Why traveling has become a source of shame in Sweden

STOCKHOLM – By dodging the endless winter to warmer latitudes, Swedes have become frequent flyers, but have recently had the "shame" of taking the plane and contributing to the

global warming

.

They even have a word for it, "flygskam", or "shame of flying", which conveys guilt over the recognized harmful environmental effects of air transport.

An anonymous account

Instagram

who already has 60,000 followers criticizes the behavior of
influencers in social networks, which promote very distant destinations, to the detriment of the planet.

"I'm worried about everything that's going on around me and (the embarrbadment of the plane) has affected my views on air travel," said Viktoria Hellstrom, 27, a student. in political science in Stockholm.

Last summer, this young woman preferred to take the train to Italy, despite the fact that her friends opted for the plane. And yet, he felt guilty about having flown a few weeks ago.

Spain

.

Every day, more and more Swedes, especially the younger ones, choose the train instead of the plane to reduce their carbon footprint.

Pioneer in the field, the teenager Greta Thunberg,
He became famous for his campaign for strikes in schools and traveled 32 hours by train from Stockholm to Davos, Switzerland, to attend the World Economic Forum in January.

Other Swedish personalities have already announced their decision to no longer use the plane. The well-known sports commentator, Bjorn Ferry, who works on public television, said that he would now travel only by train.

For its part, 250 employees of the film industry have published a manifesto in the newspaper
Dagens Nyheter in which they asked Swedish producers to limit their trips abroad for environmental reasons.

Train

The geographical location of Sweden (almost 5,000 kilometers separates Kiruna, mining town of Lapland, Marbella on the Spanish Costa del Sol), high purchasing power, charter flights and the boom of low-cost airlines costs have allowed Swedes to become frequent travelers.

According to a study by researchers at the Gothenburg University of Technology in 2018, aircraft emissions between 1990 and 2017 were five times higher than the global average per capita. These emissions have increased by 61% since 1990 on international flights, says the study.

But people have started to become aware of global warming. According to the Swedish Institute of Meteorology, the average annual temperature increases twice as fast in Sweden as the world average.

In this scenario, a study by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) published in January revealed that almost one in five Swedes (just under 20%) had chosen to travel by train at least once. not by plane. minimize the impact on the environment. The same study showed that this trend is more pronounced among women and generally among the youngest.

As a result, the national railway company SJ recorded a 21% increase in travel this winter, as the government announced its intention to reintroduce night trains to major European capitals from here to end of 2022. And although the number of pbadengers on domestic flights decreased by 3.2% in 2018, the number of pbadengers on international flights increased by 4%.

In other countries

Until now, the tendency to "fly shame" has not had the same impact in neighboring countries, although Finland has invented its own version of the term: "lentohapea".

A similar phrase is not used elsewhere in the world, but since the aircraft emits 285 grams of CO2 per pbadenger per kilometer, compared to 158 by car and 14 by train, some have decided to stop.

Fausta Gabola, a Franco-Italian student in Paris, is reluctant to accept a scholarship to study in Australia, one year after having badured her that she will no longer take the plane. "I dream of going there, I introduced myself without really thinking about it and now it is a dilemma, I would have the feeling to be hypocritical if it was," says -he.

The French political scientist Mathilde Szuba believes that any decision not to steal implies leaving part of the world out of reach. "There is no easy substitute for theft," he said. "You can not go to distant places without taking the plane."

In

Sweden

Some experts warn against an overly simplistic badysis of the phenomenon and an overestimation of the role of shame, a fundamental feeling among protesters that filmmaker Ingmar Bergman captured in his film "Vergüenza" (1968).

Frida Hylander, a psychologist who studies the relationship between psychology and climate, explains that while shame – and in particular the fear of public criticism – is a powerful determinant of behavior, it is not the only one.

The expert wants to believe that there was an awareness of climate change after the heat wave of 2018, which caused unprecedented forest fires in Sweden.

A new fare on flights in effect since April 2018 could also have an influence, as well as the bankruptcy of one of the largest Swedish airlines, which resulted in the closure for several months of certain domestic routes.

AFP Agency