‘Climate Conscious’ Family That Gave up Flying in 2002 Travels to Australia by Land and Sea for Family Wedding – Then Gets on a Plane
Climate change and all the attendant hysteria might be wearing some of us down but luckily there are some moments of light relief. A Somerset family of eco-heroes who selflessly gave up flying in 2002 have made it by land and sea and, it transpires, by air to attend a family wedding, according to the BBC:
The family decided to stop flying in 2002 “because of its effect on the climate”.
Mr. Simon, from East Pennard, said: “We stopped flying a long time ago because of our own carbon footprint, which we looked at and we thought we can’t justify it anymore.”
But when Ms. Coggins’ sister, who lives in Sydney, revealed she was getting married, the family started planning how they would get there without using a plane.
They travelled through Kazakhstan, China, Laos, Thailand and Indonesia using multiple modes of transport, before taking a flight from Dili in East Timor’s capital to cross the Timor Sea to Darwin, Australia.
Apparently:
The family thinks they have used five times less carbon travelling than if they had flown all the way.
Note ‘thinks’. No actual figures are provided to prove this claim. The journey took four months and involved the couple giving up their jobs. Oh! That’s how it’s done! Just give up work. This must be the most extreme example of climate activism being a middle-class leisure pursuit.
The trip required “a monumental amount of planning”. Sadly, the planning didn’t extend to working out how to get from SE Asia to Australia:
Their travel options ran out and they were forced to take a short flight.
Writing on the family’s blog, Rosa [the couple’s daughter] said: “It really was tough, having to get on a plane after all we had achieved without one.”
Probably a lot less tough than trying to swim across the Timor Sea.
Ms. Coggins made the invaluable observation that “unfortunately the world isn’t currently set up to make low-carbon travel easier than flying”.
No method of travelling long distance is easier than flying and nor will it ever be, except possibly short hop space travel, because it’s a great deal faster and safer. It’s never going to be easier to go by land and sea to Australia because most of us have to earn a living and don’t have time, however wonderful a trip of a lifetime might be. That’s why the Cutty Sark is now a museum ship. In 1883 it broke the record at 73 days from Sydney to London. Impressive but not quite as impressive as less than 24 hours in a 787.
But the great thing about this story is that perhaps Net Zero won’t be so bad after all. If your travel options run out it seems you can just hop on a plane and still be an eco hero. I’m off to Australia myself in a couple of weeks. My travel options have run out too, so I’ll be on the non-stop flight to Perth with all the other passengers whose travel options have run out.
Stop Press: Some people in the comments have been asking how the family got back from Australia. According to the BBC: “The family will continue soaking up the sun for the next few months before going back home the same way they came.”. So, a whole year off then.
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I think all those who believe in net zero and that fossil fuels are bad should as is there right stop using any product derived from fossil fuels, from Pharma, through to food grown using fossil fuelled vehicles etc, by doing this and fully emersing themselves in the cause they believe in, as there is so many of them they will undoubtedly save the planet. I thank them in advance for their dedication and selflessness in their beliefs, and for allowing me to continue in my beliefs.
And maybe, Hester, at the extreme end, they could stop breathing too – all that CO2 can’t be a good thing after all…
Now you’re talking Aethelred. That is an agenda I fully support.
Too harsh? Hardly. Nut zero is going to result in the deaths of millions. This family of wealthy eco nutters could at least lead by example.
Now that is a good idea especially as it would stop them talking.
All those unfit bodies cycling to work must produce more CO2 than the rest of us with their panting, perhaps they can go first?
You too can attend a wedding on the other side of the world (nearly) without using a plane to get there… If you are rich enough to take four and a half months to get there.
By the way, how did they get back?
Damn’ hypocrites.
A family full of self righteous chunts!
How did they get back! The same way they got there? I think not
Hot air balloon I think, Dings. Lots of hot air!
Of which 432 parts in a million would be ……
If I’m honest, I’m a little more sympathetic towards them.
Not because I respect their cause, but for two other reasons.
One, they’ve acted on their beliefs and tried to walk the talk. That has to be respected at some level.
Two. Going on the information given I don’t see them telling anyone else what to do. They’re getting on with what they believe without ,as far as I can see, trying to impose anything on anyone else. I repeat, based on the info provided. If that’s the case I don’t have a problem with them. I just wish they picked better causes.
Good points, Stewart.
Good points indeed. But they are still utter plonkers – just look at the photo above!
Looks like one of the girls has hurt her knee, bless…😉
“One, they’ve acted on their beliefs and tried to walk the talk. That has to be respected at some level.”
No respect of any sort due. This action reveals a level of ignorance and stupidity that is off the bloody scale. Failing to do at least some research in to AGW is unpardonable.
Talk about ignorance is bliss.
Mr Simon said: “The travel was a thing in itself. It was a great experience.
“We wanted to do it with our daughter in her gap year – see the world.”
I figure some of the people subject to Khant’s ULEZ tax wouldn’t mind going on a six month holiday in order to show their children the world, either. I certainly wouldn’t, even despite I have no children, and I would avoid flying because I absolutely hate being stuffed into a better can with hundreds of tightly-packed people for hours on end. But that’s not useful for political agendas of interest to the BBC.
I wisg I could genuinely agree, Stewart.
But you, or I, or a reasonably bright 15 year old could work out a dozen routes to get from the UK to Australia and back by sea in an afternoon. Not least, more than one direct cruise liner’s itinerary. Quicker, simpler and cheaper than their extended holiday to East Timor.
And I don’t believe for a moment that you can’t travel between East Timor and Australia by sea.
These self-entitled virtue signallers remind me of the many multi- millionaire participants on “Grand Designs” who, after building a “home” so big that you would need a Segway to get to the lavatory without shitting your pants, after using as much concrete and steel to build a supermarket, nevertheless are congratulated by our Kevin for their “sustainable” and “eco-friendly” credentials.
Yeah, everyone “needing” to attend an Australian wedding, or “needing” a new home, should follow these examples and help “save the planet”.
Did these clowns consider a Zoom call?
There’s no bonkers like bonkers-bonkers. It could only be more insane if they’d all chopped down a tree, hollowed out a canoe and paddled their way there. Meanwhile, Gore’s Gulfstream cut an arc in the sky above them mid-Indian Ocean as he travelled to Australia for a climate change conference. Absurd.
Greta’s chums on their carbon fibre racing yacht would beat ‘Cutty Sark’ to Sydney or ‘Thermopylae’ to Melbourne (61 days).
Where to start? This ought to be enough.
1. CO2/temperature for 800 million years, no correlation
2. CO2/temperature for 600 thousand years, temperature leads CO2
3. Van Wijngaarden and Happer; ‘Infrared Forcing by Greenhouse Gases’, CO2 saturated (doubling to 800 ppm causes 1% absorption increase). Methane quantity insignificant.
https://co2coalition.org/publications/van-wijngaarden-and-happer-radiative-transfer-paper-for-five-greenhouse-gases-explained/
Perhaps on their travels they had time to peer at all the poor people immiserated by their luxury belief/cult.
4. The most important argument against climate alarmism is that the proposed solutions are unworkable and dangerous, particularly for the poorest (women cooking over indoor wood and dung fires and coping with unreliable water supply in Africa which has abundant coal and exports it to Europe which forbids affordable, reliable hydrocarbon based electricity in Africa).
I’m guessing most of the vehicles they travelled all those tens of thousands of miles in where not exactly euro6 standard compliant either.
A semi-normal eco-conscious traveler would simply tick the ‘offset my carbon emissions’ box when booking the long haul flight.
‘Ms. Coggins made the invaluable observation that “unfortunately the world isn’t currently set up to make low-carbon travel easier than flying”.’
Magellan and Cook might disagree with you on that one, Coggy!
Bet she plays a storming ‘Kumbaya’ on that guitar (Animal House anyone?).
Dumb cause, but they don’t seem to be hurting anyone.
I have a much much bigger problem with officials and bureaucrats that are actively imposing Net Zero policies on all of us. Those are the really dangerous people.
Mocking some confused family might be fun and make the rest of us feel very smug, but I would focus attention on the real menaces: the policy makers.
Disagree really strongly, we must call out this lunacy whenever it surfaces because it reinforces the Net Zero insanity. No more ‘go along to get along’ make it your New Year’s resolution too.
Don’t you think it actually has the opposite effect?
i reckon it might even help us by providing a perfect example of what Net Zero lunacy leads to and people are going to think, “hmm, yeah, I don’t think we should get rid of planes, maybe carbon isn’t so bad…”.
We haven’t found ourselves bound in all of a sudden by ULEZs, electric car quotas, wasteful wind and solar projects, because of a few enabling loonies.
It’s because while everyone slept, behind the scenes, policies and laws were enacted with escalating targets that have us on a difficult to course that we now have to try to correct. And it’s going to be really really hard. Thanks to the behind the back scheming of bureaucrats and plutocrats.
The pols nod it through because their focus groups tell them it’s what voters want. People are realising what a mistake EVs were whilst still believing the insanity. Greta’s star is fading. Mark Steyn is about to show up fake Nobel laureate Michael E Mann ‘pro se’ in a DC court. I think we can play our part rather than surrendering to Davos Man.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26085162-a-disgrace-to-the-profession
I really don’t think the population knew anything about what was being done to be able to have an opinion on it.
For years we’ve all been fed vague ideas about climate change and the need to do something but I don’t think anyone was thinking much about it let alone really cared.
When the laws were passed back in the 2000s and then again by Theresa May, no one had a clue what was being passed.
Politicians aren’t responding to focus groups they are following the policies of these multinational organisations which in turn are controlled and directed by plutocrats.
Seconded Nigel.
“Mocking some confused family might be fun and make the rest of us feel very smug,” People like this make me angry not smug. They are I assume part of what we call on here the ‘intelligent stupid’ who soak up the propoganda concerning AGW, carbon, Co2 and all the rest. These people are the real danger to us, world civilisations and even the planet, NOT the policy makers. The ULEZ schemes blatantly mock the public because what they actually confirm is that so long as you have the money you can release as much Co2 as you desire. Co2 as people like the Khant know has F A to do with harming the planet and indeed another couple of hundred parts per million in the atmosphere would do wonders for crop levels. The policy makers however decidedly do not want greater food production – they want billions less of us not more. If eco nutters such as this family ignored the propoganda or even used their undoubted wealth to fight against the nonsense the world and the people on it might have a chance. If whole populations reject the global climate change crap what are the policy makers going… Read more »
Hear hear Hux!
Thanks Vax F.
Dumb cause, but they don’t seem to be hurting anyone.
By publically (see below) demanding that “the government” “must do more to lead the way to decarbonisation”, ie, that the government of the UK must exert more force on the people living in the UK to make them mend their evil CO₂-ways despite this won’t make one jot of a difference and would be wasting valuable time and resources on hobbyhorse projects if there was actually a climate emergency, they’re mostly certainly doing their utmost to harm others. That their utmost happens to be very little doesn’t excuse the evil intent.
An extreme example of collective climate derangement syndrome.
The questions the article doesn’t ask are the ones that interest me. How does a family of working age afford this? How did they pay a mortgage, if they have one, while they were away? Are they independently wealthy or have they recently inherited? After all, the cost of travel and being ‘on holiday’ for so long must be massive.
Tbh, I would also have thought the emission totals comparatively would be very similar.
I don’t know about soaking up the sun, isn’t Australia having a very wet summer?
Their collective carbon footprint would certainly have been lower if they hadn’t travelled.
I wonder what their eyewear is made of?
A tenner says plastic.
And there is no elastic in their knickers, just raffia.
Thought so.
£10 POM anybody?
5 to 6 weeks on 1 form of transport.
So four month’s worth of journeying on fossil fuel powered transportation, accommodation, food, energy, did not emit any carbon dioxide?
The plane the could have flown on, flew anyway and had they been on it any additional fuel (thus emissions) to carry them + luggage would have been marginal and less than that from four months travelling.
There were three levels of retardation. Those with an IQ of 0 to 25 (an IQ of 100 is average) are called idiots; 26 to 50 are called imbeciles; 51 to 70 are morons.
Morons could communicate and learn common tasks; imbeciles stalled mentally at about six years old; and idiots couldn’t respond to stimulus or communicate with any level of competency.
Now we have a fourth level: Climatrons.
Climatrons IQ= -30 to 0 !
The Mirror report from 10 days ago has more details. It was their life savings and there’s hope of a supermarket job on return.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/travel/australia-new-zealand/family-attempt-epic-no-fly-31708862
Theo […] said the Government was not doing enough to lead the way when it comes to decarbonising.
No signs of intelligent life down under, Jim!
One of the worse cases of extreme virtue signaling I have ever witnessed. The amount of self-delusion is just staggering. Imagine what it would take to convince yourselves and others that your world tour over several months in fossil fueled land vehicles is somehow more eco friendly than a quick flight! They must think everyone is as dumb as them. Greta would be proud.