I haven't flown for six years. I didn't feel a pressing need to travel, but most of all I didn't want to make such an enormous contribution to climate change. A return flight from Melbourne to London pumps about 1.8 tonnes of carbon pollution into the atmosphere, wiping out other efforts to reduce emissions at home.
For a roving freelance journalist, it was a principled but ridiculous stance. I once spent two days on buses between Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney just to conduct a few face-to-face interviews. My most impractical assignment was researching the Queensland sugar industry — two days on a train, then a taxi into the cane fields around Bundaberg.
But now here I am on a Jetstar flight to Sydney for a climate change conference. As the plane takes off, I squirm with a sense of hypocrisy: I've broken my vow for the same reason I made it.
Returning to something after a long absence brings fresh insight, so I spend the entire trip pondering why we fly, and why it's so hard to give up. The answers are less obvious than they first appear.
There's the convenience, of course. We slingshot ourselves from one place to another in order to get there more quickly.
But even that's more complicated than it seems. Once everyone has access to the same conveniences, they congeal into cultural norms. You're expected to fly at a moment's notice for work or a family crisis, and refusing to do so can leave you unemployed or ostracised. This social and cultural pressure is rarely acknowledged.
Watching paddocks pass underneath as the plane crosses northern Victoria, I can think of another compelling reason we fly. The status. Flying makes us feel important, as the language we use to talk about it reveals.
Cognitive linguist George Lakoff argues that we think in terms of metaphors. By metaphor he doesn't mean rhetorical flourishes that catch our eye because they are unusual or poetic. He means phrases so familiar we don't notice them.
"One of the reasons sustainability lacks appeal is it's described as a down concept. We're asked to reduce our emissions or live a low-impact lifestyle ... Refusing to fly takes this heresy to its extreme: here is someone literally renouncing the high-life."
His book Metaphors We Live By mentions the orientational metaphor up-down. We use these concepts with remarkable consistency. For example, happy is up and sad is down. So we say 'that boosted my spirits', 'you give me a lift', 'he's feeling low' or 'his spirits sank'.
Virtue is up and depravity is down: she has high standards, he is an upstanding citizen, that was a low trick, don't be underhanded, I wouldn't stoop to that.
High status is up and low status is down: he has a lofty position, she'll rise to the top, he's at the peak of his career, I've hit rock bottom.
In this framework, flying is metaphor made real. When you're in a plane you're elevated, aloft, high above. Those are literal descriptions of your orientation, but also metaphors of your place in the human hierarchy.
But hang on, doesn't everyone fly these days? It's not a luxury like it was in the 70s.
Yes, it can seem that way if you look at a rich industrialised country such as Australia. But if you look at the whole planet of 7.5 billion people, it's clear that flying is still the preserve of the comparatively wealthy. Globally, high flyers are high status; it's just that many of us would be surprised to find ourselves counted among this elite.
Gazing out the window at the horizon, I can see another less obvious appeal of flying: a sense of perspective. Again, it's both literal and metaphorical. From up here we have a bird's eye view, a sense of the bigger picture. We're not bogged down in the detail. It's a place for high-level thinking — and, as Lakoff writes, intellect and rationality are also up concepts in our culture.
One of the reasons sustainability lacks appeal is it's described as a down concept. We're asked to reduce our emissions or live a low-impact lifestyle. Intuitively, many people translate this to mean a lower quality of life. This is why the idea of deliberately living with less is so baffling to most people — it sounds like you're choosing poverty, even if that's not what is meant. Refusing to fly takes this heresy to its extreme: here is someone literally renouncing the high-life.
There are many rational reasons why, even as climate change bites, we'll keep burning fossil fuels to fly from A to B. Teleconferencing software can never replace the intimacy of a face-to-face meeting. Business people will continue to seal deals in person because it builds trust. Nor can armchair travel or virtual reality surpass the wonder of waking up 24 hours after takeoff in an entirely different culture and climate.
So we'll keep transporting our bodies thousands of kilometres for work or play, and most land or sea travel is too slow to meet the demands of people living in such a fast-paced society.
That leaves planes, and there aren't many good alternatives to carbon-based jet fuel. Growing crops to manufacture biofuels is possible, but it takes up arable land needed for farming. While batteries hold promise, they're still too heavy for the amount of energy they provide — a crucial point when you're trying to get a 400-tonne Boeing 747 off the ground.
But another reason we'll keep flying is emotional and, dare I say it, philosophical. Flying reminds us that we are members of a species clever enough to break the rules governing other land-locked mammals — those lowly creatures so beneath us! — and exist in a higher realm. Aside from the seductive convenience, it's this metaphor of flying that makes it so hard to resist.
Greg Foyster is a Melbourne writer and the author of the book Changing Gears.