Flight shaming

Young Swedish activist Greta Thunberg and the thousands of young Swiss who are striking for the climate have drawn the public’s attention to air traffic pollution. More and more people are deciding not to fly anymore and some Swiss universities are issuing rules on flights for business and study trips. The phenomenon has been called “flight shame”, from the Swedish “flygskam”, which was on the list of Swedish neologisms for 2018. Here we explain “flight shame” and get a personal confession from our Swiss German-speaking colleague Pascal, who calculated the amount of kilometres he’s flown in the last ten years.