Flight Shaming: # stayontheground

For the environmentally conscious, boarding a flight can be a source of mild stress or guilt, considering the large amounts of carbon footprint that comes with it. 【小题1】

Flight shaming, or flygskam, is a movement that originated in Sweden in 2017. Back then, singer Staffan Lindberg declared his intention to give up flying to and from his concerts in favor of travel by train, bus, car, or boat. 【小题2】 Before long, a substantial portion of the general public had happily jumped on board. The following year, the hashtag # jagstannarpamarken — which translates as # stayontheground started gaining popularity on the Internet, and by 2019, annual air travel in Sweden had fallen by 5%.

Although “shame” has a relatively negative meaning associated with it, the overall outcome of the flight shaming movement has been undeniably positive. No longer restricted to Sweden alone, the trend has spread throughout Europe. 【小题3】 Besides, the movement is less about shaming other people out of flying than it is about changing one’s own travel habits for the benefits of the Earth.

An interesting side effect of the flight shaming movement is that those who observe it often rediscover the novelty of slow, purposeful travel. When traveling by land, one can take in the variety of sights, sounds, and smells along the way. 【小题4】 Without doubt, travelers willing to take on the challenge of flygskam have the opportunity to experience local culture in ways that passengers flying thousands of miles above could only dream of.

In the Seychelles archipelago (塞舌尔群岛) in East Africa, flooding and erosion (侵蚀) caused by rising sea level pose an incoming threat to the country’s many low-lying islands. At the same time its mangrove forests (红树林), which serve as a vital aspect against these impacts, are disappearing: Approximately 70% of Seychelles mangroves have been destroyed since the late 1700s due to human-driven development and agriculture as well as soil erosion from sea-level rise.

Today the Seychelles Government is working with local community leaders to restore the mangroves, and not just for protection against rising sealevel. Research shows that these forests can store about 2.5 million tonnes of CO₂ (equal to taking 500,000 cars off the road for a year), directly helping to fight climate change. They also provide a breeding ground for fisheries, a sector that contributes one-fifth of the country’s GDP, benefiting local communities’ livelihood and helping to protect the islands’ lively biodiversity (多样性).

While the concept of using nature to benefit both lives and lands is by no means new, global interest in “nature-based solutions” has skyrocketed in recent years. Many now see nature-based solutions as a key approach for addressing not only climate change but a range of social, environmental and economic challenges — from biodiversity loss, food security and air pollution to disease control and declining local economies.

Yet there remains widespread debate about what exactly constitutes a nature-based solution as well as how to best include these strategies into broader climate and conservation efforts. This indetermination has contributed to significant under-investment: It’s estimated that to limit temperature rise to below 1.5 degrees C (degrees F), hold back biodiversity loss and control land degradation (恶化), annual investments in nature-based approaches must be three times by 2030.

As nature-based solutions continue to rise on the global agenda, building a more consistent understanding around the concept and its implications will be key to raising support for effective, extensive solutions that benefit both people and the planet.

Every Sunday at 2 p.m., Marisela Godinez, the owner of El Mesón Tequilería, a Mexican restaurant in Austin, Texas, used to fill a 12-gallon bucket, plus another half-bucket, with leftover food from the restaurant’s all-you-can-eat brunch buffet. “We threw out a lot of food,” she said.

But a few months ago Ms. Godinez signed up to use an app called Too Good To Go. Now, 10 customers pick up “surprise bags” of her leftovers for $5.99 each, and she sends far fewer leftovers to the landfill.

Too Good To Go has tried to gamify (游戏化) buying leftover food. In the United States, customers in 12 cities can browse restaurants and stores, then reserve “surprise bags” that typically cost about $4 to $6 and contain food that would have been originally priced at roughly three times that amount. The bags can be picked up at a certain time window.

Around the country, apps that connect customers to businesses with leftover food have begun to spread. The concept is simple: Restaurants and grocery stores throw away huge amounts of food every day. Rather than trash it, apps like Too Good To Go and Flashfood help businesses sell it at a reduced price. They claim that the businesses and buyers are helping the environment because the food would otherwise become food waste, a big contributor to climate change.

Food production itself is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for between a quarter and a third of global emissions. Each step of the process — growing, harvesting, moving, processing, packaging, storing and preparing food — releases carbon dioxide, methane(甲烷) and other planet-warming gases. When the food is wasted, so are all those emissions. In addition, once unused food reaches landfills, it breaks down and releases more methane.

According to interviews with several companies selling on Too Good To Go, at least a few items for sale there aren’t necessarily what buyers might think of as “food waste.” A beverage (饮料) company owner George White said he not only used the app to sell discontinued products, but also sold new flavors there in hopes of attracting new customers.