Flying with Purpose
6 years, 9 months, 29 days, 18 hours
23 September 2022
Last month a colleague challenged me as to whether it was acceptable for companies like ours to continue to hold large international conferences.
It is a more than fair challenge. The pros and cons of flying is a dilemma I grapple with personally. The debate I have with myself oscillates around the following thoughts:
That the world isn’t taking the climate emergency seriously enough, or recognising the urgency in it, and ‘business-as-usual’ stuff like big global events are a prime example of that.
That we should prioritise the actions that have the biggest impact. Aviation is responsible for about 2% of total CO2 emissions. The big prizes in averting climate disaster lie in converting all the world’s energy generation to renewable, getting everyone to drive an electric car (or no car), removing oil and gas from heating, and decarbonising iron, steel and cement.
Alongside, and intimately connected with, the climate emergency is a social emergency, of rising inequality, intolerance, and nationalism. As parts of the world become uninhabitable and involuntary migration increases, there seems a significant risk that we face a catastrophe of human v human alongside human v nature. So there is an ever greater need for individuals to come together, to find solutions to these global challenges and to recognise that our similarities are much greater than our differences.
I believe humans need other human interaction for their mental health and well-being. You could argue that should come from those we happen to live within walking distance from, but in a globally-connected world, of disparate business and personal families, that is not always possible. A world in which we interact with each other almost entirely through screens is for me a dystopia.
Certain individuals and organisations have amplified reach and influence. Those of us in KPMG are in that privileged category. The biggest difference we can make is not cutting our own carbon footprint (though we should, to play our part and for the example it sets), but through supporting global-scale change through our clients.
So there may be a good reason for bringing colleagues together if the result is we are more effective in what we do to drive change through our clients. If that cost-benefit test is not met then we shouldn’t do it.
Where I have provisionally landed is this. First we shouldn’t start from a presumption of trying to do everything on-line, as that seems to me too blind to the benefits of meetings in person. However, second, the bar for travelling, particularly flying, is now set much higher than before and must explicitly weigh the carbon impact of that travel. Therefore, third, we should take fewer flights but spend more time where-ever we land. At a business level that means we should hold fewer large gatherings, and be clear as to the benefit that we expect each such meeting to bring.