Matthew Whitehouse, South Carolina

I am a musician (organist) and astronomy educator. Prior to the pandemic, I flew internationally/long-haul 1-2 times a year for conferences, recital performances, and speaking engagements. This included several trips to Australia and New Zealand. Losing a 2020 recital engagement in Norway to COVID prompted me to re-evaluate. Post-pandemic, I have decided to accept only local professional engagements, and to limit my flights to 1-2 times per year within the continental US for personal/vacation reasons. It’s not a perfect “flight free” solution, though my jobs require very little travel. They do, however, require a consistent onsite presence and are difficult to take off more than a few days at a time. When I do travel to maintain people/place connections from my graduate school days in Arizona, I’m thus reliant on the speed afforded by flying. However, I figure that flying out to the western US, rather than Australia/New Zealand or Europe, is a significant carbon savings. I think it would be wonderful for these “flight free” campaigns to talk more about people such as myself, who have made major reductions but not eliminated flying completely. Particularly in the US, where we have a vast and diverse country but little access to a Europe-style train system. It’s not perfect by any stretch, though I think the climate crisis needs lots of people involved with imperfect solutions!