@wenchsenior A couple points of clarification:
"your moral position on climate change" . . . I don't see this issue as moral. To me saying flying pollutes is like saying water is wet. People's choices are theirs.
"I can't categorize my current closest relationships as being metaphorical drugs" . . . the flying is the addiction, not the relationships. My friends who works with addicted people tell me that the communities of addicted people help keep them addicted too.
I'm curious, I see the benefit to you and your friends from seeing each other. As I read it, you see that there are costs that others bear. Two questions, and I'm not asking to influence you but to understand the view better.
1. Is it conceivable that you could like life overall more if you stopped flying, even given your friends' dispersion, or is it absolutely inconceivable?
2. Are there any limits to the costs you'd impose on others to see your friends?
Again, as I read these questions, I imagine some would read them as trying to corner you, but I hear the views a lot -- in fact, I felt similarly before my year avoiding flying -- and I'm interested in understanding the perspective. Unlike people I meet in person, you're anonymous, which I imagine allows you to speak more openly.
Good questions.
1. I definitely could like life more overall if I stopped flying, IF several other conditions were in place (living in a location that actually has outdoor beauty and activities/living closer to friends and family). I don't care for flying...it's not the flying that's an 'addiction' for me, as you make the analogy. DH actively hates it (and has to fly regularly for work). But those life conditions aren't in place, and can't be until (possibly) DH retires in his 60s. By that time, I will have lived about 30 years in a situation where flying was a necessary evil b/c of my husband's career path and location of his job.
2. The way you frame this question makes it seem like flying is a special case, but it's just one example of a bunch of damaging activities modern-living humans do to the planet, merely by going about their daily existence. So our individual choices about minimizing our devastating impact range from ignoring it completely to committing suicide and ending one's damaging effects to the planet (which I've always maintained would be the most logical choice to support my essential values).
However, like every other living creature, I selfishly want to live. What's the next most extreme set of options? There are lots of other things one could do as well, and if you combined ALL of those things, you could live with fairly low impact (living off grid, trying not buy anything, using no carbon-based transportation, having no children, eating no meat or foraging entirely off the land, investing no money in the modern economy that relies on externalizing costs of pollution (oops, that would put an end to this forum's existence).
If a large percentage of humanity chose, or was forced, to do those things (except for the foraging off the land thing), there would be a huge long-term benefit to ecological health of the planet and the stability of human society, but small benefit or active cost to stability of society and individual happiness of many individuals in the short-term (i.e., a human lifetime or two). Classic tragedy of the commons problem.
I already forewent having kids (the single biggest contribution to reducing all forms of negative impact that I can make, barring putting a gun to my head this very instant). For me, personally, that wasn't much of a sacrifice. Nor did it affect others' happiness very much in the short-term (my parents would have liked grand-kids, but it wasn't a priority). But by not having kids, I'm actually imposing costs on our society in the short-term and medium-term b/c less consumption (by me, providing for the kid(s)) = lower economic growth/contributing to our country's declining birthrate and destabilization of social safety net, reducing number of future taxpayers, etc.
Flying is just one of the items on these sliding-scale dilemmas of short-term benefit vs. long-term costs.
If I DON'T fly, it imposes huge costs on my lifetime emotional health b/c it means I can only very occasionally access wild, remote places of natural beauty and even, occasionally, interesting culture (which, and I'm not joking, would lead me to the 'beneficial' outcome of gun-to-my-head...it's win/win LOL!!).
If I don't fly, I would be unlikely to see my father again more than once or twice in his lifetime. This imposes misery and cost not only on my father (who already is lonely and unhappy that his family don't have more free time to travel and visit), but in his eventual decline it would impose costs on my siblings and on my father's local friends, who would have to take over any role I might have offered to help care for him. Hypothetically, this would also impose more costs on the state (other taxpayers), as well. I've watched such disparities in effort and proximity absolutely damage relationships in friend and family communities as my grandparents aged, and the pain is still rippling around a decade later.
If I don't fly, some of my relationships will inevitably be reduced in quality and intensity, and this imposes a cost on the OTHER parties in the relationships, not just me. They have less community, less support, less love. It's not just me who suffers.
If I DO fly, it benefits the economy, my relationships, and the extended social communities around some of my relationships in the short-term. In the medium-term (my lifetime), my flying is probably pretty neutral (planes aren't going to stop flying just b/c I decide not fly, so the pollution will still occur). In the long-term, my flying is contributing to devastating destruction, though I suspect the costs are going to be borne more by the non-human world, unfortunately. Humans are like cockroaches, and our species will carry on regardless.
So what 'costs' should we focus on when deciding what actions to take? Short-term? Medium-term? Long-term? The climate change problem (and pollution in general) will only be dealt with by societal and economic restructuring on a massive scale, which I can't affect with most of my individual choices. Certainly, my choosing not fly won't affect the airline industry even one iota. Planes will continue to fly, with or without my ass in their seats. So my choice to NOT fly isn't really reducing harm to anyone, though it might make me feel more virtuous.
Costs associated with broad-scale social and economic restructuring could be very high, less high, or even (possibly) neutral in the short- and medium-term, if an organized plan to change was carried out by advanced nations. But again, that isn't something I can affect very much as an individual, aside from voting and joining some sort of local civic planning organization.
Granted, some peoples' lives are arranged in such a way that their individual efforts to reduce impact don't carry much perceived cost. You appear to be such a person as re: flying (I'm assuming your relationship-counterparts that you formerly saw more frequently via flying are as happy as you are with your new relationship status quo and are feeling their lives are also improved by your not flying). That's great.
I have friends who have lived off-grid for a decade and consider themselves very environmentally progressive. They are currently living in a yurt with no hot water. They kind of thrive on that and enjoy it; it's like a hobby or a self-selected endurance event, so they don't perceive as many costs to themselves as many of us would. They do eat meat b/c they like it, though they try not to eat factory farmed meat. They don't currently have enough money to fly regularly, but when they did have the money, they had no compunction about flying to Australia, etc. Like most people, they are good at making trade-offs in some areas, and unwilling to shoulder the costs in others.
I have friends who dislike meat, so giving it up wasn't a sacrifice. I like meat, but am happy to limit it in my diet, and to essentially give up dairy. Other people I know would view giving up cheese as an unthinkable sacrifice, but would happily skip owning a car. I know people who want nothing to do with their family, and not flying to see them is no burden at all. Personally, I love walking, and don't mind skipping the car in favor of walking several miles to run various errands, even in blistering heat. Aren't I virtuous LOL? Guess what I really dislike, though? BIKING :gasp: Etc etc etc.
Everyone makes trade-offs as to where to put their energy, and how many short-term costs they want to bear as individuals while pushing for long-term benefits. IMO, a huge amount of energy seems to be expended in Sysiphean individual efforts of rolling that boulder, when the benefit per unit effort comes from 'leveling the mountain' or some such analogy to changing our entire society.
Ugh, now I started my weekend again feeling like we need a good plague to wipe out 99% of us. I should stop engaging in climate change threads; it's not good for my mental health.
Sorry OP, that's probably more than enough thread hijacking.