In Europe and the United States the number of flights will be halved by 2035 compared to the current growth rate of 4-5% per year. This forecast is given by the Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS), which comes from the growing popularity of the so-called Flygskam movement ("Shame on flying").
Originated in Sweden, since the end of 2018 it has spread to all Scandinavian States, and now finds new adherents in the European Union as a whole, as well as in the United States.
The Swedish term "flygskam" means the guilt that passengers must feel when buying air tickets in an era of environmental crisis.
According to experts, air transport now accounts for 2 % of global greenhouse gas emissions. Flying an airplane is 1,500 times more harmful to the environment than riding a high-speed train.
The world's leading aircraft manufacturers Airbus and Boeing, for their part, predict that the growth rate of air travel in 4-5% will continue until 2035.
However, research conducted by UBS shows that air passengers are far from indifferent to the campaigns of ecologists to protect the environment. Thus, UBS predicts that in the European Union as a whole, the growth in the number of flights in the period up to 2035 will not exceed 1.5% per year, in the US - 1.3%.
Notably, in Europe, companies provide extra days off for employees who prefer to travel by train or other more environmentally friendly means of transport than aviation.
And in Sweden activists of the new environmental movement - Flygfritt ("Without the plane"), which already unites about 100,000 people, generally call for a complete rejection of air travel from 2020.
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