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The image of GA in the media: Commuting by plane causes media hype

Things are getting more and more out of hand here currently.

Green movements got a huge win in cantonal elections in Zurich last month. Coinciding, there are organized anti climate demonstrations for kids and teenagers every saturday, apparently triggered by this Swedish girl’s appearance at the WEF.

Now politicians here in Zurich demand a total ban on any air transport for any schools of the canton, not only for school trips and so on, but also for their staff and students on their own time (they have to pledge or sign a pledge not to fly even privately).

This is total hysteria. I am darn glad that my wife no longer teaches, would be problematic with her other job as flight attendant, they’d probably fire her. And I am starting to wonder where I should sent my girl to school once the time comes. I suppose this summer a lot of families will have huge problems with their offspring when they are scared to fly with them in order to avoid bullying in school once they return.

So no isolated incident with the professor at Chur but it appears that it is an orchestrated campaign. I wonder what will come next, but am hearing rumours about proposed legislation to ban all short range flying by law. No chance I hope (direct democracy will hopefully play) but if so, while aimed at airlines, it could possibly also mean the end of GA in this country if the law is written stupidly enough. Eco-dictatorship… no place for humans.

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

Mooney_Driver wrote:

they’d probably fire her.

The law in Switzerland would permit firing someone for arbitrary reasons?

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

Airborne_Again wrote:

The law in Switzerland would permit firing someone for arbitrary reasons?

Not that up front but as many teachers here are on time limited contracts before they ever get elected, they simply would not renew the contract I imagine. I’ve seen that happen all the time for no apparent reason whatsoever. And not only in teaching btw, also other functions today work with time limited contracts a lot to circumnavigate firing protection.

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

I found the OP in this post rather sad, but the thread only got worse from there due to the reactions. Lots of conspiracy theorists around here it seems, as well as a lot of [ removed, not necessary ]. We don’t need this here on EuroGA I think.

It would be nice if we could agree on two very basic facts here:

  • Man made climate-change is real, and it is happening right now. We need to stop it for the sake of our future and that of our children and grandchildren. What exactly has to be done is of course subject of debate, but the debate wheter it happens is over!
  • We are all living in rather decent western nations with relatively little corruption and rather stable rule of law. It is baseless to assume that our governments are “out to get us” and our freedoms, although some nations recently seem to have voted against their long term interests (US, UK and Hungary come to mind). Irritating reporting by excitable journalists, as in the OP, has to be taken with a grain of salt. These people are out to get clicks and for that they need to generate outrage…ignore them.

Whenever I talk about my hobby of GA flying with uninvolved people I always get positive reactions like “wow I didn’t know you could do this”, never the negative kind of reaction described here.

Low-hours pilot
EDVM Hildesheim, Germany

MedEwok wrote:

Whenever I talk about my hobby of GA flying with uninvolved people I always get positive reactions like “wow I didn’t know you could do this”, never the negative kind of reaction described here.

Depends how you talk about things?

But yes usually you get a positive reaction even from “a green person” if you can offer them gliding instead
I can’t offer a military jet ride unfortunately but most will get a smile flying in one, less when they have to split the bill

Last Edited by Ibra at 07 Apr 22:51
Paris/Essex, France/UK, United Kingdom

Lots of good points by MD above.
Yep, I read in a newspaper that The Netherlands MPs are preparing a law to forbid short-range CAT, and in Sweden a hashtag calls for no air transport for holidays.

This story of Earth punishing the little humans for their sins of exploiting natural resources sounds too good to me, and mankind is very sensible to these stories, since the Golden Calf and before.
Those eco-leaders said they didn’t need a God, they just became the priests of the New Global Paganism.
My God promised to Noah never to destroy His world again after the Flood.

LFOU, France

Mooney_Driver wrote:

Not that up front but as many teachers here are on time limited contracts

Ouch.

And not only in teaching btw, also other functions today work with time limited contracts a lot to circumnavigate firing protection.

Sweden has strict limitations on time limited contracts just to prevent them for being used to circumnavigate job protection.

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

I’ve decided to delete my last post but for the final paragraph. This is no longer about aviation, it is about politics.

It is interesting however how many people in this aviation forum defend the strategies and populism going on in the field of climate change yet they do not find it necessary to take their own consequences, otherwise they would hardly frequent here. Whoever truely believes that his 150 hp airplane is sinful and decadent should do away with it, and the car, forego having children and whatever else and ride to work on a horse or whatever. Oh, wait, don’t horses also produce ugly gasses? So walk… oh, what about the gasses man produces, breaths, e.t.c?

Last Edited by Mooney_Driver at 08 Apr 09:51
LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

Peter wrote:

6kW is roughly what one needs for a small electric car doing local journeys. A Tesla doing 100 miles a day (a typical longer commute)

A typical outlier commute I would say. UK Department for Transport figures show that the average car commute is 10 miles, so that’s already an order of magnitude more than the average! (Compared to the average train commute in the UK, which is just over 20 miles, and there’s a good chance the train is electric already).

Andreas IOM

Mooney_Driver wrote:

Whoever truely believes that his 150 hp airplane is sinful and decadent should do away with it, and the car, forego having children and whatever else and ride to work on a horse or whatever

My 160hp plane is sinful and decadent, but I enjoy a bit of sin and decadence every so often :-) (And I have foregone having children, largely to afford aforementioned sin and decadence!) :-)

I also rode my bike 20km to work today. Not in any particular environmental drive, but it keeps me healthier (a bike is a vehicle that makes you healthy and saves you money, a car is a vehicle that costs you money and makes you fat!)

Andreas IOM
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