Book festivals depend on exchange: whether that be an exchange of ideas, an exchange of recommendations, or a transactional exchange between bookseller and consumer. The problem is that, whilst many have been (re)discovering the comfort of a good book during this pandemic, COVID-19 threatened to bring these acts of exchange to a halt. Cancelled events such as the Hay Festival were left in a precarious position, as the not-for-profit foundation derives 70% of its income from book and ticket sales. However, in adapting their models to an online format, book festivals are taking a long overdue step towards making the literary landscape more accessible to the masses.
As a total newcomer to these sorts of events, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when I signed up for the digital Hay Festival, but I was quickly overwhelmed by the range of interesting talks, research and readings available at my fingertips. For those on the outside looking in, literary and intellectual communities can often feel remote, hidden behind a veil of elitism that is all too common when discussing the arts. To have free access to so many exciting resources from the comfort of my own home was a pleasant surprise to say the least.
While nothing can match the feeling (or the valuable industry revenue) of being able to browse through bookshops in person, what the online spaces lost in physical trade was atoned by the achievement of a wider audience reach than ever before. The simple process of registering for a talk, receiving a link, and then interacting with thousands of other attendees from across the globe through a live chatroom meant that the enthusiastic communities which book festivals unite somehow appeared more connected than ever. Not only do the recorded talks solve so many accessibility problems, but the ability to watch them for up to 24 hours after the event had passed (and even longer for a subscription fee) facilitated easy and flexible attendance around other commitments. As idyllic as it sounds to vanish for a few days to the literary haven of Hay-on-Wye, for many, financial and geographic constraints curtail the prospect of reaching the so-called ‘Woodstock of the mind’.
By eliminating the challenges of locations and time zones,
the speakers and talks were diverse and far-reaching in a way that is unique to
online global connectivity. There was something surprisingly comforting about drifting
to sleep with Toby Jones, wine in hand, reciting the poetry of Wordsworth. I also
felt the thrill of gaining exclusive insights on global issues, like White House
tensions, as they unfolded. The unusual intimacy of bringing these speakers
into the home provided a golden opportunity to share interests with loved ones,
especially with those who you might never have had the chance or cause to
discuss such topics with before. If you had told me in March that I’d be
spending my Trinity watching book festival talks with my dad, it definitely would
have come as a surprise. However, in this Groundhog Day world where things were
starting to feel incredibly isolating, it was a blessing to be connected to
thousands of people across the globe, as well as having a new topic of
discussion to broach with my family every night.
Online book festivals are more accessible, can develop an even more diverse literary community, and have the potential to gain a much wider reach. For the many authors that rely on these festivals to platform and sell their books, this must surely be good news. It is therefore unsurprising that, looking forward to a post-Covid world, many leading festivals have already explored the possibility of online/in-person hybrid events. Nevertheless, there is still something irreplaceable about the personal touch of getting a physical book copy signed, and the jury is out on whether a wider reach necessarily translates to more sales, particularly when there are no visible book copies in sight. The success of online literary festivals depends entirely on which type of exchange you are looking for. In the case of the independent booksellers, who have only just recently seen growth in trade after a 20-year decline, the optional donations offered by online festivals may be too little, too late. After all, you cannot fuel a career based on the exchange of ideas and conversation alone.
Either way, it is undeniable that the pandemic has forced a
necessary conversation in the literary industry about its own future, from
examining the centralisation of the publishing world to acknowledging the
importance of independent booksellers in a world where Amazon appears to be
subsuming everything in its path. At a time when we are forced to be
increasingly socially distant, it has never been more important to make
literary communities more inclusive. Opening up discussions and making the thought-provoking
ideas and research shared at book festivals available to all seems as good a
place as any to start.
A blind Ghanaian student who was refused entry to the Oxford Union’s debating chamber in Michaelmas 2019 has reached an out-of-court settlement with the society. The Sunday Times reported that on Friday, the Union agreed to pay Ebenezer Azamati a settlement of several thousand pounds. The Union has also agreed to an independent inquiry into its operations and will publicly consult on adopting its recommendations.
Mr. Azamati, who was represented by John Halford of Bindmans solicitors, pursued a claim for alleged assault, race and disability discrimination. Speaking to the Sunday Times, he said: “When it happened I felt powerless. I had no means of fighting the union.”
“I am a poor boy on a scholarship. But I gathered the courage to do so because I felt if I did not say anything no action would be taken. Regardless of how difficult or tedious it was going to be, it was necessary.”
In October 2019, Mr. Azamati arrived early at a Union debate and reserved an accessible seat near the entrance by placing a book on it before leaving for dinner. When he returned, he was refused entry, manhandled out of the building and had his Union card confiscated. A Union panel found Mr. Azamati guilty of violating Union rules against “violent conduct” and revoked his membership for two terms. Following an appeal and after a video of the incident sparked international outrage, his membership was reinstated.
The incident led to Union members starting impeachment procedures against Brendan McGrath, Union President at the time, who subsequently resigned. In a statement issued through Bindmans, Mr. Azamati he said: “Mr. McGrath and the Union have yet to acknowledge that I have done nothing wrong, which is upsetting. I would like the union to state now, clearly and straightforwardly, that I am not at fault in any way for the way I was treated.” The Union has now apologised unreservedly to the student.
Following McGrath’s resignation, the Union implemented new standing orders for the training of staff and committee members. However, it failed to complete diversity and equality training, and committee training in Hilary term was not attended by the full committee, Cherwell reported in May.
Mr. Azamati will continue his studies but said he would not attend any more Union debates. “Because you have an accident in a car does not mean you will never drive a car again. But you will be cautious,” he said.
Current President of the Oxford Union, Beatrice Barr, told Cherwell: “We are pleased to have reached an agreement that reflects our desire to improve the way in which we approach issues of access and equality. We look forward to the results of the review we have determined to undertake, which will include views from throughout the Oxford community. We are excited to welcome our members, old and new, to an improved and more welcoming society this Michaelmas.”
Burger King will shut down its store on Cornmarket Street, the Oxford Mail reported on Wednesday. A property agent for the fast food chain said Jesus College, the landlord, had refused to extend the short lease on the building.
AG&G Director Richard Negus said the property surveyors had “tried to negotiate” with Jesus, but that the college would not compromise on the rent charged. The company “wanted to reach an agreement to secure the lease and make provision to keep it open as and when coronavirus finished, but couldn’t get an agreement… so it has been put on the market.”
The failed rent negotiations have prompted criticism from trade and business associations. Graham Jones, a spokesperson for the trade association OX said that Jesus College “looks like it’s trying to kill the business and has other uses lined up”.
Jones added that if landowners want business in Oxford to flourish, they would have to accept lower rent income based on lower rent income for a while.
The Oxford Mail has published an editorial comment, arguing that “the college, as a charitable institution, is duty bound to maximise its revenues. That however, can not come at the cost of the city’s vitality.” Colleges and churches “may appear quaint and old fashioned, but beyond their ivy-clad quads and calm cloisters, they are hugely wealthy landowners and, in some cases, ruthless landlords.”
Burger King’s Cornmarket Street branch is not the first business in Oxford’s restaurant industry to remain closed after being forced to shut following the lockdown in March. Earlier this month, the Bicycle Shed Pub in Summertown announced it would remain closed due to being unable to sustain business in the current climate.
Oxford could face local lockdown measures after a surge in coronavirus cases. Oxfordshire County Council said “measures that would slam the brakes on Oxford’s gradual emergence from lockdown have moved a step closer.”
There were 41 coronavirus cases in Oxford in the week ending 21 August. This amounts to 26.9 cases per 100,000 people. The average area in England had seven cases per 100,000 people, according to the BBC.
The Oxford NHS Foundation Trust says the city is now on amber alert and that the Public Health Surveillance Unit is “monitoring the situation very closely”.It adds: “If cases continue to rise, then local controls may be introduced.”
The Director of Public Health at Oxfordshire Country Council, Ansaf Azhar, called the increase “very unsettling” and encouraged young people to follow government guidance.
Azhar said: “We can see the number of people contracting
COVID is increasing per 100,000 of the population on a day-by-day basis and it
is very unsettling. Undoubtedly the 18-29 year age group is driving this rise
in cases.
“My appeal to everyone in Oxford – and 18 to 29 year olds in particular – is to remember what got us out of lockdown. Do we really want to end up with the kind of local control measures we have seen introduced in various parts of Lancashire, Yorkshire, Leicester and Aberdeen?”
He added: “At the minute it feels like we are moving in that
direction. People need to be aware their behaviour is putting themselves and
others at risk. If you’re aged 18 to 29 and catch COVID-19, you are absolutely
not guaranteed to get away with the mildest symptoms. Even mild symptoms are a
struggle, while longer-term symptoms can include chronic fatigue,
muscle weakness and memory loss.
“Equally you may well pass this on to older or
more vulnerable people. How would you feel if you knew that someone was in
hospital in a ventilator with their life under threat because you’d passed
COVID-19 on to them?”
The NHS Foundation Trust says that increased case numbers are
due to people returning from holidays in Europe and lower levels of adherence
to social distancing.
Despite the increase, Oxford is not yet on the government’s watchlist for areas of concern.
When a lockdown was announced in Leicester in June, there were 135 cases per 100,000 people, compared to Oxford’s current figure of 31. Oldham, Blackburn, and Pendle were placed under restrictions when cases reached between 70 and 90 per 100,000 people.
The University of Oxford has recently launched its dedicated COVID-19 testing service for members of staff.
“The service will benefit the local community by reducing the risk of a further COVID-19 outbreak and reducing the pressure on NHS testing facilities,” the University said in an email to students. It is initially open to staff only but students with symptoms will be able to access the service from September.
Oxford City Council said: “We are working closely with the County
Council on getting the message out as widely as possible in the city, using our
community and business networks to reach as many residents as we can alongside
media and digital message.”
The Council’s measures include a social media campaign to
promote mask wearing and an appeal for mask donations.
Oxfordshire County Council has been contacted for comment.
Of
course, snobbishness towards the North is nothing new. George Orwell captured
it vividly in his The Road to Wigan Pier, in which he wrote, ‘When you
go to the industrial North you are conscious…of entering a strange country… The
Southerner goes north… with the vague inferiority-complex of a civilised man
venturing among savages.’ Today, as a Leeds born-and-bred Northerner, I
certainly do not believe I am made to feel superior – particularly within the
setting of Oxford. On arrival, I was met with barely-concealed grimaces when I
informed new acquaintances of my origins, whilst one commented ‘Oh, I don’t
know many good schools up there, which one did you go to?’
Indeed, there aren’t that many good schools up north. There isn’t much good of anything. Despite Theresa May’s promises to re-invigorate the ‘Northern Powerhouse’ during her premiership, the buses, which run once an hour, still break down every other journey, and the railway network boasts only of 1960s-model carriages that trundle along at just a few miles per hour. The Harrogate to Leeds line, which I frequently caught on my way home from school, has for years been ‘Britain’s most cancelled train.’ Whilst I’m grateful at least that the windows open on these outdated trains, they provide a stark contrast to those I travel on whilst down South, which more often than not sport free Wi-Fi, charging ports, slick leather chairs and air-conditioning.
Needless to say, there is a distinct lack of investment in the infrastructure of the North, and, with a string of governments failing to address the issue, the problem has for a long time been abandoned to the inhabitants themselves. Discontented with their lot, and frustrated by a multitude of unfulfilled promises, in 2016 Northerners defied the South and voted, with a small but decisive 53% majority, to leave the European Union. I do not doubt that a significant number of the motivations Northerners had for voting Leave were nothing to do with the EU; for some, it was a rightfully rebellious act, directed at taking vengeance on an institution that had failed to hear their cries since Thatcher betrayed the miners in 1985.
With years of increased awareness surrounding this issue, it is embittering to realise that opinions are far from changed. In a recent edition of The Spectator, Peter Jones presented a column named ‘Will all roads soon lead to York?’, which further reinforced the approach of Lord Singh of Wimbledon; Jones compared London and Rome, and, through classical parallels, argued that a place was only useful if it served as a road to the capital. He finished his piece with the defeatist approach that there would be no justification for moving Parliament to York ‘unless parliament had become an irrelevance, simply an ‘alleyway.’’ As a Classicist myself, such a perception of the North left me dumb-founded. During the Roman Social Wars, the Italian allies, the socii or foederati, died in their thousands in order to prove to Rome that their territories and inhabitants should be valued as more than simply ‘roads to Rome’. Fifty-thousand perished, to be exact. Must we enact a second Peterloo, and fight such deadly battles, in order that our voices be finally heard?
Perhaps not. Following the recent election, Boris Johnson has repeatedly emphasised that he will be endeavouring to ‘level up every part of the country’. The PM has vowed to ‘do devolution properly’, by strengthening the northern economy and returning control of the railways. Despite my initial scepticism of the man who infamously couldn’t even traverse a zipwire without getting stuck, his words certainly appear to be more sincere than those of his predecessor Theresa May. A year on from his election, the North continues to appear at the top of his agenda; like a frantic Emperor Hadrian, Johnson has already made trips to areas such as Sheffield, Manchester and Goole, and, despite an up-tick in UK coronavirus cases, he managed to fit in a visit to the North Yorkshire Police’s headquarters a few weeks ago.
There is still a lot to be done; Johnson must promptly deliver on the ‘Northern Powerhouse Rail’ he has proposed, alongside smaller projects, such as reinvigorating the Northern health and social care services. The coronavirus pandemic has, no doubt, brought significant delay to Johnson’s schedule. I am hopeful that better days are to come, however. With Brexit done, gone will be the days of Londoners sneering at their Northern counterparts; with an increased need to rely on internal productivity, they will realise the value of Northern industry more than ever, and London-centricism will, I hope, slowly become an error of the past.
To be honest, I didn’t originally want to watch Mrs America. I have studied the history of 1970s American feminism so hearing that Phyllis Schlafly, an infamous protestor against feminism, was to be taking centre stage in many of the episodes, I didn’t know whether I wanted to subject myself to the anger that no doubt she would cause me. There are, for me, few things scarier than a woman complicit in her own dehumanisation and content with her own internalised misogyny. However, the programme still managed to draw me in and I was pleasantly surprised by its proficiency. The show caused me only a small amount of irritation.
The nine 45-minute episodes span the entirety of the 1970s and use the push for and against the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) and the resultant ‘battle’ between feminists and conservative women like Schlafly as their driving force. While episodes chronologically follow the ERA debate, most focus on a single character, allowing for buckets of character development. Mrs America features well-known feminists such as Gloria Steinem (Rose Byrne) and Betty Freidan (Tracey Ullman), whilst also placing a spotlight on lesser known feminists like Bella Abzug (Margo Martindale) and Shirley Chisholm (Uzo Aduba). A mix of fictional and real characters slot perfectly together to create wholly believable scenes. I cannot praise Cate Blanchett enough; her performance as Phyllis Schlafly was both measured and phenomenally emotive. Sarah Paulson, as Schlafly’s fictional best friend Alice, and Uzo Aduba deserve mentions as well for such personal, heart-breaking performances.
The show exceeded my expectations in its handling of history. I feared that Betty Freidan’s homophobia would be brushed under the carpet, and thankfully it wasn’t; in fact, it was discussed many times throughout the show’s run. I was worried about how the writers would craft an ending for a show about a movement that didn’t really have one, yet they successfully did just that. They didn’t ignore the racism still within the movement – the issue of tokenism is addressed directly. You watch as feminists of colour are overlooked, offended, and set about establishing their own groups in which their inter-sectional experience is centred. The show is honest about political pragmatism and which rights were dropped for the sake of others. Personally, I would have liked more time to be spent on the landmark Roe vs Wade case in 1973 which legalised abortion. It’s still exceedingly topical and, I would argue, marks one of the only true turning points for women’s rights in the US. However, this may be a reflection of my own historical pedanticism.
What I perhaps enjoyed most was the discourse surrounding Phyllis Schlafly. As a highly educated woman, organising national movements and travelling outside of the home, she is one of the most feminist anti-feminist figures in history. I love how this is highlighted by the programme: the hypocrisy of the movement she heads, and arguably uses for her personal political gain, is demonstrated time and time again. I do believe that Schlafly, who’s heart truly lay with other political issues, recognised women’s rights as a topic on which men would finally listen to her, and exploited this. There seems to be an incompatibility between the beliefs she professes and her experiences as portrayed by the programme: she is a proud homemaker yet this status has stopped her from fulfilling many of her political ambitions and desire to continue education, she experiences sexual assault in the workplace yet states that only ‘certain women’ experience this, she is continually belittled by men despite often being more knowledgeable than them, but does not recognise this as a cause for change. The internalised misogyny of Phyllis, depicted in the show, is baffling. As Republican Feminist Jill Ruckelshaus says to Phyllis- ‘You wanna get ahead climbing on the shoulders of men, Phyllis? Fine, just know they’re looking right up your skirt’.
Where I do take issue with the show is the foundation on which its dramatic tension is built. Most likely for dramatic purposes, the show feeds off, and into, the damaging trope of women fighting women. While it presents the complexity of women and the feminist movement brilliantly, in focusing so explicitly on women, the series almost implies that the biggest thing to have got in the way of women breaking down the patriarchy is other women.
While Phyllis was a key figure in the fight against the ERA, Mrs America, at times, veers toward the notion that she was the opposition and the antagonist. In truth, while she may have mobilised housewives from Middle America and caused a political stir, I think that her voice simply gave some anti-ERA state legislators the ability to vote the act down without looking like a woman-hater. As Phyllis’ husband, Fred Schlafly, says- ‘You really don’t need to work this hard, lots of people don’t want the ERA to go through, they won’t let you fail’. The battle over the ERA was not a battle between women, ultimately it was a battle against systemic sexism and the men who kept it in place. The show does sporadically remind us of who the real ‘baddie’ is; one memorable instance of this is the beautifully crafted ending scenes with Phyllis. That said, some TV tension and ‘neat’ parallels could have been sacrificed to avoid adding to the trope of infighting women.
Mrs America is, overall, beautifully acted, written and managed. I could find no fault in the sets, costume, direction, dialogue, or any other aspect of production. It speaks volumes that I, a fan of historical costumes and sets, have barely spoken about the agonisingly great ones in this show. There is just so much good in it. It made me laugh, cheer at the lovely Ruth Bader-Ginsburg cameo and almost cry – I always do when I watch anything about equality and the fight for civil rights. The series portrays the multi-faceted, dynamic and diverse nature of the feminist movement, without shying away too much from its problems. It showcases both female solidarity and the unhelpful divisions that arose from strong opinions and fierce stubbornness. Overall, I think Mrs America’s subject matter is handled remarkably well and that it successfully dramatises the complexities of a period in history that is frequently over-simplified or taken for granted. Acknowledge its shortcomings, but watch it – you won’t be disappointed.
K-pop group BTS’ perpetual rise in popularity has been
staggering, and the success of their latest release, English-language single ‘Dynamite’,
comes as no surprise. Perfectly timed and formulated to bolster the fame of this
seven-member group who have become emblematic of K-pop’s global image, ‘Dynamite’
is a fun, simple pop track – but tells us much about the place BTS now find
themselves in.
Over the course of their seven-year career, BTS’ global
popularity has come relatively recently. Having debuted with then-small company
Big Hit Entertainment in June 2013, BTS (Bangtan Sonyeondan) were known
amongst K-pop fans, and modestly well-regarded. Yet it would not be until 2015
that the group achieved
their first Korean music show ‘win’ with angsty dance single ‘I Need U’, and
it would take until over three years into their career, in 2016, that BTS would be awarded their
first Daesang– one of the biggest Korean award show prizes –
for second full-length album Wings, winning Album of the Year to the
visible shock of the group’s members.
This rise to K-pop prestige in their home country first is
what enabled BTS’ era of colossal worldwide fame, perhaps best marked by the
release of ‘DNA’, title track from EP Love Yourself: Her, in 2017. Now, as
a group known for their hugely dedicated fans, every release is greeted by record-breaking
YouTube views, streams and #1 singles: the
music video for ‘Dynamite’ broke the record for the most views in 24 hours, at
101.1 million. Sweeping Daesang awardsevery winter, their elite
status in the K-pop industry now seems an irrelevancy. While many BTS fans will
still call themselves fans of K-pop, for many, BTS is the only Korean group
they listen to – and they view them as transcending this fascinating genre,
arguing they should not be bound to the fact they sing in Korean.
‘Dynamite’ exemplifies the group’s confusing place on the boundary between the Asian and Western music industries. BTS remains very much K-pop in the formula of their songs, in the way the group and company operate, and in their fusion of musical influences, however much they transcend what was achieved by those who came before them. Seven years after debut, the group are still releasing music at lightning speed; this single, a pre-release to begin the build up to their next album, comes after their fourth Korean-language LP Map of the Soul: 7 in February, and after member Min Yoongi’s second mixtape D-2 (released under solo stage name Agust D), in May. K-pop fans are no stranger to complicated career moves – some groups will dart between releases from the full group and subunit or solo releases, and many release music in different languages, such as Japanese, Mandarin and English. While BTS has been marketed more and more towards an English-speaking – specifically American – audience in the last three years, the members have expressed a desire to continue to make music mainly in Korean, and have already released four Japanese-language LPs since 2014. As such, English-language single ‘Dynamite’ does not mark a significant departure from the norm.
Rather, this release has been timed to garner as much popularity as possible. Having already built a career in the US, releasing a fun, catchy song such as ‘Dynamite’ is a perfect way to cement their popularity, allowing them to tap into an existing dedicated fanbase, and to reach a wider audience via radio, or indeed YouTube. As an ‘extra’ release, which will not be included in their next (self-produced) album, it’s intended to build hype. And it’s even well-timed in terms of world-events, providing a simple, yet enjoyable comfort in the middle of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic: in a press conference, Yoongi (SUGA) said that releasing the track “all began with a thought of giving energy to everyone amid the tough times”.
Perhaps, then, we should only take ‘Dynamite’ at face value. The nostalgic disco vibe, both sonically and visually, fulfil the aim of making you want to get up and dance; the lyrics invite the listener to party with the group, an escapism as many of us remain largely shut in our rooms, with lines such as ‘Life is sweet as honey, yeah, this beat cha-ching like money’ and ‘Day or night, the sky’s alight, so we dance to the break of dawn’. Moreover, the ‘rap’ verses – a staple of the K-pop formula – are more sung than ‘rapped’, and blend unusually seamlessly into the vocals which make up the bulk of the song. The production is crisp, the words somewhat empty and incoherent, but bright and aesthetically pleasing.
‘Dynamite’ is a decent, straightforward pop track. But it’s not characteristically ‘BTS’. In fact, what is characteristically ‘BTS’ seems increasingly difficult to pin down. At debut, the group was hip-hop focused, inspired by the very origins of K-pop with Seo Taiji and Boys, who borrowed heavily from the American hip-hop of the late eighties and early nineties. As early as 2014, though, BTS’ lead singles started to shift towards something more definitively ‘pop’, accompanied by more love-centred subject matter. Yet what fostered some coherency amidst BTS’ shifting themes, as well as K-pop’s genre-bending nature, was a focus on the experience of youth.
Now, BTS are older and wealthier; it no longer makes sense
for them to continue with their focus at their conception. They have also tried
to pursue some pretty well-defined themes – Love Yourself was pretty
much done to death. Still, their artistic direction is confusing, and being
thrust into the US spotlight does not help. In the eyes of many Western
listeners, they remain the K-pop group: they sing well, they dance well,
and some of them rap. This in itself, however, does little to set them apart
from any other K-pop group.
BTS, then, must hold onto what drew fans of K-pop to them in the beginning: their authenticity. As much as Big Hit consciously sells it, the members do seem genuinely very close, and this dichotomy is exemplified by the ‘Dynamite’ music videos themselves: the main music video sells a perfectly-polished, cute but scripted, image of BTS, while the ‘B-side’ (better understood as B-roll) video showcases the members’ individual personalities and natural charm. The members also have more artistic freedom than most, with Namjoon (RM), Yoongi (SUGA), and Hoseok (J-Hope) having participated in songwriting and production from the beginning, and other members having become involved since.
Yet while the group’s authenticity remains, it has increasingly become awkwardly balanced with the demands not only of the K-pop industry, but also the American music industry, recently signalled by odd collaborations with an assortment of US artists (Nicki Minaj, Halsey, and Charlie Puth, to name a few), and the handing over of production to Western producers rather than the members. Crucially, this seems to counter the depth and quality of some of the members’ solo pursuits, both in BTS albums (Jimin’s ‘Serendipity’, V’s ‘Singularity’) and in their own right (see D-2). The reality is that, as a group, BTS have become fundamentally uninteresting, their singles more and more detached, and their discography less and less coherent.
Perhaps their next album will show ‘Dynamite’, and some of the other confusing releases which have come before it in the past few years, have been a minor diversion, an era marking a group struggling to find a focus or identity as, paradoxically, their fame continues to exponentially grow. They certainly have the talent and drive for it.
As international tourism reopens, an important question is back on the cards: should we fly? If we want to be responsible travellers, this is the fundamental question each of us must answer.
Throughout 2019, as the media feverishly covered Greta Thunberg’s transatlantic voyage, this question filled me with cognitive dissonance. Not flying seemed ascetic and impractical, exuding a perverse privilege of time and money, and yet it also seemed to be the only ethical solution in sight. Was anything else hypocritical? What opportunities to learn and experience the world would I forgo in a decision not to fly? Would my decision make any difference to the climate anyway? The dissonance deepened the more I wrestled with it.
But dissonance is an insincere position. I believe we have a moral obligation to confront such issues head-on, to educate ourselves into a stance, however nuanced that stance must be. The coronavirus pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement both helped me arrive at a position, offering clarity on questions of environmental justice and the interplay of individual and structural decisions. Tragically, the coronavirus pandemic has given us a view of what a world without air travel might look like. I want to share, in long-form, the research and reflection which have brought me to a decision.
***
My first step towards an answer was assessing commercial aviation’s contribution to climate change. Before the pandemic, the aviation industry was responsible for somewhere between 4 and 5% of total human-caused global warming. About 40% of this warming came from CO2 emissions, representing 2.4% of global fossil fuel emissions in 2018. The other 60% of the warming came from gases like nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide, tiny particles like sulphate and soot, and changes to cloudiness induced by these particles.
Aviation-induced cloudiness may account for up to 55% of the total warming impact from aviation. At temperatures below -40oC, soot and tiny water vapour droplets ejected from aircraft engines act as nuclei onto which ice crystals can form, producing a white line of clouds behind the aircraft. These are the striking condensation trails (‘contrails’) familiar from the ground, which are subsequently dispersed by winds into thin, hardly visible ‘contrail-cirrus’ clouds. These clouds reflect very little solar radiation but insulate like other clouds, making them potent warming agents.
Despite representing the majority of current global warming from aviation, these non-CO2 sources are hardly mentioned in media debates about flying. Part of this is because the best estimates for contrail extent are more uncertain than those for CO2 emissions; measuring such thin, short-lived clouds from satellite data is far harder than calculating CO2 emissions directly from the amount of fuel burnt, and so industry and media publications frequently err on the side of caution. Uncertainty is integral to robust science but is exploited by fossil-fuel industries to hide the knowledge that this warming exists, is large, and needs to be addressed.
A second reason for the omission is related to the different timescales over which warming effects operate, and the difficulties in jointly assessing them. For instance, contrail-cirrus clouds from an individual aircraft persist and contribute to warming for at most a day, whereas CO2 emissions accumulate and contribute to warming over centuries. In other words, CO2 emissions from the first trans-Atlantic flight in 1933 are still warming the Earth, but only yesterday’s contrails are. Nonetheless, because contrails are so potent at locally warming the atmosphere, the typical daily extent of contrails induces more warming than “all the aviation-emitted carbon dioxide that has accumulated in the atmosphere since the beginning of commercial aviation” causes on that day.
The coronavirus pandemic illustrates this nicely. In areas where aircraft fleets were grounded, no warming could come from contrail-cirrus, but warming was still being contributed by the legacy of past aviation CO2 emissions. However, the virtually instantaneous climate response to contrail-cirrus should not lead us to underestimate it – as soon as we start flying again, contrail-cirrus will resume; its extent is expected to triple by 2050, growing at a faster rate than CO2 – but it does explain why CO2 and non-CO2 warming are so often separated.
A third reason why non-CO2 warming is often forgotten is its non-linearity: altitude, latitude, temperature, time of day and the characteristics of the land beneath the flight path (that particulates fall onto) all determine the magnitude of the non-CO2 warming components. This precludes being able to specify ahead-of-time the precise warming contribution of a given flight. Unfortunately, favourable conditions for airline efficiency are those that exacerbate contrail warming – such as flying at high altitudes, high latitudes and at night (because there is no reflection of solar radiation to partially offset the warming at night).
Many carbon calculators and media visualizations suggest we can address the non-CO2 warming contribution simply by multiplying CO2 emissions by two. The three factors discussed above (measurement uncertainties, temporal disjunctures and non-linearity) explain why this approach is flawed. (This is a mistaken interpretation of a ratio known as the relative forcing index, which divides all past aviation emissions contributing to warming today by all past aviation-CO2 emissions contributing to warming today). We cannot use this ratio in any predictive or multiplicative way for an individual flight. Hence, it is incredibly difficult for scientists to robustly calculate aviation’s ‘total global warming potential over the next 100 years’, the standard metric used in international agreements to specify how much global warming an individual action will have.
Going through these technical details is important. Firstly, they highlight how the aviation industry exploits legitimate measurement difficulties to trivialize itself and escape international regulation under the Paris Agreement by only referencing CO2. Secondly, measurement uncertainties and non-linearity together explain why most flight carbon calculators will probably underestimate the damage of a given flight. Thirdly, the inherent unpredictability of a flight’s climate impact shows why waiting for better technical data does not excuse current inaction.
In short, we need to consciously acknowledge all the possible warming effects of flying in our decision-making, even if an accurate picture of the climate impact of a given flight is unknowable until after the plane lands. Most simply, the bottom line is that 5% of global warming was caused, pre-pandemic, by commercial aviation.
The next important topic to investigate is the uneven distribution of air travel, even within richer nations like the UK. In 2019, less than half (48%) of the UK population flew (weighted towards London and the south-east), and yet the UK still had the third largest aviation emissions of any country. The 15% of the UK population who fly three times or more a year take about 70% of all UK flights, flights which have been laid at the door of second homes, offshore tax havens, and frequent short-haul city breaks. Flights per capita are highest for wealthy island nations and offshore tax havens.
Globally, inequality in aviation is far more extreme. Although the proportion of the global population who have ever flown has never been systematically addressed (which is itself telling), somewhere around 6% is the current best guess. Airline routing shows that only 1.2% of the total carbon emissions of air passengers were emitted for flights between African countries in 2018, whereas 18% was emitted between North American destinations (over a far smaller geographical area). Research by Oxfam demonstrates that the richest 10% of the world’s population emit 49% of all CO2 emissions. Air travel is even more unequal: the top 10% consume 75% of all air-transport energy.
Fly from London Heathrow to JFK New York and back and you’ve already emitted more CO2 than the average person in 56 (mostly African) countries emits in a year, according to an uncomfortable Guardian visualization – and this calculation ignores non-CO2 warming effects. I recommend having an experiment with the page: I found it an incredibly powerful visualization because it fully highlights the environmental racism and the environmental privilege involved in flying.
Indifference to carbon inequalities and disregard for climate change’s disproportionate burden on people of colour is a form of racism, according to Laura Pulido, a leading scholar in the field. “The evidence for the uneven and unfair distribution of death [from climate change] is overwhelming”, she writes. “Indifference…characterizes the attitudes, practices, and policy positions of much of the Global North toward those destined to die”. Pulido discusses environmental racism as structural, state-sanctioned racial violence that has always been inherent to capitalism, and that has always offloaded its externalities onto poorer, less valued bodies.
Environmental privilege is the ability to reside in (and travel to) clean, un-poisoned places, shielded from climate change’s worst impacts, all the while polluting the environment. In the words of social activist, Naomi Klein, environmental privilege requires vast sacrifice zones. “Fossil fuels…are so inherently dirty and toxic that they require sacrificial people and places: people whose lungs and bodies can be sacrificed to work in the coal mines, people whose lands and water can be sacrificed to open-pit mining and oil spills…And you can’t have a system built on sacrificial places and sacrificial people unless intellectual theories that justify their sacrifice exist and persist: from Manifest Destiny to Terra Nullius to Orientalism, from backward hillbillies to backward Indians…[It’s] the original Faustian pact of the industrial age: that the heaviest risks would be outsourced, offloaded, onto the other – the periphery abroad and inside our own nations.”
I believe the Black Lives Matter movement must be a clarion call for people who fly and have flown to examine the privilege of choosing to fly, something I’m guilty of not doing in the past.
The first authors to use the term ‘environmental privilege’ remark that those with it “often believe they have earned the right to these privileges”. Yet how can anybody earn a right to fly and emit a vastly outsized share of emissions, way above the global per capita emissions necessary to keep climate change under control? To me, it is essential to reframe flying not as a right or a goal but an immense privilege and responsibility. Not flying is not about victimhood or sacrifice but the position of the great majority of the world’s population. Prominent environmental activist and journalist George Monbiot captures the mood well: “these privations affect only a tiny proportion of the world’s people. The reason they seem so harsh is that this tiny proportion almost certainly includes you.”
Are there, then, any arguments that can justify buying a holiday plane ticket, when to buy one is the most damaging single action for the climate most people can make? This is where I feel the coronavirus pandemic offers clarity. It has given climate activists, tragically, the very result they were campaigning for. We no longer have to talk hypothetically.
Aviation is the backbone of tourism: about 60% of international tourist arrivals are by plane, not to mention domestic travel. Much of tourism’s recent growth comes from the 60% decrease in airfares since 1998, with most tourists now travelling for leisure, not business. Tourism is not a marginal sector: it represented 10.3% of the world’s GDP in 2019, and has been crippled by the pandemic; the World Travel and Tourism Council expects 31% of tourism jobs (100.8 million) to be lost in 2020. The last four months evidence the merit in the argument that some air travel is necessary for development and cultural exchange. If not, are we happy with the prospect of swathes of the travel industry collapsing again? Of course, this is a slippery, ethically complex issue: the same countries most vulnerable to sea level rise are most dependent on tourism and international aviation for income. Whilst I would love to see the scope of both long-haul and short-haul flights curtailed, the crucial takeaway for me is that abstention from flying can be socially and economically destructive, just as climate change is.
The pandemic has also brought into sharp relief the structural reasons limiting the effectiveness of individual action. By April, although passenger numbers had fallen by over 95% worldwide, CO2 emissions from aviation had only fallen by 60%, fitting with the 62% decrease in flight departures. In other words, many flights have been taking off practically empty: ‘ghost flights’.
There are several reasons for this. Firstly, in the US, a stipulation for government bailout was that airlines kept routes running despite the low demand. This emphasizes how important regional interconnectivity is for governments and their unwillingness to axe major transportation routes for the climate’s sake. Secondly, ghost flights flew because of slot allocation rules (until these were temporarily suspended). Slots are the ability for an airline to take off and land at crowded airports at particular times, reallocated every six months. If an airline operates its slots at least 80% of the time (the ‘use it or lose it’ rule), it can keep the slot for the following season, making them ridiculously valuable at busy airports. For instance, Oman Air reportedly paid US$75 million for a pair of Heathrow slots in 2016 and British Mediterranean Airways flew a plane empty six days a week for six months to Cardiff in 2007 to preserve its Heathrow slot after axing a route to Tashkent.
The pandemic reveals how far airlines are incentivised to fly popular routes regardless of their passenger load factors. A major argument of the Swedish flygskam (flight shame) movement is that aircraft departures could be reduced if enough people abstained from flying. Whilst passenger numbers fell in Sweden in 2019, these reductions were crucial to small regional airports without slot allocation; there is a sense of futility to the consumer-driven argument. It would be crazy for airlines to give up their expensive slots at crowded airports when the aviation industry was expected pre-pandemic to more than triple in size by 2050. Even if businesses and academia continue videoconferencing and many airlines are laying off pilots and old stock, air travel is still likely to bounce back. Therefore, the main challenge for climate activists is to stop further expansion and further lock-in. This is why the court ruling that deemed Heathrow’s third runway illegal was so important.
Aviation is also artificially cheap. Although part of this is budget carriers and record-low oil prices, cheapness is also structural. Article 24 of the 1944 Convention of International Civil Aviation exempts all aviation fuels from taxation. According to a 2019 government briefing paper, this is an “indefensible anomaly”, but it is an anomaly that the UK government can do little about. Whilst Article 24 exists, any fuel taxation policy would only encourage environmentally damaging ‘tankering’: filling up a plane as full as possible in a non-taxed jurisdiction, leading to more emissions due to the plane’s heavier weight. All progressive aviation regulations – such as a no-fly zone over the Arctic – face the Sisyphean challenge of obtaining unlikely worldwide cooperation.
However, I believe it is disingenuous and dangerous to meekly accept that individuals cannot change commercial aviation’s fate. We might not be able to stop pre-coronavirus flight levels resuming, but our choices can slow the industry’s rate of expansion, particularly as role models like Greta Thunberg shift the representation of aviation away from discourses of freedom and status towards recognition of damage, privilege and death, including flying’s toll on personal health.
PhD researcher Steve Westlake has shown that “around half of respondents who know someone who has given up flying because of climate change say they fly less because of this example.” Another study shows climate scientists with smaller carbon footprints are believed as more credible by the public. Credibility increases as communicators reform their behaviour. Crucially, individual action also paves the way for public acceptance on structural changes, like taxes on frequent fliers.
As leading no-fly climate scientist Kevin Anderson puts in: “individuals are what we first see manifesting potential systemic change. To succeed, examples of change need to gain momentum, be taken up by others, and finally be scaled up – perhaps through top-down nurturing and the development of specific policies.”
Ultimately, I admire people with lifelong no-fly policies, but I think being puritanical and renouncing flight should not be the focus of the discussion, as the pandemic has shown. Widespread reduction is what we need, not individual or societal elimination. Alongside the massive privilege of flying, there is the privilege of being able to choose not to fly, a privilege afforded by fast, dense train networks; by powerful passports which minimise overland visa hassles; and by family living close to home. If those privileges are available to us, I think we should take them to minimize our harm, but if they are not available, we should not shame occasional flying.
***
So, here is my decision. I aim to take at most one personal flight in the next three years. If I fly, I will commit to maximising my time at the destination and will spend my money at homestays and local businesses. I will try to fly medium-haul (the least carbon-intense distance per kilometre); economy-class on the most efficient planes; in the morning (to minimise contrail-cirrus warming); with minimum luggage; and not through the Arctic, where aviation is especially devastating. I have come to see the higher price of train fares as the fair price I should pay to minimise the emissions travel causes. Rather than offsetting through an offset charity-cum-business, widely regarded as ineffective (see here for concise summary), I will donate to a dedicated forestry charity (like treesforlife.org.uk) where concerns about additionality, permanence, leakage and enforceability are less pronounced.
***
I hope my article helps you think through this complex issue – writing it has certainly helped me. Let’s have a conversation that avoids flight-shaming and which learns from the Black Lives Matter movement and the coronavirus pandemic. Let’s be nuanced and self-reflexive rather than allowing ourselves to wallow in dissonance.
Just one week ago, disaster struck Lebanon, a country already on its knees following a series of financial crises and an increasingly incompetent government. The ammonium-nitrate fuelled blast, which demolished a significant fraction of the city’s economic hub and took at least 200 lives, was shared widely across Western media via video footage, and within minutes viewers across the world shared their feelings of shock and sorrow on social media. The Twitter hashtag #prayforbeirut quickly began ‘trending’, and scrolling through my Instagram feed I noticed popular influencer-led brands promoting donation pages such the British Red Cross and Lebanon’s grass-roots NGO, Live Love Beirut. What the media failed to share was the fact that, across the same 24-hour period, anti-government extremists detonated an explosive device in Taimani, Kabul, killing numerous locals, and floods in Yemen left at least 20 people dead. 4th August 2020 also marked the anniversary of the 2019 Cairo car-bomb terrorist attack; an event which, at the time, saw minimal coverage.
The events of 2020 have taught me a lot about the nature of humanitarianism and aid in the western world. It seems we, the Western public, are unable to deal with multiple disasters at once; excited by the hard-hitting headlines of BBC News, one week our sole focus is Black Lives Matter, and the next it is Beirut. In our Covid-19-locked-down, virtual world, humanitarian crises became reduced to ‘trends’, and the name of George Floyd started being utilised as a prop by brands keen to demonstrate their ‘wokeness’.
With a lost life being appropriated for the sole purpose of upping sales, it is no wonder that our world quickly forgets the human reality of such crises. Our attention span is almost non-existent; as soon as disasters become popularised by the media, we have heard enough, and with the help of fresh ‘Breaking News’ our thoughts are diverted elsewhere. Needless to say, black lives are still being unjustly lost, and Beirut is still suffering immensely from its blast-induced catastrophe.
Whilst this disposable nature of human emergencies may simply fuel an ideological crisis for us, the consequences are all too real in the rest of the world. Since the media have exhausted the West’s enthusiasm to combat the crisis in Yemen, it is rarely mentioned, despite the fact that a four-year famine is still ravaging the nation, and a child under five dies every 10 minutes from preventable causes. Meanwhile, in the UK, over-ambitious Chancellor Rishi Sunak introduces to us the ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ Scheme, prompting Brits to spend over £105.4 million on food out in just one week. This makes front-page news.
Our perception of human crises as expendable is not the only flaw of Western humanitarian aid. More often than not, Western news outlets prioritise Western disasters. We may certainly level this criticism against the news outlets themselves, yet the mainstream media understands its viewers perfectly; xenophobic as we often subconsciously are, we care more about our own kind, and sympathise more greatly with those who live similar lives. Hence, the media extensively platformed the Australian bush fires of 2019-2020, and, despite being the tenth largest economy by GDP in the world in 2018, the country received 140 million AUD in donations to aid its post-disaster rebuilding programme. Simultaneously, halfway across the world, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, millions of Congolese people were in need of humanitarian assistance. The country still requires a massive 1.82 billion USD in order to rebuild itself following years of oppression, violence and health emergencies, including Ebola and the longest measles outbreak in the country’s history. Yet, lacking air-time on Western news platforms, the issue will for a long time remain unresolved.
Responding to our need for drama, entertainment and excitement, the West’s ‘breaking news’ approach to news coverage of crises is more destructive than we know. Long-term catastrophes, which no longer spark enthusiasm, are simply forgotten; such is the case with the long-fought wars against the Taliban in Afghanistan, and such is the case in war-torn Yemen. Despite the increased efforts of the likes of Extinction Rebellion & Greta Thunberg, the urgent issue of climate change is being continuously swept under the carpet. In the East, the freedom-fighting citizens of Hong Kong have been left to their own devices; as with other crises, the West have been distracted by their own issues – tackling the coronavirus pandemic.
Manifesting a white-saviour complex, yet demonstrating a truly self-interested approach at heart, the Western mainstream media is broken. Yet, our sub-standard reactions to humanitarian catastrophes are partly due to social media platforms too; in our newly virtual world, it is all too easy to perceive real issues as simply ‘trends’ that can be followed on Twitter and quickly forgotten. In a world only becoming more treacherous as a consequence of climate change, this model of disaster management and humanitarian aid needs a sincere rethink.
On
18th March 2020, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) took the unprecedented
decision to postpone the 65th edition of the Eurovision Song Contest – an
annual celebration of (mostly) European popular music, regularly involving more
than 40 nations from across the continent and beyond – to May 2021 due to the
COVID-19 pandemic. In doing so, Jon Ola Sand (the outgoing Executive Supervisor
of the contest) noted that this was the first time in the history of Eurovision
that an edition had been cancelled since its inception in 1956, though
maintained that Eurovision will return next year “stronger than ever”.
However,
for a contest whose viewing figures in the UK represent only a fraction of
those recorded before the turn of the century (with similar trends reported in
other participating nations), accusations of irrelevancy have become prevalent
amongst the general public and media alike, with the foreign affairs editor of
a Serbian magazine describing it as “a rather worthless contest” and as being “politically
and cultural insignificant”.
Irrespective of whether Eurovision is truly “insignificant” in 2020, perhaps there is an argument to be made that the Eurovision Song Contest should have a more pragmatic purpose: to unite culturally and politically-differing nations through music.
Eurovision
has never been entirely separated from politics – from the unprecedented
military presence at the 1973 contest, due to an Israeli debut appearance just seven
months after the atrocious Black September attacks in Munich, to rising
Russia-Ukraine and Armenia-Azerbaijan tensions leading to numerous withdrawals
from editions in the 2010s, the political landscape in Europe has always reflected
in some fashion on the contest and indeed on its participating songs.
But
whilst conflict and tension have done much to divide nations, the opposite also
holds true at Eurovision. Perhaps the most notable example of this comes from
the 1993 contest in the Republic of Ireland, held during the climax of the
Bosnian War and the breakup of Yugoslavia; during the voting portion of the
contest, in which the host receives the points from each participating nation
by phone-line, a garbled and heavily-distorted voice came from Sarajevo to
announce the points from Bosnia & Herzegovina, greeted by warm applause in
the theatre when the contest was held. This was but a few short seconds of a
three-hour broadcast but, in that fleeting moment, everyone gathered in
Millstreet was united in a single semi-political gesture.
Small
actions like this, while insignificant in any consideration of the contest as a
65-year-old trans-continental whole, yield a faint glimmer of the possibilities
for European unity offered by Eurovision. As an event which gathers musicians,
many of whom are highly influential back home, from over 40 countries – a
number which is set to increase in the coming years, with countries such as
Andorra, Morocco, and Turkey all discussing the potential for their returns to
the contest – it could be said that more should be done in order to promote the
international connections that we need in an ever-divided world, not just in a
political sense, but equally in a cultural sense. We shouldn’t be focussing on
what divides the participating nations, whether that be the ongoing
conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the unrecognised Republic of Artsakh,
or the international recognition of Kosovar independence from Serbia. Rather,
we should focus on what unites them: a love of one’s country, a love of
one’s culture (including what sets it apart from other nations), and a love of
music.
So, perhaps when the contest returns next May in the beautiful Dutch city of Rotterdam – an edition of the contest that I hope to be at – we can all take a moment to step back from the ridicule and the accusations of “they didn’t vote for us because of Brexit” and consider what the Eurovision Song Contest really stands for. After all, in the words of Arabella Kiesbauer when opening the grand final of the 2015 Eurovision Song Contest, “all of tonight’s artists will bring life to our motto Building Bridges: bridges between countries, cultures, music styles and, most importantly, between people.”
