I’m going on my first holiday in three years – and the climate guilt is real

I try to do my bit when it comes to aligning my lifestyle with my planet-conscious values so couldn’t I please just enjoy one little holiday, asks Harriet Williamson

I should’ve booked a UK staycation instead, and temperatures are not too different from those in the Med this summer (Getty)

It’s been three years in coming, but I’m finally going on holiday. My hand luggage requirement-compliant suitcase is packed, I’ve purchased the requisite tiny bottles of toiletries, and I’m ready to set my automatic out-of-office reply on email.

Am I excited? Hell yes. Do I also feel conflicted and more than a little guilty? Also hell yes.

Donnachadh McCarthy, the author of our climate column, wrote recently about having “zero sympathy” for travellers caught up in airport chaos. He describes holiday flights as a “criminal” due to the impact they have on the planet, and calls for them to be banned.

I do try to do my bit when it comes to aligning my lifestyle with my planet-conscious values – by recycling as much as possible (and being the annoying person who bangs on about washing out containers before they go in the recycling bin), buying secondhand wherever possible, exclusively walking or using public transport, and not eating animals or animal products. So couldn’t I please, please just enjoy one little holiday, guilt-free?

Maybe not. The climate crisis is the greatest existential threat that humanity has ever faced but humans being humans, we’ve delighted in setting our own nest alight and, collectively, we’re still not taking it as seriously as logic demands we should.

There is a serious disconnect between the reality of the climate emergency and the lack of urgency with which our policymakers are treating it. In the Tory leadership contest, which will decide who leads Britain for the next two years, the climate crisis doesn’t even seem to be of passing concern. It’s the whopping great elephant in a room that is increasingly on fire.

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McCarthy’s probably right – I should’ve booked a UK staycation instead, and temperatures are not too different from those in the Med this summer. But when billionaires like Kylie Jenner are hopping on their private jets – in some cases, for absurdly short journeys – it all feels increasingly hopeless.

If the super-rich are hell-bent on undoing every bit of mitigating work that us climate-aware normal folks attempt with a single polluting private jet journey, then perhaps my one holiday in three years can just about fly.

Yours,

Harriet Williamson

Voices commissioning editor