David Cross | David Cross is, with artist Matthew Cornford, part of the collaborative team Cornford & Cross. He recently contributed an essay Endgame: energy crisis, climate change and visual culture to the RSA Arts & Ecology Centre website
‹‹ I gave up my car first (1983), followed by my television (1985) motorbike (1989), credit card (2000), and mobile phone (2007). I decided not to fly in 2005, though I had to take one flight from France to London in 2007 for family reasons. But I'm not going to stay behind: my plan is to build links with people in places I can reach by rail; I'd definitely consider a long sea voyage, and I'd love to make a journey by Zeppelin. ››

Robert Butler | Journalist Robert Butler writes for the Economist Intelligent Life magazine and works with the Ashden Directory. In his Going Green column, he recently wrote about physicist David McKay's attempt to put the consequences of consumers' actions into simple language
‹‹ In the larger scheme of things, it looks as if the decision not to take a particular flight will make no discernible difference. Almost certainly, the plane will fly anyway.

But for most UK citizens the single most significant action they can take to reduce their own carbon footprint is not to fly. Many other savings — changing lightbulbs, switching off phone chargers - are simply tiny by comparison.

As Cambridge physicist, David MacKay, points out in Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air, if you take one long-haul flight a year (say, to Cape Town) that will work out at nearly a quarter of all the energy that you use that year. It's the equivalent of running an electric fire, day and night, all year round. Or having six hot baths a day every day of the year.

So the quickest and best way to reduce your carbon footprint is to think twice before booking that flight.

(Full disclosure: Robert Butler has taken one-return flight within Europe in 2009 and plans to take one more.) ››

Ruth Catlow | Media artist Ruth Catlow is co-founder and co-director of Furtherfield.org media arts organisation and its gallery HTTP Gallery in North London. With fellow media artist Marc Garrett, she created the activist media artwork we won't fly for art, an online pledge hosted at Pledgebank.com
‹‹ The fundamental thing that that started us off was we were in residency in Banf, Canada, last March. It’s in the rockies in Canada and it’s really beautiful.We’d been invited back to run a resiency around issues of media artrs and ecology and we realised that by doing that we would be contributing to 30 people traveling there by plane from all around the world.

It seemed to undermine the whole point, when it's our understanding that planes are such a core part of the problem. I think Gustav Metzger really put his finger on this button, understanding the role that flight in our contemporary imaginative lives. Especially in art, flying around the world really represents success. It’s a representation of professional and cultural success.

From 4.  May10 2009 Melanie Challenger Grind me underfoot you num- Skull! I'm your soul. And souls come and come." Body walks on, past the wind-struck shadow of home. It gets wind of a voice but the sirens strike it dumb. "Go on, grind me into dust, you nincom- Poop! I'm your soul. And souls come and come."

The artistic inspiration for it was Gustav Metzger’s Reduce Art Flights. We are very inspired and changed by the fact that we tend to work within networks a lot, so what the pledge attempts to create is a reworking of Gustav Metzger’s work to see what additional agency was available by placing that within the network. Having an artwork citied within a network puts it in the same place as discussion and dissemination, all those things happening in the same place, which is slightly different to how things operate within the gallery system. ››

• Read the full interview with Ruth Catlow about we won't fly for art

• Read Emma Ridgway's interview with Gustav Metzger explaining the genesis of his Reduce Art Flights artwork appealing to the art community to reduce their air travel. 

• Read Ruth Catlow and Mark Garrett: 100 responses to we won't fly for art

Mark Lynas | Activist and journalist Mark Lynas is the author of Six Degress: Our Future on a Hotter Planet and High Tide: The Truth About Our Climate Crisis. He also worked on Franny Armstrong's film Age of Stupid
‹‹ I'm in two minds about the flying issue. Yes, it's the fastest-growing source of emissions, and is a big chunk of personally-responsible carbon, but it's also probably the most difficult area for most people to cut back on. Of course there is no argument that weekend breaks in Prague, shopping trips to New York and so on should go, but what about visiting close family who live abroad? What about weddings? What if your grandfather, who lives in Sydney, is ill?

Although I don't fly recreationally — and indeed just took a fantastically expensive rail and boat trip to a school reunion in Mallorca to avoid flying — I do feel there is a lot of backlash  potential in being too purist on the issue. After all, let he who is without sin cast the first stone. The biggest immediate challenge for the planet is to cut out coal for power generation - and for that there are obvious low-carbon substitutes: nuclear and renewables. There are no obvious substitutes for travelling long distance, whatever young people with time on their hands — who might happily take a month on the Sydney trip - might say. So let's focus on the easier wins first, rather than guilt-tripping each other and yelling 'hypocrite' at the first opportunity. ››

Francesca Galeazzi | Architect/artist Francesca Galeazzi created the performace artwork Justifying Bad Behaviour on the 2008 Cape Farewell expedition. She now lives in China and struggles to avoid air travel. Recently she turned down an invitation to appear at at an eco-symposium in Oregon, but accepted another to fly to address architecture students in Melbourne
‹‹ The issue of flying is critical and definitely not a simple one to address. Living abroad means that I take regular flights to Italy to visit my family, and offsetting the emissions with a simple click on the online booking doesn’t make me feel better at all. At the end of the day, I am not a fan of carbon offsetting!

So the controversy of flying is something I live with daily. And I have no good answer for it. I try to limit unnecessary flights as much as I can.››

Nick Lezard | Critic Nick Lezard writes in the New Statesman and The Indendent
‹‹ The declarations of various artists and writers that they will not travel again by aeroplane, not even for literary purposes, strikes me as one of the more ridiculous and unintentionally comic examples of self-righteous silliness available from a very wide contemporary collection. Do not get me wrong — climate change caused by the developed world is the greatest threat to the continuity of humanity that we have ever faced. And I, also, do everything I can to avoid flying. But that is not just because I want to feel smug about my carbon footprint (and I like feeling smug about my small carbon footprint). It is also because I am, like many people getting on in years, increasingly scared of flying, however irrationally, and also insulted by the increasing personal degradation involved in the whole process.

I would love to be able to persuade people to take me everywhere by train, but beyond, say, Budapest, this becomes impracticable, not to say expensive. And how would one get to America, surely the most important destination for Anglophone culture? Don’t think of taking a ship there — carbon emissions per passenger from cruise ships are, if George Monbiot is right, and I trust him on this, more than seven times greater per passenger mile than those from planes. And were all jet travel to cease tomorrow, only a 3 per cent cut in carbon emissions would be achieved. And as for the preposterous self-importance of the gesture — as if millions will follow suit just because a literary festival in, say, Aspen is slightly under-represented by Europeans – at this point I begin to wonder if this is not some kind of practical joke, a satirical skit intended to undermine the creative world in the public imagination. ››

Melanie Challenger | Poet Melanie Challenger, co-author of Dialogue between the body and the soul
‹‹ I was travelling a lot. I was living in New York and returning home to the UK. I think some moral decisions happen very quickly. The veil drops or something and you become absolutely aware that you can’t continue with something. I returning to New York and I got as far as the new Terminal Five building at Heathrow at about five in the morning. I had parted; he’d gone off in a taxi. I was in that bleary-eyed half-conscious state that we very often do travel in and I suddenly arrived in this place of blinding lights and huge TV screens and sensory overload and thought, ‘What the hell am I doing?’ There’s no real justification for my journey. So I just cancelled my ticket there and then.

I then emailed everyone when I got home, work colleagues and very close friends that I was going to be seeing, to tell them I wouldn’t be coming now, and there was a delay in people’s responses, and when they did come back I had a mixture of some people saying. ‘I understand,’ and quite a few people alarmed, and then one or two people actually angry, even though it wasn’t a righteous email. It does divide opinion I think. The very fact of that choice people find quite threatening. ››

John Hartley | Artist John Hartley is also an arts officer at Arts Council England who support the RSA Arts & Ecology Centre
‹‹ Air travel is only one of many sustainability challenges. The energy hungry west emits even more greenhouse gasses through agriculture, and most of the clothes and goods we surround ourselves with are oil dependent. But being so thoroughly part of the problem gives us more scope for change and that change could still allow face to face communication. Avoid a flight and what are the CO2 savings? It must be stressed that figures change according to where you look, but based on DEFRA calculations for long haul flights, Heathrow to JFK emits 610kg CO2 each way. Compare that to the UK per capita meat consumption (79.6kg) which is responsible for 2897kg CO2 annually; almost five times the emissions!

So when asked to speak at a New York performing arts conference on sustainability, while acknowledging the absurdity of the travel, I still went, but stayed veggie for 154 days. Not a perfect solution — or any kind of solution perhaps — my total emissions haven't come down as they must, just not gone up further. But by repackaging a problem, we can have more control over how we accommodate it and we needn't drop the communication when we need it most. Sustainable ambitions shouldn't be about total shut down, just better priorities. ››

Margaret Atwood | Writer Margaret Atwood invented the Long Pen to help her cut down the number of literary events she travels to. Though she will be at this year's Edinburgh Literary Festival, she recently gave the following reason for not appearing at the Cheltenham Literary Festival:
‹‹ It's a two-way transatlantic flight for just one event. These days Graeme [Gibson; writer and partner] and I are cutting down on flying, grouping our events, taking the train when possible, and offsetting as well.I grew up with parents who were very environmentally conscious. They were early members of the Sierra Club. Our whole family is like that. ››

J J Charlesworth | Art critic and lecturer J J Charlesworth came across a blog post referring to A dialogue between the body and the soul and it's background and wrote this response: ‹‹ As an art critic, I would not have discovered all the great wonders that the art world has to offer if it had not been for cheap air travel. My world would have been a smaller, narrower place without it. I do not need to be told by Geoff Hoon, Gustav Metzger or Emma Thompson whether my profession or my personal interests entitles me to fly. Especially when all our hundreds of millions of inspiring, horizon-widening air journeys account for perhaps two or three percent of all emissions.››

From 3, May 5 2009 by John Kinsealla Body        My avidity for changes        of scenery doesn’t prevent me loving the dead of all cultures, in all countries — I am better for seeing       first hand, I am better       for moving on fast as I came.

John Kinsella | Poet John Kinsella, co-author of Dialogue between the body and the soul
‹‹ 10/9/08 : Email from John to Melanie
Subject: Re: nyc

I am stopping all plane travel everywhere. That's it for me. Have to be a real emergency to shift me to make any exceptions.

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10/9/08 email from Melanie to John
Subject: Re: nyc

I'm fully with you. It's desperately important that moral choice begins in the individual body, as yours has, but that we make solid, authentic notice as discussion and judgement for others.

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10/9/08 email from John to Melanie
Subject: Re: nyc

Seriously, I can't write what I write and not stand my ground on this. I'd be a hypocrite not to make a stand...(from a distance) let's you from your space and me from my western australian wheatbelt.››

• Email exchange between Melanie Challenger and John Kinsella, September 2008


Chris Bodle | The smart thing about artist Chris Bodle's Watermarks Project unveiled last year in Bristol was the way it provided a novel way to visualise the various scientific about climate change, projecting the conclusions of differing scientific projections onto walls in Bristol as potential sea-level rises.
‹‹ Now that the science of climate change is well established, I believe that art, in its broadest sense, has an increasing role to play in engaging with this all consuming global issue, on many levels. As this is an interconnected global issue, cultural exchange is critical.  Some times this means there is a need for people from disparate parts of the earth to meet in person, to engage in dialogue, experience and undertake work in other places and develop culturally and inter-culturally grounded responses — to complement the scientific and technical ones. Ironically, air travel helps this to happen. I think with air travel, there’s probably an element of taking the poison as part of the cure — but in small doses!

For me the small doses bit is the critical thing — I haven’t flown for years, I wouldn’t fly short distances or where there’s other viable ways of getting somewhere — but if a compelling reason to fly came up I wouldn’t rule it out either — but I would look at ways of compensating elsewhere.

I may well change my view in the future and see flying as completely unacceptable in any circumstances but for the time being I would still consider it as an option.››

Liz Snook | Liz Snook is a spokesperson for Plane Stupid, the activist group who in recent months have disrupted air travel at Stansted, Aberdeen and Southampton airports.
‹‹ Plane Stupid oppose short haul flights and airport expansion, so while why we do try and support those who don't fly at all, it isn't our primary objective. While we want to discourage all 'unnecessary' flying we aren't perscriptive about what constitutes unnecessary. More significantly prehaps, we are concerned that too much emphasis on ' personal lifestyle solutions' to climate chaos are a bit of a political cul-de-sac, that present the false impression that our choices take place in vacume.

Given the timeframes we're dealing with and the massive vested economic interests behind avaiation, we think the most crucial thing is to take action on avaiation expansion, by challenging it on the ground and with the policy makers as they arrange new flight plans and lay new tarmac. If the 27 airports around the UK which are due to expand do so, then the personal sacrifices of a few farsighted individuals will be tottally overidden.

It's far more effective to pledge to take action on avaition than to pledge never to fly under any circumstances.

I have never have flown and can't imagine any circumstances in which I would. For me, it's like claiming priority over the kid who drowns next year in Bangladesh, or the grandmother starving in east Africa. I can't know how significant my contribution will be in the grand sceme of things, except to understant that I will be exasipating problems that are already being felt imediately and lethally. Aside from anything else it's tottally against my own self interest. When climate feedback effects kicking in, I'll be living in the misery I helped create. If you feel you have an option, it's not really a choice.

I think there are life and death emergencies where flying is a useful and amazing thing. In times of urgency it's great.

I can't imagine any artistic journey that would be so time critical. Just 40 years ago people traveled the world without ever stepping on a plane. The great artists who worked before the advent of Easyjet don't seem to have had their work hugely deminished by it's absence.

Trains are a far more romantic way to move about, and for those without the money there are plenty of other options. I've cycled to Prague. My friend has just sailed to the Bahamas to visit her dying grandparents (she learnt to sail especially just so she could crew someone else's yacht). I have another friend who's just cycled to Australia.

All of us found that our experience and understanding was much richer for having traveled properly. Giving up flying is a gift to artists, not a sacrifice. An opertunity to understand the world in context, and be transformed by the subtle cultural shifts you're immersed in along the way.››

Barbara Hadrill |Writer Barbara Hadrill lives off-grid in West Wales. Invited to be a bridesmaid for a best friend who lived in Australia, she chose to travel there by land and sea, writing about her journey in Babs2Brisbane (CAT Publications)
‹‹ Once I had calculated the carbon footprint of flying to Australia, I knew in my heart I had to find another way. Travelling at ground level, I gained so much, from doing one simple thing. Slowing down. I re-connected with our beautiful planet Earth as I watched each mile pass by. Journeying with local people on buses and trains gave me a unique insight into the wealth of world cultures. Ultimately I learnt that we can't stop flying for good, but in searching for an alternative, we gain much more than we save on a cheap flight ticket. ››

Photographs: From Plane Stupid's Adopt A Resident campaign in Sipson, a village threatened by Heathrow expansion

Read the poems A Dialogue Between the body and the soul by Melanie Challenger and John Kinsella