Up, Up, and Away

Me, days before an exciting trip to London, which swings like a pendulum do:

I’m excited! But how to beat jet lag? If you go online to look for “jet lag remedies” you may find “natural cures” that advise you to rub a tincture of toad spit on your neck for six hours prior to departure. This does not work. You can take melatonin, which some people swear by; all I know is that I took it once and woke at 3 a.m. over the Atlantic with sleep paralysis, convinced a succubus was descending on me while I stared in mute limb-locked horror. (It was the flight attendant, offering a baguette.)

A relative in her 90s said I should just take a sleeping pill, and I wanted to ask if she also wanted to watch Jack Paar and maybe read the Saturday Evening Post, because she obviously thought this was 1961 and I could pop down to the Rexall for some Sominex or Miltown or Nembutal. Sorry, but I think the golden age of household soporifics is over.

No, I’ll do it the way I always do it: a little sleep deprivation, a nice glass of red wine, three hours of thin fitful sleep that will dump me in London at 7 a.m. in a jangly state, staring at a robot passport reader. The camera goes up and down and gives you a look-over like a robot evaluating a prospective date in a brothel, presumably running your features through Interpol databases. Green light: You may now roam about England as you choose.

Seamless and easy, really. So normal. An ordinary miracle of modern life: the sleek tube that lofts you into the clouds and delivers you in another land. It’s called “freedom of movement,” and if you’re a proper modern, you’ve trained yourself to frown at the word “freedom.” Because it usually means someone doing something you don’t think they should do.

I wonder if I’ll be around long enough to see the era of airline travel end. I’m sure I’ll be around long enough to see a left-wing site note that defense of air travel is a Nazi dog whistle.

Oh, look, cheap one-way trips to Paris or Warsaw! Yeah, you know who else went there for one-way excursions? Hmmm?

The last time I booked a flight, the airline’s page told me how much carbon I’d be emitting. Not me personally, unless I’m hyperventilating for the duration of the six-hour journey, but the plane itself, gusting out tons of CO2. It’s a relevant metric for some, I suppose. If you’re that concerned, stay home and do something really good for the Earth, like composting fingernail clippings. But it is not enough for oneself to burrow into a net-zero hobbit hole; others must be brought to heel as well. News from France, via euronews.com:

“France will seek support from other EU nations for a minimum price on flights in an effort to cut the aviation sector’s carbon emissions. The country is aiming to ‘open the debate on the fair social and environmental price of a flight ticket,’ according to Transport Minister Clément Beaune.”

The “fair social price of a flight ticket” is absolutely something the EU should study, if only to find out what the hell it means. Even if they cannot decide on a definition, it won’t stop them from adding a 50-euro social-impact fee to the ticket.

Thus the upper class will squeeze out the plebs, forcing them into trains. (You know who else liked to force people into trains? Hmmm?) The plebs have vacant lives anyway, so forcing extra travel time into their cowlike existences isn’t really something they’ll notice. The elites will fly, because a think tank is paying for it and will buy the requisite carbon credits from some financial alchemist who turns guilt into profit via the purchase of trees in Namibia. Or they are flying to Davos, an urban baptismal font that absolves all. They need to be somewhere quick, because there is a terribly important conference about something vitally important, and they need to stand in a big ballroom with a glass of something sparkling and shake hands with people who are also terribly important and terribly necessary to solving the terribly pressing issue.

Doesn’t quite matter what it is, but three years later, your dishwasher is suddenly illegal. Your new clothes iron is 20 degrees cooler. There may be a throttling device in your fridge that limits you to six ice cubes a day. Point is, the Earth needs these people, and so they must leap into the sky like the busy angels they are.

The eventual goal, according to those who have laid out exactly what needs to be done to save life on Earth, is the end of airline travel for 99 percent of the population, just as it’s the end of suburbs, personal cars, meat galore, and all the nightmares spawned by freedom and prosperity. The sight of a plane overhead will not symbolize the blessings of human ingenuity, the way we all slipped the surly bonds of earth and touched, if not the face of God, the button on the ceiling that brings free drinks. It will mean that our nobles are passing by overhead, like perfumed silk-hosed inbred ninnies in a gilded carriage. Removing your cap is not mandatory, but it is recommended.

Me, after 24 hours trying to get home via a connecting flight:

Okay, raze JFK Airport to the ground and salt the runways. I never want to fly again. I would have been home faster if I’d saddled a narcoleptic Galapagos tortoise.