Jaweria Baig has never been on a plane.
The 18-year-old Pakistani climate activist is part of the majority: about 80 percent of the world's population has never stepped foot on a flight. She is also a part of #JustUseTeams, an initiative by Microsoft users and activists globally. The collective is pushing Microsoft to cut down on the number of corporate flights they take each year — with a tongue-in-cheek reference to utilizing Microsoft's own product, Teams.
"I’ve never taken a flight. Yet every day I live with the consequences of a planet overheated by the greenhouse gas emissions from flights," writes Baig in an open letter to Microsoft's Eric Bailey, Global Director of Travel, and Lucas Joppa, Chief Environmental Officer.
"I’ve felt the threat of climate change since I was a child, with my family home in the Hunza Valley, northern Pakistan, threatened by melting glaciers and deadly heat waves as temperatures have risen."
Air travel has a number of adverse effects on the environment. In 2018, aviation was responsible for 2.4 percent of global fossil carbon dioxide emissions. With this and the water vapor trails from aircrafts, the entire industry can account for five percent of global warming.
Baig and other activists in #JustUseTeams are asking Microsoft to keep their corporate travel at 2020 levels, when the pandemic inadvertently led to a significant reduction in travel.
"You showed that it’s still possible to do business without taking so many flights, meaning many of your flights were actually pointless."
Microsoft is part of a cluster of leading companies that spend hundreds of millions of dollars on air travel, causing frightening levels of gas emissions. In 2019, Microsoft's business travel accounted for 392,557 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions. Its co-founder, Bill Gates, has been found to be one the world's largest "super-emitters" as a result of his private jet usage.
"It doesn’t have to be this way. During the pandemic, we all learnt new ways of living, working, and studying. Many of us turned to video conferencing, using tools like Microsoft’s own Teams platform to connect virtually. Flights fell to historic lows — but your profits didn’t — they kept rising," writes Baig. "You showed that it’s still possible to do business without taking so many flights, meaning many of your flights were actually pointless."
Still, the founders of #JustUseTeams also acknowledge Microsoft's climate change goals. The company is a principal partner at the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) and it has promised to be carbon negative by 2030, taking steps to do so. But when it comes to flights, the #JustUseTeams collective maintains its concerns.
"If Microsoft was to go back to emitting as much through business flights as before the pandemic, it would risk undermining the meaningful contributions its sustainability team, its partners and its customers make every day," reads the website.
Speaking to Mashable about her ultimate goal, Baig says she hopes they cut their flights down by at least 60 percent, if not by 80 percent.
"They can make a massive impact," Baig tells Mashable. "We don't have time, it's do or die at this point. Hopefully, if they take this step, they will inspire other big corporate flights buyers as well as people to make a change.
"I have said this earlier and I will say it again – if a big company like Microsoft takes a step like this, others will definitely follow them."
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