Flying towards climate breakdown?
The Corona Crisis grounded aviation – not by design but by disaster. Now the aviation industry is calling for billions of bailouts to get back to pollution as usual. This dirty business is flying us into climate breakdown. We need to cap air travel at a drastically reduced level, while strengthening alternatives to enable a climate just mobility for all.
The Let’s Stay Grounded campaign aims to strengthen the European movement to reduce aviation and motivate people to engage in political action. The world was grounded for the corona crisis. Now it is time to stay grounded to prevent the climate crisis. Pledge with us to stay grounded, change the travel policies of your work places and universities, and get active in local groups resisting airport expansion – together, we can put pressure on policy makers to reduce aviation and its environmental impact! Only by building a movement can we prevent the industry going back to business as usual and withdraw the aviation industry’s license to grow.
The penguins, as the coolest grounded ‘no fly’ birds, are our movement mascots. So join our #PenguinsForFuture and take action for a climate-safe future!
It’s time to take matters into our own hands and we need you!
The coolest birds stay on the ground:
Flying is the fastest way to fry the planet. The Stay Grounded network works on a global level to reduce air traffic and build a climate-just transport system. Sign up to our monthly newsletter and we will keep you updated on ways take action for a just and safe world.
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Get Information
Find out why we have to reduce air travel
Change the Rules
Call on politics to cut the unfair privileges of aviation
Change your Organisation
Learn how to change travel policies at your workplace, at school or university
Pledge to Stay Grounded
Take the challenge and pledge to fly less
Take Part in Actions
Ever more activist groups and civil initiatives all over Europe counter aviation growth – join them and get active
Travel Differently
Find the best travel options in Europe by train, learn about online conferences and other alternatives
About the Project Partners
Let’s Stay Grounded is a European campaign, carried out by the Stay Grounded network and different partner organisations in France, Spain, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, and Austria. In addition to that, we have cooperation partners in many European countries supporting the campaign and spreading its message in their local context.
Our Main Project Partners are:
Ecologistas en Acción – Spain
Ecologistas en Acción is a Spanish grassroots confederation of 300 groups that promote systemic change in order to achieve environmental sustainability and social justice. In the framework of Let’s Stay Grounded! campaign, Ecologistas en Acción will work for the reduction of flights in Spain through three main strategies: obtaining individual and institutional no-flight pledges, organization of direct non violent actions and lobbying for institutional and political initiatives on kerosene tax and on the development of night trains.
Reseau Action Climat (RAC) – France
The Climate Action Network – CAN-France is a network of 22 national NGOs (including Oxfam, WWF, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, France Nature Environnement, etc) working on environmental, climate issues and north/south solidarity, and the french representative of both CAN-Europe and CAN-International.
Terran e.V. – Germany
The Freiburg-based German association Terran e.V. wants to enjoy movement on the ground. The terran lifestyle means conscious decisions on the means of transport and choosing other means than air travel, due to its climate impact. As part of the European “Let´s stay grounded!”-campaign, we want to spread the new word “terran” (= traveling without airplane).
Pledge as a company or private person not to fly or to fly less, enjoy being terran!
Join us via #terran or info@terran.eco
Natuur en Milieu – The Netherlands
Nature & Environment is a Dutch independent non-profit organization and is committed to sustainable solutions in the areas of food, circular economy, mobility / aviation and sustainable energy. These themes have the greatest impact on achieving our goals: the Netherlands becoming climate neutral in 2050 and restoring biodiversity. We focus on putting pressure on the aviation sector in the Netherlands. The sector will have to downsize and work hard on innovation to enable clean and efficient aviation in the future. At the same time we want the public to make better choices in mobility. That is why we joined forces with Stay Grounded.
Zomer Zonder Vliegen – Belgium
A summer without flying, the summer of your life: that’s what the message of Zomer Zonder Vliegen (or: Summer without Flying) is all about. We are a grassroots awareness raising campaign on the climate impact of aviation, providing inspirational stories and views about travelling, travel culture, and alternatives for flying. Besides that we critically engage with aviation policies within Flanders and Belgium by trying to be a meaningful and refreshing voice in the public debate on aviation.
Possible – UK
Possible is a UK-based climate action charity. We’re working for a zero carbon society, and we want reducing carbon emissions to have a positive impact on people’s lives and help to build a better and fairer world. We focus on five key areas where people can really have an impact: cutting emissions from energy and travel, changing consumer behaviour, supporting nature and talking about climate change. Because there’s no way of flying without causing significant harm to the climate, we’re focused on campaigns and projects to reduce demand for flying while supporting people to still be able to travel.
Zeroing Flying – Austria
Zeroing Flying helps (climate) researchers to become climate friendly. We support institutions in aligning their travel policy with climate mitigation targets and individual researchers to change their travel behaviour.
Explane – International
ExPlane is an international network of students and staff at universities and schools. The network is involved in the institutional part of the Let’s Stay Grounded campaign: it is taking action to transform the travel policies and culture of educational institutions from the bottom up. Everyone can join ExPlane and start a campaign at their own university or school making use of the ExPlane toolkit. ExPlane also collects good practices and spreads awareness about the impacts of aviation.
Collaction – International
Our activities
Stay Grounded in review: 2023 – A year of sustained momentum
2023 was a busy year, with lots of growth and momentum in the movement and within the Stay Grounded network. We saw our network grow - reaching 215 members! - and numerous inventive and impactful actions against private jets, aviation growth, and destructive tourism....
Stay Grounded in review: 2022 – A year of actions for reducing aviation
It is hard to put the many things that happened in our growing network in 2022 in a nutshell! But that being said, here comes our (surely incomplete) best attempt to give an overview over the activities and achievements of the past year. By our activities, we mean the...
Luxury Emissions – Why We Need to Cut Them
We know that not all forms of energy use and emissions are created equal. We also know that some of both are unavoidable for human subsistence. Yet, there’s a current paradox around what counts as wasteful uses of energy and what doesn’t. How is it possible that...