To start, I still do have to fly occasionally for work, across the Mediterranean or overseas, but I reduce this to what I think is the bare minimum. In Europe, I go long ways to replace air by train travel, in order to reduce emissions, but honestly also because I enjoy this a lot. I keep saying that I read and work a lot, but I actually look out through the window most of the time. Currently I am engaged in fighting for regional train survival (in France), not in order to #flyless but to keep all options to avoid cars and buses. I think Europe should outlaw between-hub flights such as Amsterdam-Paris or Frankfurt-Munich. I never fly Marseille-Paris. The challenges? To persuade others to do the same, and to overcome the difficulties of ticketing with rail travel, particularly on international lines.
I am a plant ecologist and geographer, with a PhD on Baltic vegetation, 20 years of work at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. I spend a lot of time for the IPCC and now have the mission to produce with many colleagues a pan-Mediterranean assessment (MedECC) of risks associated environmental change. I work for CNRS at the Mediterranean Institute for Biodiversity and Ecology in Aix-en-Provence.