I just want to do better.

My name is Lance McMullan. I am a 35-year-old American and I have flown over 165,000 miles in my life. My lifestyle revolved around flying for over ten years. I have lived in Texas, Alaska, Washington, Hawaii, Arizona, and Florida, all while routinely visiting family in both Texas and California. When I was in college, I worked as a fishing deckhand in Alaska during the summers while going to school in Hawaii. I have visited Italy and France (on separate trips) and I spent a year in Thailand. My life would have been impossible without planes.

In this time, I have learned that each place has a different culture, different plants, different animals, and different land. In every place, people are interacting with the natural world to live on this planet. We eat what grows around us. We fish, we hunt, we forage, or we farm. We are much more alike than we are different. If you live in a place where people have lived for thousands of years, then you have everything you need all around you. I am lucky to have had the opportunity to travel and learn about the world, but if I could take it all back today, I would.

Global warming is affecting people's daily lives, everywhere. We know that carbon dioxide gas increases global warming, so we must do all we can to stop increasing the carbon dioxide gas in our atmosphere. There are many ways to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions that you can read about in How to Get Started. For me personally, I live in a place powered by renewable energy and work from home. Flying is my activity that contributes the most carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, so I have chosen to fly less. As of today [August 18, 2025], I have only left Alaska one time since 2023.
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My wife has continued traveling for vacations and holidays, so I know that my choices did not stop any planes from leaving. In reality, I have not changed any plane emissions at all... but I did not personally contribute to those flights, and I feel good about that. My wife shops locally whenever possible, she buys used clothing, eats little meat, picks berries and makes sourdough bread. While flying isn't something she is ready to limit yet, she is making positive changes in many other ways. The changes we make do not have to be drastic. We all have the ability to make small positive changes in the way we live.
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I will fly again. I live in Juneau, Alaska, where there are no roads in-or-out. To leave, I have to either fly, or take a ferry and then drive a thousand miles. I will continue to occasionally fly to visit family. I will not fly for vacations, concerts, or events. As the founder of a renewable energy company called Sitkana, we will fly for projects and site visits to move our technology forward, but we will not fly for conferences or meetings that can be done over videochat.

Everyone is free to draw their own lines in the sand on every issue - wherever is comfortable for you.

If you can help spreading this message, please reach out.

If you have the ability to help expand this project [coders, grassroots organizers, social media experts, influencers] contact me directly at lance.mcmullan@gmail.com.



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‍Here is my lifetime flight chart: