Todd Smith says he fell in love with planes after watching an air show at age 5.

“And I just thought, well, they look like they’re having fun, and that’s what I want to do,” he tells host Rachel Donald on an episode of the Mongabay Newscast, a weekly podcast by Mongabay.

Smith says he wanted to be a fighter pilot with the U.K.’s Royal Air Force, but with his undiagnosed attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and not “hitting the grades that were required of the Royal Air Force,” the dream felt like a distant reality.

Yet he persevered, and after school, he took out a personal loan to learn how to become a commercial pilot. He got his first break flying for a Bulgarian company, and later Thomas Cook Airlines.

His perspective about working in the airline industry started to shift after a backpacking trip to Peru, where he saw Vinicunca, the fabled “Rainbow Mountain,” which started becoming a popular tourist attraction in the mid-2010s as its snow cover began melting due to climate change, revealing its colorful rock striations.

“That was the first seed that was planted, and I was witnessing in that moment climate change and mass tourism firsthand,” Smith recollects.

Smith says he’d also started noticing shrinking glaciers while flying over the Alps, and thinking about “how vulnerable they looked and that they probably won’t exist that much longer.”

That led him to start researching climate science, leaving him torn about how his love for nature and aviation “didn’t seem that compatible.”

After the COVID-19 pandemic, Smith became involved in climate activism. He co-founded Safe Landing, an organization that urges the aviation industry to address climate change. Industry leaders aren’t making any meaningful changes, he says, and aviation traffic is doubling every 15 years. Lifetime carbon emissions from new aircraft delivered now until 2042 are projected to exhaust the aviation industry’s allocated carbon budget by 2037. This could lead to an eventual crash in the industry, he says.

Safe Landing, composed of aviation workers and enthusiasts, calls for the industry to be honest about the realities of climate change. It also calls for reining in the current growth trajectory and transitioning to renewable fuel alternatives such as green hydrogen technology, while ensuring long-term employment of workers through the transition.

Additionally, the organization provides a platform for aviation workers to improve their understanding of climate science. “They want to be empowered beyond the short-term thinking of board members and politicians. To have a say about what direction the industry is going in,” Smith says.

In the meantime, Smith has found a way to fly again. “To honor the part in me that loves to fly, is to start paragliding … and know that it doesn’t have to cost the Earth to fly.”

Listen to Grounded: A pilot who quit flying to help tackle climate change works to change aviation, for good.

Banner image of Todd Smith, courtesy of Helena Dolby