As I sit on a plane somewhere over the black sea on my way to Bali for the UN Climate Change Conference, staring out the window and wondering when the all-important peanut cart is coming by again, I start to think about flights and flying – the big elephant in the room for so many in the environmental movement.
As some of my friends in London so kindly pointed out when I was getting ready to leave, what’s the point of flying almost 20,000 people halfway around the world to sit in a room for two weeks and discuss how to deal with climate change when you’re creating thousands of tones of CO2 emissions just by traveling there? To me it seems clear that it’s worthwhile as long as the overall positive impact on climate change outweighs the that’s larger than the negative one. Which brings me to ask - what can we accomplish that’s worth all the carbon emissions?
If we’re talking specifically about air travel, there’s actually a lot we can do. At the moment, emissions from aviation and maritime shipping are excluded from our international climate change framework. Since this isn’t being addressed at the international level, the responsibility to tackle this issue has been pushed onto national governments. But of course it isn’t easy to pinpoint national responsibility in such a fluid and international arena, which is reflected in the lack of leadership shown so far.
Living the UK for the past six months, I’ve become really aware of schizophrenic government policies on climate change and air travel. Under the government’s ambitious Climate Change Bill, which will likely be passed in the spring of 2008, Gordon Brown’s government has pledged to reduce emissions by at least 60% by 2050. But it makes no commitments to address international aviation. Why? Well, my guess is that restrictions on air travel emissions just might impact that government’s support for a proposed expansion of Heathrow Airport, which would add 50% more flights to one of the world’s busiest airports. How in the world are these two policies compatible? On one hand, he says that addressing climate change is a priority but on the other hand, he’d like to increase air travel to and from the UK. What gives?
As I step off the plane, I’m still wondering whether or not I have the right to jet off wherever I want at the expense of my two-year old niece, who will have to deal with the consequences. There’s no easy answer, which is why we need to pull together internationally and put aviation and maritime shipping emissions back on the table, and into a post-2012 framework. Let’s address this together.
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I totally agree that aviation should be on the international agenda, but I do think there are things that individual nations (and certainly airline companies) can do.
At a transportation stakeholders meeting a month ago, someone brought up the fact that even domestic flights in India are flying really inefficient, indirect routes, because the government has created lots of no-fly national security zones across the country that national and international flights need to detour around. That’s true across the world, and while I’m not at all proposing we eliminate national air security, there are ways for all countries to reconsider their airspace limitations, especially due to improved electronic monitoring of airspace which wasn’t available when the zones were created.
Also, Mayor Ken Livingstone had some really interesting comments about air travel last week while he was talking in Delhi. He said that as emissions from air travel were increasing 6 percent each year, most of this was coming from short-haul pleasure trips, which are “a luxury the world can no longer afford,” especially in areas that do have effective trains to cover the same distance. One example: Paris to London. So, Livingstone said one thing he was petitioning the city to do is to withdraw landing permits for planes/airlines flying London-Paris! Whoa! While that’s unlikely to happen, the city could increase taxes on these flights or provide other short-term incentives to make sure that people realize how much easier and environmentally sound it is to take a train for those short distances. In the US, it is most often cheaper to fly from NY to DC or NY to Boston than to take the train. Where’s the government support for a national train system? A high speed, lower cost train from NY to Boston would be an enormous step forward.
And, if we can put higher standards on automobile’s fuel efficiency, don’t governments have the capability to place fuel efficiency standards on planes? NASA’s sponsoring a huge Personal Air Vehicle research campaign, claiming its possible to create 40-50 mpg small aircraft. (check out http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/477/) If we could make larger planes more efficient, too, and get airline companies to commit to buy/retrofit their planes to most efficient engines possible, each flight would have less of a carbon impact.
On the corporate side, companies like UTC (which owns Pratt & Whitney, one of the largest aircraft engine manufacturers) are committed to making more efficient engines, and I think it does go beyond greenwashing. http://www.utc.com/press/speeches/2006-03-29_david.htm
And then, to get people to reconsider flying and their flight choices, what if - when using online flight price comparisons like http://www.kayak.com, or orbitz, cheaptickets, etc. you could compare not only prices but carbon footprint? So that a cheaper flight that took you a much longer route might show you that on the ticket, at least to make sure that consumers had to think about it. Or if your carbon offsets were included in ticket price? Virgin Atlantic and a number of other airline companies already have places on their direct websites to buy offsets when you buy tickets, but could those be made “opt-out” rather than “opt-in”?
Just some thoughts from a guilty traveller, hopeful for international action on aviation in Bali, at least to offset the flying of the roadblocking Department of State representatives…
Hey Caroline,
What great comments! I was thinking about writing a flying: part 2 blog entry about what we can do as individuals, so thanks for addressing this. I’d add a few more items to your list of things we can all do to decrease the global carbon footprint from air travel:
1. Take the train. (London to Paris is actually faster by train than by plane). An excellent site is http://www.seat61.com, which shows you how to get around by train & boat in Europe, Africa, Asia, America & Australasia.
2. Do your research on offsets. Sure, offsetting is a good idea, but since it’s not a regulated industry yet, some companies are much better than others! Personally, I offset by donating to a local renewable energy cooperative in Vancouver.
Any more ideas from others?