Sustainable transport: to fly, or not to fly? “Blue & Green tomorrow” sets out some of the arguments

The website, “Blue & Green Tomorrow” asks the question about individual’s air travel: “Sustainable transport: to fly, or not to fly?” The argument is between those who say air travel broadens the mind etc, and those who see the personal carbon emissions as a genuine issue  of conscience. They point out that there will not be any innovations that reduce the carbon emissions of air transport significantly in the foreseeable future. They acknowledge that: “to fly is also to inflict the gravest damage upon the climate that a human being possibly can.” They give examples showing how much more carbon is emitted per passenger kilomerer by aircraft than other forms of transport, and add: “it must be considered that an international flight can easily journey as far in a day as an average car will in a year.” And carbon offsetting really does not reduce the emissions from flying. They conclude – with no conclusion – except that if aviation is permitted to expand as predicted, we are relying on there being unforeseen progress in alternative fuels or emission reduction – which is a big gamble. But for governments to restrict flights would require a significant shift in political will and an unprecedented international display of public opinion. Never before would a campaign have lobbied for a reduction of public freedoms on such a scale. Beyond that, the decision is an ethical one.
.

 

Sustainable transport: to fly, or not to fly?

March 18th, 2014

(Blue & Green Tomorrow  http://blueandgreentomorrow.com/about-us/ )

By 

 One side argues that the green movement can be enriched by air travel; the other says environmentalists must stay grounded. But who’s right?

This article originally appeared in Blue & Green Tomorrow’s Guide to Sustainable Transport 2014.

Innovations that will reduce passenger planes’ considerable environmental impact may be possible, but they are not around the corner. In 2001, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that alternatives to kerosene-based fuel for commercial jets would not be viable “for the next several decades”.

The UK Department for Transport, which would perhaps be more inclined to be optimistic given the government’s support for the expansion of aviation, also admits that no quick fix is “currently visible”. Aviation, it seems, will be the last transport sector to change.

This is unfortunate, because to fly is also to inflict the gravest damage upon the climate that a human being possibly can. In a large car carrying four passengers, for example, a return journey from London to Edinburgh of around 720 miles emits 74.4kg of carbon dioxide per passenger kilometre.

A commercial plane making the same journey would emit 202.6kg per passenger kilometre, and it must be considered that an international flight can easily journey as far in a day as an average car will in a year.

But this is not all. Jets release gases and particles that have an overall warming effect roughly 2.7 times as powerful as carbon dioxide alone. The altitude at which these emissions are released exacerbates the impact.

Carbon offsetting – a mechanism through which emissions are compensated by small investments in things like renewable energy – has been hailed by some as a solution. However, the system has been criticised. Campaign group Friends of the Earth brands offsetting “a dangerous distraction”.ResponsibleTravel.com – a leading tour operator for sustainable holidays – ditched offsetting in 2009, arguing it was ineffective.

The Department of Transport estimates that demand for flights will increase by 1% annually until 2050. The European commission says that by 2020, global international aviation emissions will increase by around 70% from 2005 levels, even accounting for the anticipated improvements in energy efficiency. The International Civil Aviation Organisation predicts that by 2050 they could grow by 300-700%. This is not sustainable.

There clearly are other ways to get around, but none make the far corners of the world so quickly and easily accessible than aviation. The environmentally conscious traveller therefore has a difficult choice. Can flying be justified? 

Flying can be justified 

“I fly because it’s the only way in which I can do the work that I do”, says Brendan May, chairman of the Robertsbridge Group sustainability consultancy.

“I think that applies to people like me who advise companies and I think it applies to a huge number of NGOs. There is no way that we can transform the business practices and politics of places outside the UK without spending time with the people we’re trying to help change behaviour.”

May is currently working to protect the rainforests of Indonesia; something he says cannot be done without boarding a plane: “If the work that I’m doing is successful then that would definitely compensate for the six or so flights that I have to take to Indonesia.

Similarly, the social benefits of what people like the fair trade movement and the Oxfams of the world do, far outweigh the negative footprint caused by their journeys. I think you could apply that argument to much of the serious environmental work that goes on around the world.”

In fact, May argues that more environmentalists should fly. “They should fly to influence, they should fly to engage, and they should fly to important international gatherings where decisions are made. Otherwise they are just undermining their own access and influence”, he says.

He qualifies this, saying that campaigners “who just fly the conference circuit” should stay at home, and that flying should be avoided when more sustainable options are available.

“I think that anyone that flies from London to Brussels or Paris is an idiot. There really is no need. But if it’s going to cut out time that you could then spend doing useful things then you don’t want to be on a train for 10 or 12 hours. I think you have to take each journey individually.” 

He also makes a distinction between business and leisure travel. One of the most popular retorts of the pro-flight lobby is the economic benefits that air travel brings.

Speaking to Blue & Green Tomorrow in 2012, Paul Steele, executive director of the Air Traffic Action Group, said, “People often forget that if you’re flying on vacation to Thailand or from Bangkok back to London, your plane is not just about passengers who’ve been on holidayYou’ve got business people, government people, but also, importantly, the belly of that plane is full of goods. The aviation industry transports 35% of the value of the world’s goods.”

ATAG claims that if aviation were a country, it would have the 19th highest gross domestic product (GDP) in the world, generating $539 billion (£330 billion) per year. Despite this, May argues that business air travel can and should be reduced, not just for environmental reasons, but also cost efficiency ones.

The increased use of ICT and introduction of software such as Skype mean that many international meetings can be made without anyone leaving an office. He is, however, wary of conveying a similar message to holidaymakers.

“I don’t believe that the environmental movement is going to succeed by telling normal working family people that they cannot go on holiday with their kids by plane. I think that kind of narrative is absolutely lethal to the environmental movement,” he says. 

“The reality is that aviation is going to grow exponentially in places like the Middle East, Africa and south-east Asia, and are we really going to say to all these emerging middle class people in Indonesia, in China, in Africa, ‘No, you cannot get on a plane’?

What we have to do is put the aviation sector on a more sustainable footing, which means looking at aircraft design, looking at routes and fuel and the way in which people travel, but saying that we shouldn’t fly anywhere is just a route to nowhere.”  

As previously mentioned, carbon offsetting had been put forward as one way of putting the aviation industry on such a footing, and May argues that we should not only listen to its recent bad press: “We have to defend good offsets which brings a whole range of benefits, but not be blind to the fact that we can’t just kick our dog and give the RSPCA some money and all will be well.” 

He concludes, “I think aviation has a lot to answer for and the aviation lobby has handled the climate change debate in a quite clumsy and laggard-type way, but I think it is the wrong industry to pick. There are bigger fish to fry out there where there is a more realistic chance of success.” 

Flying cannot be justified

In the opposing corner is Prof Kevin Anderson, a climate scientist and deputy director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. He argues that environmentalists should lead by example by staying grounded.

Anderson decided that he could no longer justify flying eight years ago, and instead advocates slower, less damaging modes of transport. “At a system level, trains have an order of magnitude lower emissions than the metal bird alternative – the saving is that significant”, he wrote in a recent blog entitled Hypocrites in the air.

“Attending an ‘essential’ conference to save the world from climate change in Venice, Cancun or some other holiday resort, is perfectly doable by plane. However, the rising emission trends don’t seem to have registered the sterling work we have achieved at such events. Perhaps if we flew to more of them, emissions would really start to come down – we may even spot some flying pigs en route.”

 

In another article, written this time with Dan Calverly and Maria Sharmina, also of the Tyndall Centre, Anderson argued that the attitudes of airborne environmentalists borders on the colonial.

“This form of patriarchal egotism perpetuates the systemic nature of many issues. Whilst alleviating narrowly bounded but high profile concerns, from the extinction of particular species through to localised deforestation, it neglects more challenging and high-level drivers such as climate change”, they say.

“Certainly there may be niche benefits in western experts applying ‘sticking-plasters’ to localised problems, but it is an inappropriate model for addressing the pervasiveness of climate change, let alone the more interconnected nature of sustainability.”

Brendan May counters that most prominent environmentalists still take to the air, but Anderson is not alone in taking such an absolutist standpoint. The environmental journalist George Monbiot says that to board a plane is to be complicit in causing environmental destruction, succinctly saying, “If you fly, you destroy other people’s lives.

One recent convert to this way of thinking is the meteorologist Eric Holthaus. In an article written for the AtlanticHolthaus described how after reading the IPCC’s latest review of climate change science, he emotionally realised “any hope for a healthy planet seemed to be dwindling, a death warrant written in stark, black-and-white data”.

He and his wife decided they must reduce their own carbon footprints, and though Holthaus flew around 75,000 miles last year – mostly to Africa and the Caribbean, where he works to reduce the impact of climate change – he knew he could never fly again.

“For a lot of us frequent fliers, the environmental harm is dramatic and adds up fast”, he wrote in the article.

“A one-way flight from New York to San Francisco (2.23 tonnes of CO2) has nearly the same impact as driving a Hummer the same distance (2.81 tonnes). By vowing not to fly, I went from having more than double the carbon footprint as the average American to about 30% less than average.”

Holthaus noted that he still has to travel a lot, using trains or the car he shares with his wife when videoconferencing won’t do. “But by removing my single biggest impact on the climate in one swoop, I can rest a bit easier knowing I’ve begun to heed the IPCC’s call to action. Individual gestures, repeated by millions of people, could make a huge difference.”

The verdict 

To an extent, the choice seems to be between what is politically possible and realistic, and what science demands. If aviation is permitted to expand as predicted, we are relying on there being unforeseen progress in alternative fuels or emission reduction. This would be a big gamble.

But then, for governments to restrict flights would require a significant shift in political will and an unprecedented international display of public opinion. Never before would a campaign have lobbied for a reduction of public freedoms on such a scale.

Beyond that, the decision is an ethical one. When you next step on a plane, do you believe it will be worth it? As with so many of the questions that the environmentally aware must ask themselves, there is no easy answer.

Further reading:

Is it contradictory to fly somewhere for a ‘sustainable’ holiday?

The return of the airship: under the bonnet of the world’s longest aircraft

Airlines call for unified measure to cut carbon emissions

Avoid plane strain

The Guide to Sustainable Transport 2014

.


 

So, what are we all about?

http://blueandgreentomorrow.com/about-us/

Blue & Green Tomorrow wants to help grow businesses that balance the needs of the planet, its people and prosperity. We aim to provide you with the knowledge you need to make informed choices without prejudice, scaremongering or Greenwash. On this site you’ll find insights into how to invest responsibly, travel sustainably, shop ethically and use cleaner sources of energy.

We want the world to be as blue and green tomorrow as it was yesterday.

We believe that everyone can play a part and anyone can make a difference. Not by going back through misplaced nostalgia to some bygone age, but by striding out to a bright new future in which we take advantage of the new approaches that can improve our quality of life, the food we eat, the air we breathe, the water we drink and the land we live on.

Life is for living without costing the earth. There is no Plan(et) B.

.


.

Is it contradictory to fly somewhere for a ‘sustainable’ holiday?

January 25th, 2013 (Blue & Green tomorrow)

By 

Photo: Sean MacEntee via Flickr

One of the most contentious aspects of sustainable tourism is air travel. Can flying ever be ‘sustainable’ when considering the carbon footprint of your holiday? Alex Blackburne attempts to lay out the pros and cons.

Powered flight is one of man’s greatest achievements. Ever since the Wright brothers took to the air for the very first time at the beginning of the 20th century, it has acted as a catalyst of discovery and exploration for millions of people every year.

But sustainable tourism – which isn’t about not travelling, but instead, improving the ways we travel to and experience new destinations – has always enjoyed a rather prickly relationship with air travel.   Many claim that our inclination to fly is contradictory in our search for sustainability – which means balancing the needs of the planet, its people and everyone’s prosperity.

Environmentalists are right in saying that flying is damaging the planet, but also claim that it is an unnecessary mode of transport when cleaner options such as trains and boats exist. And the figures seem to back up their point. As American author and abolitionist Henry David Thoreau put it in the 1800s, “Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the Earth.” A rather chilling quote upon reflection.

People in developed countries find themselves in a privileged position in that they can jump on a plane and be on the other side of the world within a matter of hours.

The old cliché, “travel broadens the mind”, is truer now than it has ever been before in history. And in the context of sustainable tourism, there are countless places whose economies depend on the constant flow of relatively affluent travellers landing on their doorstep each year.

Nations like Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia, Egypt, South Africa, along with almost every developing country in the world, rely on tourism as a significant and regular income stream. To stop flights to these places would effectively be issuing them with a sentence of austerity: probably the main argument for people in the pro-air travel camp.

What’s more, conservation efforts worldwide would be lost – or at least severely impacted – without the use of air transport.

But the point that rightly aggrieves so many is the impact of flying on the planet. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that by 2050, emissions from the aviation industry could be up to 10 times greater than 1992 levels – which stood at 2% of CO2.  However, scientists claim that because the emissions are produced in areas of high altitude, aviation’s impact is even greater. Either way, this makes the industry one of the fastest growing contributors to global greenhouse gas emissions.

According to a report by the Airports Council International (ACI), 9 billion plane tickets will be sold in 2025 – nearly double the amount sold in 2010. Heathrow airport – already the third busiest in the world – is currently in discussions to build a third runway to deal with this projected increase, though plans have been criticised by green groups.However, to deal with air travel’s increasingly heavy footprint, carbon offsetting serves as one solution. This means compensating the emissions produced from your travels, usually by investing relatively small amounts into things such as renewable energy and the planting of trees.

According to ClimateCare.org, it costs just under £21 to offset a 12,000 mile flight from Heathrow to Tokyo that emits 2.79 tonnes of CO2. Meanwhile a shorter flight – Aberdeen to Gatwick (851 miles) – costs just £1.30. All small prices to pay to counterbalance the impact of your flights.

But carbon offsetting does have its critics. Responsibletravel.com – one of the leading tour operators for sustainable holidays – removed the ability for customers to offset their emissions in 2009.

We believe that the travel industry’s priority must be to reduce carbon emissions, rather than to offset”, its managing director Justin Francis said at the time.

Too often offsets are being used by the tourism industry in developed countries to justify growth plans on the basis that money will be donated to projects in developing countries. Global reduction targets will not be met this way.”

While it is mainly commercial flights that are targeted by anti-flying groups, one aspect that many people fail to consider is just what else is travelling on the plane with the passengers.

People often forget that if you’re flying on vacation to Thailand or from Bangkok back to London, your plane is not just about passengers who’ve been on holiday”, Paul Steele, executive director of the Air Traffic Action Group told in for last year’s Guide to Sustainable Tourism – the follow-up of which is being published next month.

You’ve got business people, government people, but also, importantly, the belly of that plane is full of goods. The aviation industry transports 35% of the value of the world’s goods.

Those aircraft aren’t just flying for the tourists, they are also flying to fulfil a whole range of different needs; not least of which is the transport of goods.”

It comes down to personal choice. We can all agree that more sustainable, responsible and environmentally-friendly travel and tourism industries are needed in order to move society and ecology onto a more level and prosperous playing field for the long-term.

The UN is on board; secretary-general Ban Ki-moon said in September last year that tourism was “well-placed to promote environmental sustainability, green growth and our struggle against climate change through its relationship with energy”.

Reducing the negative impacts of tourism goes much deeper than how we get to our destination. Our focus must be placed on the impact our travels have on local communities, and whether the places we’re visiting will be viewed with wonder or regret in the future.

http://blueandgreentomorrow.com/features/flying-sustainable-holiday/

.

.