Exponential growth in air travel adds to global warming fears
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Posted on January 18, 2007
Filed Under Global warming/Climate change, Deep ecology, Greenhouse gas emissions, Ecological overshoot, Ecological hope, Consumer culture, Fossil fuel dependency, Environmental disasters, Earth spirituality
Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:
We don’t want to get out of our cars, much less give them up all together. And we sure don’t want to cut back on all that air travel that takes us to exotic places, warm beach or cold ski vacations, international conferences (on things like, oh, say, global warming), multiple trips to business offices and meetings, etc., etc.
Airplanes contribute somewhere around 3% of the human-induced greenhouse gases, which build-up is causing global warming. And it spews this stuff right into a delicate layer of air.
So it was with great interest that I read this article in the NY Times a few days ago. The skies are about to get more crowded than ever, with three times as many airplanes in the sky as compared to today — by 2025.
There will be thousands of tiny jets, seating six or fewer, at airliner altitudes, competing for space with remotely operated drones that need help avoiding midair collisions, and with commercially operated rockets carrying satellites and tourists into space.
That is a whole lot of jet fuel waste streaming across the friendly skies. One thing we do not need is fast-paced increases in one source of greenhouse gases.
This article is not about global warming; it is about the crisis in air traffic control that this increase poses. It ain’t going to be too safe up there, given current technology capacity. But, of course, the fix from this perspective is to enhance that capacity.
The article does not mention what this will mean for our greenhouse heating problem.
The Guardian in London reported last year that Britain’s emissions are now greater than the 1990 benchmark levels being used as a target for emission reductions. The reason — aviation and shipping. And since much of this aviation is international, it is not included in the count, though it must be if targets are to be actually reached.
I found this interesting 2005 press release about the concerns of the European Union in regard to aviation and global warming. You may recall that there were actually protests from many ‘green’ Europeans when some local airlines began offering very low fares within the the Union. Hard to imagine a similar movement here — protests to challenge cheaper fares, or cheaper gasoline, or mass cheers for the idea of a gasoline or carbon tax.
The emphasis right now in the EU approach is on emissions trading, using the market to create incentives for airlines to reduce emissions. I have some questions about that as a strategy that can do what it is supposed to do in time to save us. But at least some folks are taking the issue seriously, unlike the country in which I reside.
Some research efforts are underway right now to find alternative fuels to fly our jetliners, but this technology is years/decades away. As the MSNBC article notes, the attempts to use biodiesel fuels presents us with the fact of real limits, that word this culture hates so much – we cannot grow enough of these crops in this country to fuel cars, airplanes — and feed people.
Others are looking at coal-based fuel. Coal. God help us. Coal production is the single greatest source of greenhouse gas emissions of all the fossil fuel energies. This from the Sierra Club:
Power plants are a major source of air pollution, with coal-fired power plants spewing 59% of total U.S. sulfur dioxide pollution and 18% of total nitrous oxides every year. Coal-fired power plants are also the largest polluter of toxic mercury pollution, largest contributor of hazardous air toxics, and release about 50% of particle pollution. Additionally, power plants release over 40% of total U.S. carbon dioxide emissions, a prime contributor to global warming.
Even the NY Times editorial writers said the other day that greater use of coal really dooms the planet.
The world has lots of coal, which can indeed be converted to gasoline. But the process releases enormous amounts of carbon, far more than refining oil into gasoline does. Unless we are willing to invest in technologies that can sequester carbon emissions and keep them out of the atmosphere, turning to coal could be a disaster for global warming.
For a good summary of the jet fuel issues, go here. The comment at the bottom of the article is also a useful read.
There seems no way to deal effectively with this issue right now except by cutting back on air travel. This goes against our grain (no pun intended), once again, but so does just about everything related to our warming and resource depletion issues — we must cut back on human consumption, we must scale down our lives, we must reconnect with the natural balances of this Earth and stop these ceaseless assaults on them.
So, here are a couple of sites to check out: one will calculate your greenhouse gas emissions from your airplane travel; this other presents the global warming crisis, our inordinate responsibility for creating the crisis, and steps you can take to reduce your carbon emissions. It is focused on the Great Lakes area, but works for all of us.
So, how ’bout these ideas as well — spend more time at home. Take walks with your kids. Do nature hikes, bike rides. Visit your parks. Watch thing grow in your backyards. Listen to the birds. Get a sense of what is being lost by our restless way of doing business and pleasure — not just quality of life, family, community, and neighborhood, but also the future viability of life on this Earth.
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