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17419
From: Akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: 1% of people cause half of global aviation emissions
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New study shows that 1% of people cause half of global aviation emissions Date added: November 18, 2020 A study by Linnaeus University in Sweden found that frequent-flyers who represent just 1% of the world’s population caused 50% of aviation’s carbon emissions in 2018. They also said that only 11% of the world’s population took a flight in 2018; of those only 4% flew abroad rather than within their own country. The carbon emissions of US air passengers are bigger than those of the next 10 countries combined, including the UK, Japan, Germany and Australia. The lead author of the study, Stefan Gössling, said: “If you want to resolve climate change and we need to redesign [aviation], then we should start at the top, where a few ‘super emitters’ contribute massively to global warming.” Aviation in 2019 emitted around 1 billion tonnes of CO2 and benefited from a $100bn (£75bn) subsidy by not paying for the climate damage they cause, with most not paying fuel duty, or VAT in Europe. In a typical year, like 2018, 48% of people in the UK did not fly at all; the figure was 53% in the US; and 65% in Germany. Other data shows in the UK that about 70% of flights are taken by 15% of the people. Also just 1% of English residents are responsible for nearly 20% of all flights abroad; and the 10% most frequent flyers in England took more than 50% of all international flights in 2018. . Frequent-flying “‘super emitters” who represent just 1% of the world’s population caused half of aviation’s carbon emissions in 2018, according to a study. Airlines produced a billion tonnes of CO2 and benefited from a $100bn (£75bn) subsidy by not paying for the climate damage they caused, the researchers estimated. The analysis draws together data to give the clearest global picture of the impact of frequent fliers. Only 11% of the world’s population took a flight in 2018 and 4% flew abroad. US air passengers have by far the biggest carbon footprint among rich countries. Its aviation emissions are bigger than the next 10 countries combined, including the UK, Japan, Germany and Australia, the study reports. The researchers said the study showed that an elite group enjoying frequent flights had a big impact on the climate crisis that affected everyone. They said the 50% drop in passenger numbers in 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic should be an opportunity to make the aviation industry fairer and more sustainable. This could be done by putting green conditions on the huge bailouts governments were giving the industry, as had happened in France. Global aviation’s contribution to the climate crisis was growing fast before the Covid-19 pandemic, with emissions jumping by 32% from 2013-18. Flight numbers in 2020 have fallen by half but the industry expects to return to previous levels by 2024. “If you want to resolve climate change and we need to redesign [aviation], then we should start at the top, where a few ‘super emitters’ contribute massively to global warming,” said Stefan Gössling at Linnaeus University in Sweden, who led the new study. “The rich have had far too much freedom to design the planet according to their wishes. We should see the crisis as an opportunity to slim the air transport system.” Dan Rutherford, at the International Council on Clean Transportation and not part of the research team, said the analysis raised the question of equality. “The benefits of aviation are more inequitably shared across the world than probably any other major emission source,” he said. “So there’s a clear risk that the special treatment enjoyed by airlines just protects the economic interests of the globally wealthy.” The frequent flyers identified in the study travelled about 35,000 miles (56,000km) a year, Gössling said, equivalent to three long-haul flights a year, one short-haul flight per month, or some combination of the two. The research, published in the journal Global Environmental Change, collated a range of data and found large proportions of people in every country did not fly at all each year – 53% in the US, 65% in Germany and 66% in Taiwan. In the UK, separate data shows 48% of people did not fly abroad in 2018. The analysis showed the US produced the most emissions among rich nations. China was the biggest among other countries but it does not make data available. However, Gössling thinks its aviation footprint is probably only a fifth of that of the US. On average, North Americans flew 50 times more kilometres than Africans in 2018, 10 times more than those in the Asia-Pacific region and 7.5 times more than Latin Americans. Europeans and those in the Middle East flew 25 times further than Africans and five times more than Asians. The data also showed a large growth in international flights from 1990-2017, with numbers tripling from Australia and doubling from the UK. The researchers estimated the cost of the climate damage caused by aviation’s emissions at $100bn in 2018. The absence of payments to cover this damage “represents a major subsidy to the most affluent”, the researchers said. “This highlights the need to scrutinise the sector, and in particular the super emitters.” The figure for the social cost of carbon emissions was actually a bit conservative, Rutherford said. A levy on frequent fliers is one proposal to discourage flights. “Somebody will need to pay to decarbonise flight – why shouldn’t it be frequent flyers?” Rutherford said. But Gössling was less enthusiastic, pointing out that frequent flyers were usually very wealthy, meaning higher ticket prices may not deter them. “Perhaps a more productive way is to ask airlines to increase the share of [low carbon] synthetic fuels mix every year up to 100% by 2050,” Gössling said. A mandate for sustainable aviation fuel starting in 2025 is backed by some in the industry. A spokesman for the International Air Transport Association (Iata), which represents the world’s airlines, said: “The charge of elitism may have had some foundation in the 1950s and 1960s. But today air travel is a necessity for millions.” He said the airline industry paid $94bn in direct taxes, such as income tax in 2019 and $42bn in indirect taxes such as VAT. “We remain committed to our environmental goals,” the Iata spokesman said. “This year – in the teeth of the greatest crisis ever facing our industry – airlines agreed to explore pathways to how we could move to net zero emissions by around 2060.” A key pillar of the industry’s plans is the carbon offsetting and reduction scheme for international aviation, produced by the UN’s air transport body. But this was heavily criticised in June when revisions were seen as watering down an already weak scheme, with experts estimating that airlines would not have to offset any emissions until 2024. “I think they have a zero interest in climate change,” Gössling said. Other research by Gössling found that half of leisure flights were not considered important by the traveller. “A lot of travel is going on just because it’s cheap.” He stopped flying for holidays in 1995 and more recently stopped going to academic conferences and taking long-haul flights. “I’m not saying I’ll never fly again. But if I can avoid it, I really, really try,” Gössling said. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/nov/17/people-cause-global- aviation-emissions-study-covid-19 |
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17420
From: JTRIV, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: 1% of people cause half of global aviation emissions
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Hi Akira, I've run across this anti-aviation group before. So what do you think is the solution here? Should aviation be priced so high that only .01 % of the people can afford to fly? What about air cargo? Should that also be priced so high that nothing but essential products would be shipped expensively? Healthcare costs will skyrocket even more. I guess I'm asking what you think should be done?? You've posted several articles blaming fossil fuel companies, including state run ones and public officials. Now you've posted the anti-air travel group pointing blame at air travelers... but what is the goal? Do you think we need to stop travel and live like our ancestors who rarely traveled beyond where they were lived? Because it will be quite a while before air travel can be done without fossil fuels. Or is it just about blame? Maybe it feels good posting these articles by various folks that focus on blame? But as climate scientist Judith Curry pointed out the blame game is not productive. There has to be an end game, a move away from fossil fuels and viable clean energy to replace it. Cheers Jim |
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17421
From: ryan, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: 1% of people cause half of global aviation emissions
| if we just ban the 1% from flying the problem would be cut in half...most of their travel is frivilous anyway...aviation is a major component of global warming and pollution and needs to be addressed... |
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17422
From: JTRIV, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: 1% of people cause half of global aviation emissions
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Hi ryan, So we just ban air travel? Simple as that, huh? LOL Cheers Jim |
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17423
From: ryan, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: 1% of people cause half of global aviation emissions
| it would be the smart thing to do...but humans are not known for their intelligence... |
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17424
From: JTRIV, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: 1% of people cause half of global aviation emissions
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Hi ryan, > it would be the smart thing to do...but humans are not known for their intelligence... Well it isn't practical which is why it isn't happening. Same reason we aren't just shutting down power plants and gas stations. Luckily some smart people who aren't naïve are looking at ways to replace fossil fuels with sustainable solution. Cheers Jim |
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17425
From: ryan, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: 1% of people cause half of global aviation emissions
| spare me the "smart" people...same ones that got us here...what's not "practical" is polluting the planet so badly it will soon no longer support organic life... |
17426
From: JTRIV , [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: 1% of people cause half of global aviation emissions
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Hi ryan, > what's not "practical" is polluting the planet so badly it will soon no longer support organic life... If it is so practical when do you plan to stop using electricity and any products transported to your area or any products grown with fossil fuel powered farm equipment or manufactured with fossil fuels? Your words make it sound so easy even as you live your life enjoying the benefits of those very fossil fuels. And as usual you are over the top with the BS about “ polluting the planet so badly it will soon no longer support organic life...”. Why don’t you support the science of climate change instead of the doom crap? Cheers Jim |
17427
From: ryan, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: 1% of people cause half of global aviation emissions
| i have lived large chunks of my life "off-grid"...no electricity, no vehicle, etc...not a stretch for me by any means...and perhaps those were the best periods of my life...right now i do use a fossil fuel based lifestyle because i realize that the outcome is already baked in...my participation or non-participation will make no difference...the best thing i can do is work on myself, and perhaps ripples will affect others...unfortunately the "doom crap" is truth based...the oceans are dying...over 90% of the large fish breeding stock is gone and land species are going extinct at incredible rates...global warming is happening at a rate that hardly anyone saw coming...resources are getting scarcer and scarcer and battles for them will soon be the cause of many wars...hunger and disease are rampant...the world leaders are for the most part idiots...science is a distorted discipline that fails to understand how things really work...happy new year! |
17428
From: JTRIV, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: 1% of people cause half of global aviation emissions
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Hi ryan, So you happily point the finger of blame, yet for yourself you have an attitude of "my participation or non-participation will make no difference"? Don't you think those folks on those airplanes feel the same way?? I've known people who lived off grid... but they still enjoyed the benefits of fossil fuels in their clothes and their hunting/fishing gear and even in the canned foods required to provide a balanced diet. As for your doomy hunger and disease are rampant... WOW. Human life expectancy has increased from less than 29 years before the industrial revolution to over 71 years today. Before the industrial revolution a quarter of children died before the age of 1 and half didn't make it to puberty. Today the global infant mortality rate is just 2.9% and 4.6% don't make it to puberty. There are still problems and challenges ahead, no doubt... but it still baffles me how people like you can whine as if people are dying like flies in the midst of the most prosperous period our species has ever experienced. The only way forward is more innovation to replace fossil fuels. Blame and doomer pity do no good. Happy New Year! Jim |
17429
From: ryan, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: 1% of people cause half of global aviation emissions
| tomorrow will be different than today...the future does not look bright...we lived the "golden" years...they are over... |
17430
From: JTRIV, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: 1% of people cause half of global aviation emissions
URL: Why Is It So Hard to Predict the Future? - The Atlantic
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Hi ryan, > we lived the "golden" years...they are over... Perhaps.. or perhaps not. I'm sure you remember Ehrlich's The Population Bomb where in the 1960s he predicted that it was too late and due to overpopulation hundreds of millions would starve in the next 10 years. That was at a time when the global population was 3.5 billion versus today's 7.6 billion. There is great effort to replace fossil fuels and it will happen. The future is hard to predict.... which is one of the more interesting aspects of waking up every morning. Happy New Year Jim |
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17431
From: ryan, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: 1% of people cause half of global aviation emissions
| well i admire your optimistic attitude...but it won't change anything...ehrlich was just another sleeping fool, spouting lines of drivel about things he knew nothing of...replacing fossil fuels won't change or "fix" anything...the only thing that can change anything is remembering, and acting on it...it is a very long shot...not impossible, but highly improbable...but nonetheless, work harder! |
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