Cross-post: Brudaimonia
Commercial aviation can be considered the most inconvenient truth within the larger inconvenient truth of global warming. Europe has taken an important step toward owning up to that truth.
More below the fold.
It is easy these days to pick on automobiles as climate change culprits (and
rightly so), but flying has become the elephant in the room for some reason. I have seen a good deal of environmentalists dedicated to some conservation cause, only to think nothing (or at least not enough) of flying hundreds of miles away to a conference or organizing target location.
Aviation's impact on global warming is worse than just the CO2 emitted by airliners' engines (which is quite a bit).
It's not just that aviation represents the world's fastest growing source of carbon dioxide emissions. The burning of aircraft fuel has a "radiative forcing ratio" of around 2.7(11). What this means is that the total warming effect of aircraft emissions is 2.7 times as great as the effect of the carbon dioxide alone. The water vapour they produce forms ice crystals in the upper troposphere (vapour trails and cirrus clouds) which trap the earth's heat. [George Monbiot]
The
good news is that Europe has made a bold move to confront the harmful effects of flying by initiating a tax to help cover airliners' CO2 emissions.
The Times July 05, 2006
Air fares 'to double' as Europe votes for green tax
By Ben Webster, Transport Correspondent
AIR passengers will be charged up to £40 extra for a return ticket within Europe to pay for the environmental impact of their journeys, under plans approved by the European Parliament yesterday.
MEPs voted in favour of the "immediate introduction" of a tax on jet fuel for flights within the 25 member states of the EU. The charge would double the cost of millions of budget airline flights.
In an aspect of the vote that is foreign here in America, the European Parliament actually voted against industry's position in favor of protecting the environment. British Airways' arguments for a more lenient tax due to alleged uncertainty about flying's impacts on the environment and an issuance of free permits for already existing emissions were both rejected by the Parliament.
The vote was overwhelmingly in favor of the tax (439 to 74 with 102 abstentions), showing that Europe is fully aware of aviation's contribution to global warming and ready to do something about it. The tax and carbon trading structure would, at present, only apply to flights within Europe. While this is not as comprehensive as including international flights that include stops in Europe, it would cover the estimated 2 billion passenger-flights per year in Europe by 2020.
Awareness, however, is the first step in confronting a problem.
The parliament accepted that aviation's total contribution to global warming was two to four times greater than the impact of CO2 alone, and that airlines should be forced to pay for this.
Even British Airways is willing to publicly accept the capacity of aviation to pollute our skies.
Andrew Sentance, BA's head of environmental affairs, admitted that aviation could account for almost half of Britain's total CO2 emissions by 2050, compared with 6 per cent today.
If only our easy-flying society "across the pond" could confront our parallel truths, it would go a long way towards resolving the climate crisis.
For more information, visit the GreenSkies website.