Thursday, May 15, 2008
Are the airlines being bashed unfairly for their eco-unfriendliness? What's their real impact on the environment?
Feb 22, 2008 | I'm greener than most people, I'd guess. I don't own a car, for instance, and much of the furniture in my apartment was scavenged from curbsides and refurbished by hand. I'm low impact, abiding as best I can by the three R's of good stewardship: I reduce; I reuse; I recycle.
Then I go to work and expel hundreds of tons of carbon into the atmosphere. Yes, flying planes for a living -- big planes -- would seem to negate my efforts on the home front.
Commercial aviation has come under increasingly virulent attack for its perceived eco-unfriendliness. In Europe especially, powerful voices have been lobbying for the curtailment of air travel, proposing heavy taxes and other disincentives to restrict airline growth and discourage people from flying. I was introduced to a new term recently, "binge flier," a name for Europeans who take advantage of cheap airfares and indulge in short-stay leisure junkets. Thanks to ultra-low-cost airlines like Ryanair and EasyJet, it's not only possible but affordable to leave Britain in the morning, fly to a beach in Spain and be home again before dark. Many eco-activists find this appalling.
How much of their criticism is fair and how much is gratuitous airline-bashing is open to some debate. I'm the first to agree that airlines ought to be held accountable for their fair share of ecological impact. But that's the thing. Globally, commercial aviation accounts for only about 2 percent of all fossil fuel emissions. (In the United States, that 2 percent also drives approximately $3.4 billion in daily economic activity. Worldwide, it accounts for an estimated 8 percent of global GDP.) Airlines are easy targets these days, but in the hierarchy of environmental threats they appear to be disproportionately villainized. Commercial buildings emit a far higher percentage of climate-changing pollutants than commercial planes, yet there is little outcry and few organized movements to green them up. With cars it's similar. Americans have staggeringly gluttonous driving habits, yet only rarely are we made to feel guilty about them.
So it seems that 90 percent of the flak is aimed at 2 percent of the problem. But, actually, it's not so simple.
Gauging aviation's full influence on the environment is more complicated than simple percentages. Aircraft exhaust is injected directly into the upper troposphere, where its effects on climate change aren't fully understood. The production of water vapor (evidenced by contrails) and the release of compounds such as nitrogen oxides are factors as well. (In the days following Sept. 11, 2001, when commercial aircraft were temporarily grounded, climatologists noticed marked changes in cloud patterns over the United States, possibly attributable to the absence of cloud-forming contrails.) As a rule of thumb, experts recommend multiplying that previously cited 2 percent fossil fuel figure by an additional 2.5 to get a more accurate total of the industry's greenhouse gas contributions. Using this formula, airlines now account for about 5 percent of the problem.
Still that's not much, but commercial aviation is growing at an unprecedented rate. In countries like China, India and Brazil, emerging middle classes have spawned the birth of scores of new airlines. China alone intends to construct more than 40 large airports over the next several years. In the U.S., the number of annual airline passengers, already approaching a billion, is anticipated to double by 2025. Greenhouse gases from planes could rise to as much as five times current levels. If indeed we begin reducing the carbon output from other sources, as we keep promising to, such as those from automobiles, power plants and buildings, the output from aviation will rise drastically as a percentage of the whole. According to a study in Britain, if air travel in that country grows as predicted, carbon emissions would need to be reduced to zero in other sectors of transportation and manufacturing in order for the British government to meet stated reduction goals by 2050. A 1999 report by the United Nations concluded that regardless of improved air traffic flow and the greater efficiency of modern aircraft engines, such things "will not fully offset the effects of the increased emissions resulting from the projected growth of aviation."
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