Cattle ranches? Yeah, for a few years then desert.
This article is a counter-argument. Where is the argument? The only other article on this matter was a month ago and it came to the same conclusion as here, i.e. keep on flyin'! I'm guessing there are quite a few NYT readers among the 12% who account for two-thirds of all flights by Americans. Just some more of that editorial discretion....
12
I work in SLC, and return home to ATL about every two months. Do go on about your theories on air travel. Oh, by the way, I helping to build a new airport.
2
On a long-haul flight, a modern airliner burns an average of 75 tons of jet-fuel to reach its destination
Worldwide, there is an average of 100.000 commercial flights, every day
Mass tourism is depleting the fresh-water resources of many places
Tourism is changing the centuries-old, social balance, in remote settlements
Cruise ships are polluting with oil the pristine waters of Antarctica, disturbing the silence that marine life had experienced during millions of years of evolution
The number of passengers carried Worldwide:
In 1990 there were 1.025 Billion passengers
In 2018 there were 4.233 Billion passengers
13
Saying that reducing flying will cause more deforestation just proves that the human mind can rationalize (away) anything LOL!
15
Pure sophistry. How much are the airline associations paying for this "free" advertisement?
13
I understand the premise of this piece but question how much of commercial aviation is actually “eco-tourism”?
Not much, I’m guessing.
What about all those business travelers —I’m one of them— who have crossed oceans or circled the world multiple times on business and never gone near a rain forest or the Serengeti? I’m guessing that playing hooky for a few days here and there in Kyoto, Jo-burg, Paris, Wales, Tel Aviv or Amsterdam don’t count.
How about all those freight planes carrying FedEx and UPS planes that deliver business packages overnight or across oceans?
How about cruise ships, which dump their trash overboard, and which most passengers reach by airliner.
And by the way, electric planes are a century away.
The NYT can do better than this self-righteous posturing.
13
Flight shaming is yet another form of latter-day Puritanism, popular primarily because of the opportunity it provides to self-righteous people to scold others and deny them their pleasures. That is amplified by social media and its manipulative imperative to accumulate "likes" from other sanctimonious people. This behavioral impulse, however, is as old as humanity. Think of stoning adulterers in the Old Testament or cancel culture today!
The real problem is the explosion of population in the Middle East, South Asia, parts of Africa, and Central and South America. That is a cultural problem too complicated to discuss in 1,500 characters, and the left's all-purpose goto explanations of racism and colonialism are just more shaming for the same, self-gratifying reasons.
The author makes an interesting connection between travel and conservation, and keeps the effect of air travel on the environment in perspective. This deserves consideration.
Hysterical talk of throwing ourselves back to the nineteenth century may give some people an emotional thrill, but a measured, rational discussion is more likely to help us live in the twenty-first!
5
People against air travel are the lunatic fringe that don't travel. There are about a dozen airport expansions going on right now, and a dozen in planning. You think Delta and Southwest are going away tomorrow? We are all going to stay home? Well, that would be a big no.
5
Africa's population is projected to grow to four billion people!
Just about the time that the oil runs out, the world economy shrinks, climate refugees flood the planet, and political chaos reigns. When you have to save nature with global eco-tourism the fossil-capital ponzi scheme has about run its course.
8
When Internet critics demonize flying for its carbon footprint, it is rich hypocrisy given that digital communication itself is set to dwarf the airlines' enviro-crimes.
Data centers alone will soon create a bigger carbon footprint than the entire aviation industry; in 2018 the electricity it took to run Bitcoin alone produced carbon dioxide equivalent to 1 million transatlantic flights (Digiconomist, 2018).
Add the Internet of Things and billions of smartphones, and the communications industry is projected to account for up to 14% of global emissions by 2040, per Climate Home News (2017). The airlines' share of the pie today? 2.5%.
The spectacle of raging flight-shaming -- and power-thirsty -- Internet campaigns would be hilarious if the planetary stakes weren't so high.
Greta Thunberg's intentions are surely noble when she eschews a seat aboard a transatlantic flight (that departs with or without her) for weeks of seasickness. But the furious digital traffic to advance her climate-awareness agenda causes more environmental havoc. And unlike most digital concerns worldwide, the airlines are doing plenty to counteract their carbon footprint.
I hope Mr. Christ's column encourages less hysterical, more balanced thinking about carbon crimes. If you really want to advance the solution, before cancelling your flying plans, stop buying things from Amazon; disconnect your "smart" fridge, Internet-linked doorbell... and the device on which you are reading this, right now.
10
Perhaps flight shaming happens because our current elites and leaders are not doing enough about climate change and global warming. Flight shaming is a way of freaking out in the face of official indifference to the severity of the situation. If global warming can endanger the world's habitability, we should be funding much more investigation on what is likely to happen and much more action based on its results, even the results we have so far. That this is not happening upsets some people to the point that they break the law or engage in flight shaming; it should upset us all, so that we declare war on the problem with a dedication matching or exceeding our efforts in World War II.
7
Travel is not the only cause of airline pollution. Do we really need letters and packages delivered overnight? Do we really need blueberries from South American in January? Do we need to decorate our homes with fresh flowers from all over the world?
12
I think the tourism activity is inevitable for us. Lets consider about the religion pilgrimage. People from around the world will
visit the place they were desired to. They will come with all the possible ride.
2
Sorta sounds like that line from our Vietnam War years: "We had to destroy the village to save it."
8
I congratulate Mr. Christ on finding economic opportunity in defending air travel.
The rationale is a dense fog of hypotheticals, but then so is the idea that a mob protesting at the airport accomplishes anything.
Articles like this, the media's eagerness to print them, and readers' desperate willingness to embrace their lies, destroy all my hope for the future. Greed and selfishness will rule the day till the very end.
6
Think of all the wildlife sustained by Interstate ditches. Lesson? Build more roads.
7
In this country, better public transport and high speed efficient trains to many destinations would counter a good deal of domestic flying....especially now that flying is so onerous due to long security lines and so on.
17
A very specious argument indeed. Yes, eco-tourists can perhaps help save the Serengeti (temporarily). But it is humans that have destroyed the habitat of most endangered species, including the wild animals of the Serengeti. And by doing business as usual, we will hardly be able to save mankind. (Oddly, then, the Serengeti and its abundance of wildlife will recover.)
The key is clearly to both sharply curtail our carbon production, and to realize that we humans are not the only (or even most important) denizens of planet earth. While most other species contribute positively in some way to the biosphere, we humans have a net negative impact, which is growing exponentially in time. And that endangers not only other species, but ourselves. As we gaze across the cosmos, it is hard to imagine a planet richer in diversity, and more bountiful in its resources - if we don't destroy it first. For purely selfish reasons, we must realize we need to save both the environment, and the full ecosystem on which we depend. Take a breadth, and thank all plants and photosynthesizers.
7
I agree with a comment below that low-impact means of interacting with other cultures are available in much of the US. That writer writer mentions study of other languages and other peoples' history, sampling of non-US cuisine at ethnic restaurants or cookery classes, teaching immigrants, attending cultural pride celebrations. Other activities could no doubt be imagined with little effort, and my wife and I have done all of those I listed, but we have also chosen to spend half of our time in recent years living in another culture, learning about and enjoying it in ways impossible to reproduce in the US. Since this particular foreign opportunity may only be achieved by transoceanic travel, flying is a necessity. (Surface travel, while theoretically possible, is not realistically a current option.)
So, we wish to delve deeper into a particular foreign culture than could be done by the means enumerated by another commenter, and to pursue this ambition we have chosen to fly commercially. To those who would attempt to impose their mores on us by the current fashionable tactic of "flight shaming," my response is simple: I don't work for you. By all means, embrace the low-impact measure advocated, and any others you might choose, but abandon any idea that I intend to limit myself to your recipe(s).
1
Thanks for making this clean energy, sustainable expert feel better about my first world travel mental issues.I can't stop traveling. It's in my blood.
4
The ability of the wealthy to pay for exclusive trips anywhere in the world that are not available to the people who actually live in those countries because they cannot afford it is wrong, even if you don't factor in the environmental cost of flights for pleasure.
4
All USA public corporations must act to increase shareholder value, so they strive to grow profits. Airlines do this by growing passenger-miles, and the best way to grow passenger-miles is to lower the price of the ticket. Carbon tax, anyone?
5
Tourism to save wildlife has justified flying in the past. It would be lovely if it worked. However, if it did, there would be more tigers in India than there are in the back yards of Texas, and the Asian lion wouldn't be on the brink of extinction. India has been a popular destination since tourism's inception.
The only way to save wildlife is to have either less humans or the same amount of humans who eat a lot less, and that means soybeans and palm oil as well as cattle and sheep.
6
I can’t be flight shamed.
I fell in love with traveling as a kid and won’t ever stop. The experience of leaving a known, comfortable routine to rediscover myself in a strange land is exhilarating and I will seek this as long as I’m able to move. There are no inconveniences too inconvenient to dissuade me from seeing the world. I’ve flown around the world in middle seat; do you really think I care about some poster board waving malcontents?
There’s so much I don’t do or buy here in my day-to-day life so I have the time and money for wide-ranging international travel. All the designer-sneaker wearing, bottled-kombucha drinking, uber hailing, tiktok streaming, iPhone waving, woke juvies can shame on - I’ve got a plane to catch.
16
The other thing that is good for the planet is Lawyers.
Lawyers bring lawsuits to prevent heavy industries from carelessly polluting rivers and soils. Lawyers bring lawsuits to prevent hog farms from ignoring the effects of their sludge. Lawyers bring lawsuits to compel compliance with all types of rules and regulations.
More lawyers.
Especially, there should be more lawyers in China (not just the USA), which is the main generator of pollution in the world. Just a matter of Greta Thunberg visiting China to persuade them to pass the necessary rules and regulations - and to graduate more lawyers.
3
Jets burn kerosene. Similar to diesel fuel, the lung health effects of flying are worse than most emissions other than coal. Jet engine exhaust tends to slowly sink back to the surface. During 911 I was on Lake Michigan.
It was the only time I ever saw Chicago's western horizon clearly. All air traffic had been grounded.
Ever notice that airports smell like a kerosene lamp? I have. Bring on electric transport. Air quality has gotten dramatically worse in the last 20 years.
7
What this article plays down is the effect that the 2.5% the total manmade of CO2 that flying is responsible for in terms of global warming. The problem with flying is that the airplane CO2 unlike say automobile CO2 is deposited directly into the upper atmosphere, which is where the CO2 does its damage. CO2 at the Earth's surface is not the direct cause of global warming. It is once the CO2 migrates to the upper atmosphere that is when it captures infrared light and reflects that energy back to the surface. Think of it this way, how do trees and other vegetation absorb CO2 that comes out of an airplane at 38,000 feet?
This is why many scientists theorize that airplane CO2 is contributing several times the 2.5% CO2 footprint to the overall global warming footprint. Also, airplanes deposit huge amounts of particulate matter as well into the atmosphere. Finally, consider that worldwide air travel is expected to quadruple over the next 10 years, and in that light it is easy to view air travel as a massive threat to our environment.
8
The major reason for loss of tropical forests today are the international markets for beef, soybeans, lumber, and palm oil. There should be international sanctions against these products that come from deforested tropical land, such as beef grown in deforested Amazon areas of Brazil. We need a high U.S. carbon tax that would discourage use of jet fuel, gasoline and diesel, and part of this tax revenue should go to developing countries that protect their forests and wildlife. Finally a lot of jet travel among Americans are short flights domestically--if we had a good passenger rail system in the NE and along the Pacific coast, jet fuel use could be cut greatly. International flights not so much.
13
“By contrast, deforestation, according to some estimates, contributes nearly 20 percent”
It’s true. It’s more than all all of transport, cars, trucks, planes,trains and boats emit together.
Research is just beginning to realize the many other climate stabilization characteristics of forests. Cloud formation is still little understood. Even direct shading isn’t reckoned into the calculation at present. Then there’s water and more.
Stopping deforestation and expanding forest cover is the world’s best and possibly last hope of avoiding the worst aspects of climate change that our high carbon atmosphere will give us. Forest the planet.
10
Mr. Christ is out on a limb. It looks like he doesn't have the kind of point to make that calls for making an argument to the entire world in a little opinion piece. Instead, it needs something a lot more thorough and scientific to be convincing.
"According to the World Travel and Tourism Council, one in 10 people are employed in the travel and tourism industry, representing more than 10 percent of the global economy."
He doesn't tell us, however, how much of this is aviation-based tourism.
"At the same time, aviation accounts for approximately 2.5 percent of human-induced C0₂ emissions. By contrast, deforestation, according to some estimates, contributes nearly 20 percent, about as much as all forms of transportation combined. If we want to truly take a clean sweep at reducing global greenhouse gases, then we must stop clear-cutting the world’s forests."
People have know about the deforestation problem for decades, and it never improves. He is criticizing boycotts, and 2.5% from aviation might be much more vulnerable to a boycott.
That 2.5% might end up being the portion of the problem that makes the difference between life and death for humanity.
"While I recognize that flying is harmful to the climate, ... Conservation and poverty alleviation will suffer twin blows."
He's merely throwing something out there without explaining how tourist $$$ are connected to poverty alleviation and conservation. I doubt it. The tourism industry isn really a funnel to that.
2
@Real Rocket Raccoon, For example, in ATL, about 45,000 people are employed at the airport, air freight, and other ancillary jobs. That was a few years ago, it might be higher now.
1
Flight shaming is easy - after all, the largest proportion of those who fly are relatively wealthy. And the wealthy are an easy punching bag for everyone else. Ask people to give up their (completely unnecessary) oversized SUVs which they drive to the shopping mall every day, well that would be attacking the middle class. Ask people to have trees in the yard instead of pretty lawns - no way...NIMBY! Ask people to eat less beef so we need fewer cows - hands off my Big Mac, mac!
-
So yes, there should more teleconferencing and less flying just to meet somewhere desirable. But let's also do what is less politically easy and take on emissions control for ALL vehicles, and do ALL that is needed to keep our planet healthy. This is NOT a 1 Percenter problem. This is everyone's problem and responsibility.
15
People in the US are flying more than 2x more than they used to. This is not the time.
1
@Melanie, That's the reason for all the airport construction.
1
Some commonsensical and relatively easy to implement suggestions.
Plant more trees, especially in urban areas.
Encourage and enable more people to work from home. With the advent of the Internet, business travel is no longer really necessary, except as paid vacations for executives.
Mass transportation is required to convey food and goods long distances. Work both ends to emphasize the consumption of local foods and goods and streamline long-distance delivery by utilizing the least polluting transportation possible. Long-distance food tends to be less nutritious and flavorful anyway.
Christ's discussion on behalf of tourism is meretricious. I have no interest in despoiling pristine landscapes and wildlife with my presence. Good documentaries offer perspectives up-close-and-personal cannot.
Anyone seriously concerned with the plight of wildlife and the impoverished on other continents can make direct contributions to organizations, charities, or governments. I don't have to watch a lion chowing down on a wildebeeste to contribute to Africa's economy.
The benevolence of Western tourism is often hard to distinguish from its more invasive cousin, colonialism.
7
The kinds of radical inputs humans are making to Earth's climate system are dangerous and alarming. On the other hand, I like to travel, I live in a house bigger than I need in a climate that requires winter heating, and make lifestyle choices all the time that (if done by others, would) threaten my kids' and grandkid's future. (As my brother says, "yes, overpopulation is a problem, but the biggest problem with overpopulation is over-consuming Americans).
The Times had a column within the last week that discussed what to do when you are depressed about climate apocalypse. It basically said, "don't give up hope - do something." On a recent trans-continental flight I watched "Ice on Fire" about actions that can help with humanity's drive to self-destruct. So perhaps when I return from my latest international trip, I'll buy some carbon offsets, invest in making my house net-zero, and get more involved in living a "sustainable" lifestyle. Or start a kelp farm.
3
Well timed article . I just returned from a visit with my son in DC. I felt so guilty about using so much energy to fly there from Nashville that I took a Greyhound. Clearly Greta Thunberg has never travelled by Greyhound.
I paid extra for early hoarding but that was ignored. The first 12 hours, before changing buses at Charlottesville, the bus was cramped, seats did not recline, no WiFi service, a filthy bathroom, and a surly driver.
At a time like this when we are seeking to do-the-right-thing there is not a palatable alternative to air travel. Amtrak has few stations, in my case, a 5 hour drive is required to board. Greyhound is dehumanizing. So. Don’t talk to me about shame-on-you for flying. Until the alternatives are fixed I will fly with a clear conscience.
13
@Person Per person, the bus probably pollutes more.
Contrarian views are important, but they have to touch more bases. In part, this piece does the trick: getting our attention and making some good, counter-intuitive points.
It starts out the wrong way, promoting the economic value of tourism in general, although it later refines that. It says other things are much worse, a definite non-starter, what a climate change-denier (which I doubt the author is) would say. It concludes by citing some familiar other villains, tangential to the case. Instead he should stay on topic.
The main part of its case, though, is better, giving us something to think about if we care about these species, as well as the people there.
It acknowledges the need to practice sustainable travel better, but doesn't really tell us how. He could: discuss bow to improve the credibility of carbon offsets; further distinguish shame-worthy forms of travel with the more legitimate kind he advocates; and much more about improving his sector, including some cutting-edge ideas the Times has actually recently covered.
How could both carbon emissions be further reduced during travel and during the eco-tourist experience, and the quality of the latter improved, and not just for the tourist? Could the temporary social relationships formed during the time on the ground be maintained when the tourist returns home? Could the environmental ethic? Could the economic prospects of the guide or hotel employee go further?
Creativity and an honest self-appraisal are important.
1
I 100% agree with the author. I live in a Central African country that isn't on the tourist/safari junket where there are extraordinary primates that are endangered and need our support to survive. Guess who visits and supports the local primate sanctuary? Europeans and Americans on business trips.
For us, those visitors are enough to keep the poachers at bay. But, if people don't visit, or literally pay the communities handsomely to not kill the animals, they will kill them and eat them. People who are food insecure and wondering where their next meal is coming from couldn't care less whether an animal is going extinct or not.
So, by all means, cut back on bachelor parties to Vegas or romantic getaways to Paris. But do remember that all actions tend to have unintended consequences. Cutting back on travel to African wildlife and eco destinations will only hasten the demise of many extraordinary creatures.
10
The Hyperloop combined with electric propulsion will have a major impact on the climate — but only, of course, if travelers use them!
Sadly most of the countries that stand to be devastated by climate change are island nations (basically all of the Pacific) that depend heavily on tourism to survive. How do you expect these countries to interact with the rest of the world?
3
“We [in the aviation industry] aren't doing ourselves any favours by chucking billions of tons of carbon into the air.” Sir Tim Clark, president of Emirates, the world’s largest long-haul aviation company, quoted this week by the BBC.
5
Briefly, Mr. Christ argues that air travel is good for the planet because:
(a) ecotourism, facilitated by air travel, redistributes wealth from rich to poor, and
(b) ecotourism instills in participants an appreciation for unspoiled environments.
Both are valuable outcomes. Nonetheless, we can question if shuttling jet-setters around the globe is a good way to accomplish these outcomes.
4
7.8 billion people, most of who want, and actively live a modern life of flying often, using gas powered vehicles, and want the latest digital device, most of which are made in Asia, and must be transported by cargo ship around the world, which is also very polluting. So, if you had more than two children, you as a female, or a male are responsible for the increase in pollution, thus warming the planet to a greater degree. The nature of the human animal is an animal, after all, and it is doubtful, because of that fact, patriarchal type religions, and cultures, that people will limit their childbearing.
4
@MaryKayKlassen, Do pets count?
1
This op-ed contains an important lesson: very rarely in human affairs is an action just one thing. There are always unintended results that might, in the long run, be more harmful that the problem being attacked.
Electric cars, as another example, won't be truly "green" until we can assure that the electrical energy they use is being generated by renewable, non-polluting sources. That should include, as well, the manufacture of the batteries, the chemicals used in the batteries and the transport of all the materials for assembly. They have to be green all the way. Otherwise, electrical cars are just a means of transferring pollution to a different location.
If, as stated, jet travel is only 2.5% of the CO2 problem, I will take my vacation travel in January without an ounce of guilt. Stated another way, if we reduced jet pollution by 50%, we would only save 1.25% of the total CO2 problem.
People travel for many reasons and some of them would be approved by even the most strict environmentalist. In general, people go to other places to have richer lives and to experience what they can't at home. Taking that away would be a huge negative factor in millions of lives.
3
@Doug Terry, And then there is the China, India and Brazil problem. We can be the greenest country on earth and make no discernible difference.
1
Human beings are consuming the earth. No matter what proposal is put forward for us to consume less, generate less pollution and leave more resources for other species, you can expect a clever argument like this one, explaining that it is unnecessary or counterproductive.
There are too many of us.
We are consuming too much.
The answer is fewer people and less consumption.
If someone tells you that flying more, or eating more imported food, or consuming more in some other way will further sustainability, don’t believe it.
Things that sound too good to be true usually are.
14
Interesting perspective from a travel agent ! Besides climate change, the main reason to cut down on fossil fuel is that we only have 50 years reserve of oil and gas left . Hard for me to imagine a world with no fossil fuel , but that’s what our grand kids will be facing . I’m really surprised that no one seems to be concerned about depleting our fossil fuel reserves.
2
How many of these statistics can be trusted?
Cruise ships -- why not ocean liners again? (Except that I get terrible persistent vertigo from long or even short boat trips!)
Where oh where are the articles about population numbers. When I was 20 there were fewer than three billion people on this planet. Fifty-five years later there are close to 8 billion. In about 20 years it will be 10 billion.
Global warming bothers me mostly as it wipes out the habitat for other creatures who live here.
Perhaps we should look at immigration as another form of tourism?? People apparently spend small fortunes to try to leave places where life is miserable.
2
It doesn't have to be all-or-nothing. As a teacher about climate issues, I took a pledge to limit my air miles several years ago. I created my personal air travel carbon budget, just as I would for money. In 2013 I was co-leader of an educational trip to South Africa, which was a life highlight for me and most of the 20 students on the trip - in order to "pay" for those air miles, I didn't fly for four years = the same as "saving up" for it out of my earnings or savings. I have also partnered with colleagues on shared air mile budgets; I stay home while they fly to California for family visit, thus reducing our net carbon impact.
4
The reason it is important to cut down on flying is that there is no real alternative to jet fuel. Deforestation can be stopped by stopping the destruction of forests. The electrical grid can be made to work on renewable energy. Car and trucks can run on electrical energy. Heating can be electrified. But flying requires jet fuel and the number of flights is rapidly increasing which means flying will continue to account for a greater percentage of emissions if people do not take action and fly less. The only real answer other than stop flying is to purchase offsets for emissions although how good these are is controversial. There are other sources of emissions for which there are no good technical solutions. These include shipping, steel making, cement making, and ruminants such as cows. This is one reason why vast resources need to be devoted to research. No matter what anyone says, we do not have all the answers and flying certainly is one area where answers are lacking.
4
1) Caution: the author owns a travel company
2) A VERY small percentage of air travel is to "eco destinations"
3) Is "eco tourism" actually benefiting the destination?
4) Did you agree with the article just to feel better about yourself and your desire to travel? Or because you really believe that more flying could actually be good?
Fair number of wishful thinkers here, I think.
17
electric planes would use more energy than gasoline planes, not less.
This is because, per energy unit, batteries are heavier than aviation fuel. it takes extra energy to keep that extra weight aloft.
that extra energy comes mostly from coal and fracked natural gas.
buying electric planes may make you feel better, but it makes the problem worse.
1
Some ecologist! He's clearly in this for the dough. He is using flights to ecotourism destinations to justify ALL flying. This author claims that the planet would, counterintuitively, be hurt if we reduced our flying - using as an example, of all things, flights to the Serengeti! (So much for representative sampling.) And what about all the passenger (and luggage) flights to social or cultural events or for work that isn't environmentally or socially redeeming or that involves business which could be done locally?
Even with his Serengeti example, the claim that ecotourism has kept the African savannah from becoming farmed for cattle is probably an overstatement, considering how much more productive, temperate grassland lies to the south (and elsewhere on the planet) that hasn't yet been exploited. (And he seems to ignore the fact that native ruminants also have carbon emission "issues".) Grass growing productivity and market conditions are most import, in this regard. Ecotourism has not protected parts of the Amazonian rainforest from being cleared for grass farming/cattle production.
8
I suggest those who are trying to lower carbon footprints re-brand it as "flight privilege" instead of "flight shaming" to get more support.
2
As a flight "shamer" myself, I appreciate the author's perspective. I'm glad he mentioned, even if only briefly in passing, that travelers can purchase carbon offsets. Sometimes we need to fly. Sometimes we just want to fly. Either way, we can mitigate the impacts by purchasing offsets, which are relatively inexpensive. My hometown airline, Alaska, has a program and I encourage everyone to consider it or another carbon offset program the next time you fly. https://carbonfund.org/partners/alaska-airlines/
4
Flight-shaming. I’m sick of being shamed. I’m flying transcontinental to visit family for Thanksgiving. I’d love take a train but in addition to be much more expensive I couldn’t make the roundtrip between pre- and post-Thanksgiving classes. How about consumption-shaming for a change? Manufacturing, making the stuff Americans over-consume is environmentally degrading. I own 4 pairs of jeans and a pair of cords, only one of which is less than 5 years old, 5 pairs of shoes, 4 pullovers, 8 blouses, and assorted tee-shirts, which is good enough in my job. And a 6-year old pants suit for fancy events. How about air-conditioning-shaming. 90% of Americans have it, including most here in SoCal. I don’t have air-conditioning or central heating: I have a fan and my 4 sweaters. How about local-driving-shaming? I have this thing called a ‘bicycle’ for that.
I’m going anonymous because this is hideously self-righteous. But jeez look at the ads selling clothes galore, and fitted walk-in closets to stow it, and every bit of consumer crap. Environmental costs of this don’t seem to compute with the faux-environmentalist goody-two-shoes. And BTW goody-goodies: any of you bike? Not in matched spandex for weekend recreation on bucolic bike paths, but for local transportation? Like grocery shopping and going to the dentist?
7
Electric planes are the answer
To the astonishment of almost everyone, it will soon be possible to convert all aircraft engines to run on water - taken from the air.
This is not electrolysis but new science and technology that needs only small amounts of energy. A converted piston engine ran on a 9 volt battery.
A jet engine is due to be converted to demonstrate the potential.
Moray King predicted the possibility in his book: WATER - The Key to New Energy. An alternative hypothesis falls out of Brett Holverstott's volume: Randell Mills and the Search for Hydrino Energy.
Since conversion will be highly cost effective the world's aircraft can end dependence on fossil fuel much more rapidly than has been imagined.
Learn more at MOVING BEYOND OIL aesopinstitute.org
On the same site see FUEL FREE TURBINES. These were prototyped in Russia before the work was halted by a government dependent on the sale of oil and gas.
Improved varieties have been invented in the USA and will become an important component of future electric aircraft, giving them unlimited range.
Small vtol aircraft needing no fuel will also have unlimited range and can become a much larger component of future transportation than is presently projected.
These are Green Swans - highly improbable inventions with huge impact.
All vehicles and anything using an engine will not require fossil fuels. Conversion of cars & trucks will be easy & cheap, providing fuel savings. Parked vehicles can become power plants, earning new income.
1
I'll explain it this way.
A cosmic matrix of frictionless bodies explains almost everything.
It should be a familiar idea to those practiced in thermodynamics, but just slightly different.
All 'waves' and 'particals' are just waves in the matrix. Our observations of those matrix waves, and their effects upon real matter, create every single effect we see.
There are a lot of mathematical ideas lacking in this conceptual model, but if we work them out, I think it accounts for almost everything.
UFOs exhibiting strange, potentially radio active or electromagnetic properties, explained!
It's all the same thing. Just different levels of energy being emitted and different qualities of the matrix capable of transmitting energy or forcing absorption. Most times energy is absorbed by real matter. If not, does it exist?
Exceptional idea. If I may, I would like to build on it having some knowledge of weather; Clouds and rain begin with the most minute dust particles in the atmosphere. Those Dust particles attract vaporized water or H2O molecules in a grand exhibit of the wonder of surface tension or what I call it; Gravity. As time passes, ever greater numbers of water molecules combine around that dust particle until uncountable numbers of those water spheres become clouds and when even bigger, fall out of the clouds as rain. But here is where I join with you dear friend; those planes with jet engines are cruising sometimes at an altitude in which the exhaust byproducts, including particulates, make what is called, Jet Contrails. Depending on the altitude the plane is flying in the stratosphere, the contrails can be incredibly long, and those Jet Contrails become the seeds of new clouds that in turn attract more water molecules. My idea is to begin lobbying for flight levels and patterns that will actually create clouds along their journey. As remarkable as this may sound, if Jets take paths to create clouds, those clouds would reflect much solar infrared energy back to space allowing our planet to slow down it's warming, both by shading the planet, and cooling it off by evaporation on the surface as rain falls.
Thank you Costas. Be an Angel and share the idea if you will. God Bless you, and God Bless God. He can do that you know. But nobody ever asks.
If, and only if, those who have children stop flying, will I even think about my aviation carbon footprint.
Until then, bon voyage!
2
The carbon argument constitutes a false equivalency for air travel. In order to answer the question, whether flying is 'good' for the planet (the author reduces the argument to 'saving the planet'), the focus needs to be on the overall impact of air travel on global warming.
In the skies, contrails are much more important than carbon. The water vapor of jet engines freezes and forms a 'cloud cover' that traps heat. Research suggests that almost ALL of the temperature increase since the seventies can be attributed to air travel.
Do you remember the clear skies when all the air traffic was grounded after 9/11?
See this article for reference:
https://globalnews.ca/news/2934513/empty-skies-after-911-set-the-stage-for-an-unlikely-climate-change-experiment/
The question of whether flying is 'good' for the planet for developmental reasons is otherwise warranted.
A.J. Deus
Social Economics of Poverty and Religious Terrorism
1
The irony that the internal combustion engine and fossil fuels, the essences of modern life, would be our death knell is beyond words...
Who would’ve thunk it? It’s so unbelievable
1
Here's an idea: take all the money used for travel to Africa, South America, etc., and instead just pay people to care for their local environment. Both problems solved.
5
Animal populations around the world are quickly disappearing whether we visit them or not. Flying around the world to see them isn't going to save them. In the United States our parks and public lands are overcrowded and our wilderness system is being pressured to allow more access for recreational interests putting stress on wildlife populations already feelng the effects of a changing climate.
7
The author's premise, that flight tourism is good for the world because tourists will somehow value places they visit and help save them is laughable. Most tourists by far don't give a hoot about places they visit. Fragile places saved, have been saved by residents and serious advocates. Tourism's overall footprint is huge and has stomped out many more places than have been helped. This article is simply travel industry promotion.
7
This piece does make some counter intuitive points worth considering. But to do so it controverts the reality that air travel is one of the major factors impacting CO2. And entirely misses the point that in 45 years as an engineer, I flew 100 flights a year for work and 2 a year (or less) for tourism. Of the 100 (or more) business flights, 90% were unnecessary. So if you can do a meeting on the internet rather than in person, by all means do it. If you cancel out 20 business trips a year, take no guilt in your vacation flights!
1
"Does this mean that all tourism is good tourism? Of course not."
And therein lies the crux of the problem. I would venture to guess that over 95% of personal airline travel is directed to places that provide absolutely no "benefit" in any sense to the environment (e.g., Paris, Venice, etc.).
And that for every excursion that might serve to preserve a particular environment, it is by far outweighed by unnecessary trips to environmentally sensitive regions (e.g., Antarctica, Gallapagos, Alaska, Iceland, Machu Pichu...) where great damage is being done by massive numbers of tourists.
5
It's not only the tourist industry Africa needs. Africa needs to produce oil. Countries like Iran are suffering because of sanctions. The inability to sell oil has caused great hardship for it's people. Venezuela economy flounder when huge reductions in the price of crude occurred. Economic needs are in conflict with ecological needs. You really can't pick between one or the other. How will the developing world escape poverty? Prove to them there's green jobs on the way.
1
Although only 2.5% of CO2 emissions, it is a bourgeoisie activity that would quickly exceed that level if rest of the planet started traveling by plane. And while I agree that eco-tourism is a potent and important factor in saving some parts of the environment, I'm fairly certain that only a small portion of plane travel is environmental tourism. So, we keep the 90% of the traffic that is just blasting off to Italy for wonderful sunsets, to justify the 10% that are supporting protection of the environment. Seems a bit fallacious to me.
9
The two biggest threats to biodiversity are habitat loss and climate change. So even if flying helps promote conservation through increased tourism, it also contributes to climate change which is having the opposite effect. Pick your poison.
Are you saying that tourism is the only way to promote conservation? In any case, I would wager that most flying is not for tourism to exotic locations to view wildlife. What about all the unnecessary business travel and jetting off to Mexico for the week? How exactly is this helping preserve wildlife?
6
This is not only insightful it is prescient. The future will be fll of people discovering experiences in different places...and lots of jobs in that, and lots of facilities too. Just see Rome, already.
The vast majority of flying isn't to destinations where tourism helps save rhinos and rainforests, so this argument holds little water.
What is interesting is the idea that tourism is necessary for many conservation efforts. So a better argument here would be to reduce certain kinds of flying to be able to continue to support flying that may help nature survive.
1
VR is very, very good. A future with no physical travel, but many Remote Autonomous Travelers (RATS) could be our travel future. Imagine Africa, or the Louvre with thousands of scurrying remotes. Tourism industry, say goodbye.
Dear Mr. Christ:
Thank you so much for this. The furor over air travel is so over-hyped and so self-serving. As if, by not flying as much, I can signal my environmental virtue. What baloney.
As you point out, the CO2 contribution of air travel is only about 2.5% of the total human contribution. Eliminating all air travel would have a negligible effect on climate change, but a substantial effect on the positive impacts of travel, of which tourism is just one.
I have led several groups of students to Costa Rica to observe the fabulous biodiversity of that small country, and I am confident that the long-term effects were beneficial. And directly, we all put money into the local economy of Costa Rica.
Travel to other countries is important, for a thousand reasons. Some in the short term, some in the long term. "Flight shaming" is part and parcel of the attempt to push responsibility for climate change onto individuals instead of the corporate system that produces CO2 emissions at industrial levels. That includes the manufacture of Portland Cement (a primary construction material), freight transportation over roadways instead of railways and waterways, human transportation overland in automobiles instead of buses and trains, and the enormous opportunities to reduce fossil fuel consumption by more efficient heating, lighting, and insulation. Hey people, let's try looking at the bigger picture. Yes, consumer behavior is important. But corporate behavior is vital! Let's do it!
6
Climate disaster fix is not an either or problem. We need all the fixes since we've waited so long to address the problem. We need to stop clear cutting but we also need to stop flying, until we figure out how to do it without burning fossil fuels. A Boeing 777 burns approximately 6.8t of fuel per hour. We are trapped inside of fossil fuel monopoly on Earth. We are not allowed to look at other modes of transportation like free energy coupled with Earth's magnetic core. It's the monopoly on dinosaur energy that is killing us. Our technologies can't move forward.
2
I built two small airplanes and continue to fly. Due to the ethanol company's stranglehold over domestic policy, all gasoline in the US is mixed with ethanol which means most general aviation planes can't use it. Instead, general aviation burns av-gas which has lead in it.
If we could remove the ethanol lobby from decision making, thousands of small airplanes would stop raining lead over all of our communities but America is run by lobbyists. Lobbyists write the laws, and their stooges in congress pass them.
Representative government is a myth perpetuated by lobbyists so the public doesn't rise up and end this farce.
4
Well, it won't be long before everyone will stay in one place and experience the world through virtual reality. Cause you know, real life is dirty and inconvenient and unsafe and all kinds of bad and un-fun things can happen. Actually, virtual reality could be the best thing that could happen for the planet.
4
@gw, I work a very difficult (in the physical world) task in VR, preparing for the day when conditions fall in place and I can actually do the task. VR could replace travel and sports viewing for sure.
1
OK, but let's make a distinction between commercial airliners carrying several hundred people and private jets carrying a handful. The latter contribute far more greenhouse gas per passenger.
We might not be able to totally ban private jets, but a tax amounting to $100/mile would pay for a lot of other greenhouse gas abatement projects.
5
I sincerely hope that everyone in NYC, SF and LA stops flying so they can meditate more deeply on their existential angst.
The rest of us will fly more happily in their stead and spread our guiltless joy (and dollars) to those around the globe!
1
@Chris
Thanks for the unprovoked hostile response, and enjoy Florida while it lasts.
16
If one is looking for a villain in the travel industry, one should consider the environmental impact of cruise ships, and their endless quest to turn every coastal town in the whole world into a fudge-and-souvenir mall.
As for nature here in America - it's wonderful but one has to drive or fly to get to the Everglades or the Bryce Canyon or even the Pacific Coast Trail. People travel because they want to experience what is not available at home, and our focus needs to be more on preserving what we have and not paving over our national parks for restaurants, expensive hotels and roads to make them more accessible to the tourist industry.
6
If one is looking for a villain in the travel industry, one should consider the environmental impact of cruise ships, and their endless quest to turn every coastal town in the whole world into a fudge-and-souvenir mall.
As for nature here in America - it's wonderful but one has to drive or fly to get to the Everglades or the Bryce Canyon or even the Pacific Coast Trail. People travel because they want to experience what is not available at home, and our focus needs to be more on preserving what we have and not paving over our national parks for restaurants, expensive hotels and roads to make them more accessible to the tourist industry.
2
Flying may bring in ecotourists, but easy and cheap travel has also made it easy to bring in the destructive elements of foreign cultures to areas that are not able to support them.
4
"If we really all did stop flying, would that save the planet?"
Can we PLEASE ask the right question? The planet Earth is going to be just fine, no matter what humans do. If we continue on our current path, will the planet be hospitable for humans 100 years hence? Insects and sea creatures and all sorts of plant life will survive and almost certainly thrive. Humans may even be around to witness this changing of the guard. Problem is, our species won't particularly enjoy the show.
2
@WDG - here's the right question: how many thousands or millions of years will it take for the planet to restore healthy species balances following the cataclysmic losses of a 6th extinction? Or will it at all?
Earth is the only living planet in the known universe. NEVER take it for granted or devalue its extraordinary biodiversity.
5
@gw I think once humans are gone the planet will heal real quick.
1
@Moodbeast
That may have been true before we started building nuclear power plants, which need
humans to tend them for a long time into the future (including decommissioning and safely storing the remains). But there's another question. What if the planet has 'evolved' humans to protect it from future catastrophic asteroid strikes ? No other species is capable of doing so but we are nearly there . . .
You lost me when you suggested that a wildebeest’s carbon emissions are significantly lower than a cow’s.
2
This might be true for some places, but obviously not for the Amazon as a whole. Despite being a huge tourist attraction, deforestation there is accelerating.
3
Thank you Mr. Christ for a measured and reasoned argument in a very imperfect world.
2
It is these crazy activists that turn people off to their causes don’t fly, don’t do this ,don’t eat this , stop the preachiness. How about just letting people live their lives and trying to get them to modify their routines some so they don’t become annoyed tune everything. It gets old listening to this it’s like trying to go to dinner with vegan
1
Pave paradise - and put up a parking lot. Now we FLY to tree museums. And that they costs a lot more than a dollar and a half is meant to be a good thing!
3
Everything these days can be and will be shamed by someone.
Travel? You're hurting the environment. Don't travel? You're not broadening your mind.
Travel to poorer countries? You're exploiting their poverty. Travel to wealthy countries? You're not directing your money to places that need it.
Travel to different cultures? You're a culture vulture. Travel to similar cultures? You're xenophobic.
People are going to shame you no matter what you choose in life. Every course of action is morally loaded, and there's no way out of the intractable mess that is trying to make a decision that will satisfy everyone.
14
Mr. Christ presents an elitist, patronizing, self-serving, and flawed argument. Even if we buy that citizens in poorer countries will not protect their environment (a big "if") - then it's important to examine the reasons why said environment may be threatened. If economic need is the underlying cause, than direct assistance is a far more efficient than tourism. The noble, affluent Westerner could skip the $1,000 plane ticket to Rwanda, spend $400 on a road trip and send a $600 check to an African-based environmental non-profit.
The fact that only a tiny percentage of these "altruistic" travelers would make such a choice reveals the selfish and indulgent motives for what they are. For some of the affluent, viewing a stunning documentary of an environmental treasure is not enough. In the quest for the perfect selfie, they must stomp the land with the real and carbon footprint.
3
@Zabed M That environmental non-profit is looking forward to your $600 check.
1
@Zabed M
Sunny side up ever?
Show how much you really care by always flying first class
2
@Robert
Always do. I mean, who wants to sit next to someone who hates the fact that he’s soaring at 35,000 feet to an exciting new destination?
1
Thanks for a great column, @Costa Christ!
2
Pressuring the aviation industry will only occur if there is the likelihood of a meaningful reduction in air travel. The concern about the growing influence that air travel contributes to global warming is justified. The effect of air travel is 1.9 times the effect due to its CO2 emissions alone because of their operation high in the atmosphere. There should be 'flight shaming' to the destinations flocked by tourists that are not eco-tourism destinations. We may be able to develop electric planes and other innovations in the future but they are not here now.
4
Priceless, these articles are absolutely prices and continue to spell the death knell of the New York Times as a credible institution.
You wonder why American's don't trust the media anymore - read this.
4
Is this really a good argument against flight shame? I don't think most people are taking flights to get to eco-tourism destinations. Even assuming the author is right that eco-tourism helps prevent CO2 emissions, it still seems like a good idea to cut back on flights for any other reason.
5
We each have our own justifications for our footprints. Travelers, from eco-tourists to conference attendees, are no exception.
But, if we are to look at tourism (and its mirror twin, migration) it is having an adverse impact on the already failing water resources of the planet.
CO2 talk has come to obscure too many other, sometimes more serious, sometimes related, ecological problems. When it comes to long-haul flights there are a few:
Long-haul flights are in the ozone layer. Depleted ozone allows more energy in the UV range to reach the surface. Good for plants, but it’s warming.
Water vapor (not clouds – those con-trails evaporate) is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, and persists at high altitude.
And if one must look at CO2 share, the % figures do not reflect that CO2 released at altitude becomes part of the long-term global warming load, whereas forest-level CO2 boosts plant growth and is partly cleansed by the rains.
1
What about visiting family? Some of us immigrants have family on the other side of the world. For people who have all their loved ones close by it is easy to give up flying.
4
Oh, I am so mad at Greta Thunberg for destroying the rhinos, elephants and gorillas! Who knew that simply trying to make people more aware of the environmental footprint of air travel could lead to such a global catastrophe? And to think that it took a tourism expert to set us straight. Thank you, tourism industry! We salute you! Let's all save the planet by booking a flight to Africa today!
Not to channel Chandler Bing, but could this article BE any more self serving?
7
seems very obvious you are putting your paycheck above the health of the rest of us..You used to be a wildlife biologist but found a better way to pay the bills. It is a crises..We need all hands to do what thye can, including stop the unbleieivable bleeding of fossil fuels and environmental degradagion through air travel..Why, if you are sincere, don't you talk about all the business flights that could be done by video link - thousands of millions of flying hours gone from our carbon footprint, in a snap..
5
Flying is not inherently evil. What is absurd is the use of jets burning hydrocarbons and , so many of them, upon landing, dump thousands of pounds of unused fuels into the ir, wheerw is makes and exacerbates smog.
Once, people-well off or middle and lower class-took snips-big comfortable things that used hydrocarbons, too but at a minuscule rate in comparison to jets. humansd also used Zeppelin style ligheter then air craft which were very popular in Europe-I still have many airmail envolopes from the days of Zepp flight with the big stamp on of a zeppelein-many long before the Nazis came to power. Zeppelins were dangerous because of the inferior materil used then for holding the H2 gas and the outside of the gasbag was painted with what amounted to "rocket fuel", sadly, the engineers were unaware of the dangers.
Trains were the biggest and most efficeint mode of travel and still are. But it is probable we can fly people anywhere, if we slow down a few MPH, and stop loading the air with more
carbon exhaust. The US has enough He(helium) to man a fleet of LTA craft-but I suspect all zeppelins are now looked at like Nuclear power: too scary and thus to be avoided.
I remember (I was younger then) being astonished to read, as planes were grounded after 9/11, that about a million people then climbed on commercial airplanes in the US every day. More recently, I believe I read that it’s now about two million.
We’re a middle-income family and fly occasionally. Not at anything like that kind of proportional frequency.
3
@hagenhagen On average, every day more than 8 million people fly. In 2013 total passenger numbers were 3.1 billion—surpassing the 3 billion mark for the first time ever. That number is expected to grow to 3.3 billion in 2014 (equivalent to 44% of the world's population
Although hypothetical, this article highlights just one example of the law of unintended consequences, i.e. be careful what you wish for. You might not like the outcome.
1
With the rising temperatures and increasing drought caused by climate change the wildebeest migration is destined to end because they will be dead. Whether one feels shame or not for this or any of the millions of unfolding tragedies of climate change will have zero impact on the physics of the atmosphere. The prospects of keeping our planet livable for us humans and other slow-to-adapt species are not good and they are made worse by arguing about which source of greenhouse gas is the guilty party. The question we all face is what are we willing to give up to have a chance of keeping our planet livable?
5
At one time people lived within walking distance to their workplace, or took public transit where available. An unfortunate part of "progress" was as we moved our workplaces to far flung suburban office parks and factories, most people could not follow, and government looked the other way. So we end up driving for hours a day in our vehicles by ourselves. due to an almost total lack of affordable, reliable public transportation.
Funny thing is, when gas was north of four dollars per gallon, many people started moving to smaller, fuel efficient cars. Now automakers like GM are going to SUV's and pickup trucks only.
I could do without the huge hassle of flying, but until we have passenger sailing vessels and high speed rail, people are going to have to fly or drive long distances in fuel inefficient vehicles.
7
You've got to be kidding.
Back in the 70s and 80s, when I was young, I used to fly all the time. Flying was easy and cheap. But, silly me, I decided to become a teacher instead of a bond trader. I haven't flown anywhere in 16 years. Sure, I'd love to see the Serengeti while there are still some animals left. Maybe in my next life.
Travel is nice, but right now I think we all need to focus on ways to keep this planet livable for everyone: people, animals, and plants. Otherwise, we will not survive, let alone go on nice vacations.
7
Flying’s much cheaper now than it was in the 70’s & 80’s. Just saying
3
@Kristen Rigney air fares have dropped by 50% since 1978. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/02/how-airline-ticket-prices-fell-50-in-30-years-and-why-nobody-noticed/273506/
2
Do you want to have a lasting impact one global warming? I mean a positive impact that will lower greenhouse gas emissions? It’s really simple: dont have kids, not even one. A side benefit is that the population will eventually start to drop, easing the overwhelming existential pressure humans are inflicting on all life on earth.
7
@Mike , who will pay the taxes to support your Social Security and Medicare benefits?
4
@Mike : Bill McKibben had the right idea with his "just one" book. Everyone gets to have a biological offspring (if they want one). Population goes down dramatically. Still young people to work and carry on the species.
There's really no reason to have more than one. And no one should be pressured to become a parent.
5
@tanstaafl
That’s a problem that I would gladly face if only the human population were to decline.
1
"could very well" and "easy to imagine" are hardly imperative arguments on any topic. especially when the causal connections are as hypothetical as mr. christ presents them.
i quit flying two years ago. not only does it accelerate climate change, it's an all round personal humiliation, even in first class. a champagne cattle car with body scanning and recycled viral air.
as an international business consultant and married to a wanderlust wife, i've visited pretty much every place i want to, often multiple times, often with stayovers of a month or two to get to know some great foreign cities. i can't justify doing it anymore, especially considering all those who have never yet traveled abroad.
travel to learn about other cultures? uh, we have indigenous rural cultures at both ends of the political spectrum right here that need outreach much more than the africans.
sure, gorillas survive: they're reduced to life in a tourism zoo. oh boy, let's have an eco zoo for forests, too. that will surely "save" them.
google "crowds on everest" if you want a glimpse of what tourism is doing to the planet. mr. christ is concerned about his business. the rest of us are concerned about the planet and our future on it.
7
You know, we could actually fly less without losing our minds. We might actually regain some equilibrium and lose some stress.
8
Buy carbon offsets. For every flight.
Even better, the airlines should MANDATE the purchase of carbon offsets... they should be a part of every airline ticket cost, pro-rated to the amount of CO2 produced by each flight. They would add about $20 to a round trip ticket from NYC to LA. People who can afford to fly can pay that.
We as a society, as a species, are not going to stop flying anytime soon -- CO2 emissions from flying are set to double inside three decades. Flight shamers can talk from here to eternity with little effect on this trend. So offsets, serious, meaningful offsets, restoring forests, supporting alternative energies, changing infrastructure, are perhaps the only realistic way to go.
To get started, this NYT article worked well for me:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/24/climate/nyt-climate-newsletter-carbon-offsets.html
4
@Malcolm Offsets are definitely not a perfect solution by any means, but it is SOMETHING. I traveled to South America this summer and bought offsets many times what I was told I needed to in order to neutralize my footprint. I spent approx $1,000 on a variety of programs (of course, I hope my money actually went where it should). I know that doesn't actually negate the effects of my flying. But it's the very least I could have done. And in general I try to keep my flying to summertime only, and nonstop flights if at all possible. Plus -- back VERY, VERY light. And never fly business or first class.
Those of us who can't or won't give up flying COMPLETELY can at least work to be a little better at it.
3
@Malcolm , Carbon offsets are fake. (Of course they are fake!) To get started, read this ProPublica article:
https://features.propublica.org/brazil-carbon-offsets/inconvenient-truth-carbon-credits-dont-work-deforestation-redd-acre-cambodia/
2
This is so massively dumb I can't even take it.
9
In the mid-1990's when I was in my 20s, I travelled around the world with a backpack. It was low budget. I took buses and trains and hitchhiked. I camped and stayed in hostels. I did, however, take planes from country to country. I had a round the world ticket.
What I was most amazed at was snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef and seeing the amazing animals on the Masai Mara in Kenya. The Taj Mahal was pretty extraordinary too as were the Annapurna Mountains. And meeting so many wonderful Kiwis while hitchhiking through New Zealand.
What I was most dismayed at was the amount of litter and plastic everywhere I went especially in developing nations. And this was 25 years ago. It has only gotten worse.
If tourism is the goose that lays the golden egg it is also the one that fouls its own nest.
My travelling days are over. I cherish my memories. I weep that the Barrier Reef is dying and so many animals are going extinct and Delhi is filled with smog.
2
Flying informs my own perspective on the world. I always ask for a window seat.
1
Thoughtful piece! Maybe folks who can afford it should keep flying but purchase carbon offsets to mitigate the impact of their flights. They could also consider going vegetarian or vegan.
2
Even if aviation is only 2.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, it is a highly disproportionate share of the _non-essential_ greenhouse gas emissions, since most greenhouse gas emissions are for things like fertilizer production, cement production, essential travel, and essential electrical generation.
Since we don't yet have an alternative to the Haber process, it's just to point out that yeah, air travel is environmentally terrible.
Taken in isolation, you might be able to argue that natural lands would be converted into ranchlands if they didn't get tourists, but a real environmentalist wouldn't see plane travel in isolation and would also reduce or give up meat. (I have.)
I also don't think that foreign travel, the way most Americans do it, is a meaningful connection anyway. If you travel with a huge group and only see the top-tier tourist destinations you aren't part of the culture, at all. If you travel independently, but you can't speak a word of the native language and you don't talk to anyone outside of the tourism industry, that isn't a meaningful connection either. I don't see anything morally redeeming about vacations to all-inclusive resorts anyway.
Please. Can we just stop glorifying it and acting like travel is anything other than a high-cost hobby and that travelers aren't better than people who spend their free time and money doing other things?
10
The title is utterly misleading. The focus is on whether or not flying to eco-tourist preserves is "worth it" to preserve said preserves. This type of flying represents a trivial fraction of today's air travel -- but the title is "What if ALL that flying is good for the planet?"
10
I am expressing my opinion by simply removing the middle 962 words from Mr. Christ’s opinion piece:
“A growing movement known as “flight shame” and popularized by well-meaning climate activists is gaining momentum around the world…. Pressuring the aviation industry and politicians to prioritize scientific research and funding needed to fast-track green technology innovation will help deliver a sustainable travel future for people and the planet.”
124
@Rich Grant With great respect, Sir, have you any idea how far the efficiency of jet engines has already been improved over the past 30 years? ..Or that the entire internal airline in France was put out of business by developing and building the high-speed train network in that country?
In 30 years, current aero-engine technology already enables more than twice the passengers/payload to be carried for the same energy-consumption; and improving materials technology (e.g. much lighter carbon-fibre structures, and specialist metals in engines) is evolving still further. Ticket pricing would have a far bigger short-term effect: it's only because of the increased aircraft efficiency that tourists air-tickets can be offered at the sometimes-ludicrously-low prices; and the tourism business-model of slim-margin mass travel does more harm than the high-margin models that also levy conservation-support funding locally..
..And as for the high-speed train idea: having recently travelled at a 'breakneck' maximum 80mph (often less) for 1,000mi in the US, in slightly-ropey diesel-powered rolling-stock, it was difficult to recall the 2.5-times-faster cruise speeds of the European equivalent as a practical alternative to air-travel. In the US, the airlines' lobbying operations do seem to have a lot to answer for - to say nothing of trucking-vs-rail-freight!
As Mr Christ suggests, maybe some longer-term 'transport-thinking-in-the-round' would be more environmentally-responsible?
15
@Paratus
It's not just the greenhouse gases they produce, but where they put them, in the stratosphere.
5
Reducing pollution for its own sake is a good idea, but that won't touch global warming, which is supported by massive demands for development and even by a desire for open sea lanes in the Arctic and resources under ice caps. These demands will more than swamp all attempts at conservation. We need to face the challenge of geo-engineering.
3
Oh, Please.
So, lemme see . . . then I guess plague is good for the planet, because it will boost anti-plague medication production, employ out of work medical workers, acquaint burial experts with new people and, over time, reduce the carbon footprint of the human population.
Hmm. That aside, air travel is probably the most polluting of all forms of travel, dumping mega tons of pollutants into the higher reaches of the atmosphere were it ca do the most harm.
Yep excellent article, it all fits together, just like schlock work.
8
@joe
"air travel is probably the most polluting of all forms of travel"
So you are saying that those 300 people in that plane would pollute less if they made that 2000 mile trip by cars, 150 of them?
Travelers use planes like buses now, due to the heavy subsidization of the air industry in the US. And then they complain that it's not cheap enough. We are all paying for their travel through our taxes.
I really don't know what a clear day is anymore. Contrail after contrail after contrail merges in the morning's clear blue sky and what you get is a murky, milky kind of ceiling, holding the heat in.
Remember those photos of the skies after 9/11, after the flight ban? That was such a dreadful time, but I remember feeling reassured that our skies could really return to their beautiful true blue.
2
@rachel b portland : I, too, remember the clear blue skies right after 9/11. And the quiet. So much sadness, too. But the contrail-free skies and the quiet of no planes was definitely a balm for the soul during a trying time.
2
the better question to answer is, "can planes fly through the plumes of flames engulfing the planet in 30 years?"
3
I thought mass transit was a good thing.
1
@dechip only rail, the most expensive and obsolete form of mass transit, is good.
1
@Will Somehow Europe still uses rail as part of an effective transportation system, from light rail in cities to high speed trains flying from city to city faster than actual planes. Just because we killed or at least maimed Amtrak doesn't mean trains need to be obsolete or even expensive (look at train ticket prices in Europe too). Outside of the NE corridor, there are too FEW trains to make train travel practical and prices would be lower with more users.
Also there is still a LOT of rail cargo ..
3
@Innovator They sacrifice a ton of mobility for that choice.
Travel has far more benefits to the earth - which for this purpose I define as the people who live on it - than benefits to local communities. The more people experience other cultures and get to know the people who live them, the less conflict and bigotry there will be. It also keeps families in contact, and provides educational opportunities. To actually believe that people shouldn't travel great distances is contrary to human nature. Air travel is the most efficient way to do that in a world that is ever more conscious of how their time is used - everybody's "busy." But more people than ever are traveling
Now we have "flight shaming," a bite sized social media generated label, and we love to mindlessly throw around labels and accusations. It is absurd. As the writer points out, this faux outrage distracts from the biggest threat to the climate like deforestation. But, like the poor, carbon will always be with us. The key is to diversify energy sources so the carbon that is left is used where it is needed most. For the time being, that includes aviation.
Often lost in the climate conversation is the matter of consumption. We are buying ever more stuff. Stuff requires huge amounts of energy to produce and ship and materials processing. Waste is also huge. But people don't want to give up their new iPhone or SUV. We need to find ways to fit the better aspects of humanity into a more sustainable system, not shut it down.
4
@Stevenz : I feel pretty confident that the majority of people complaining about flying are *also* opposed to SUVs and wanton consumerism.
2
I'm always surprised to hear the argument that we need long-distance travel to have meaningful connections with people from other cultures.
There is so much more opportunity for meaningful contact with people of other cultures right here in the U.S.
Most cities have substantial immigrant populations. You can patronize their restaurants and stores, attend their festivals. Heck, you can even make long-term friendships with people.
Most cities also have ways you can volunteer to teach ESL and U.S. citizenship classes to immigrants. It's a great way to make a deeper connection with someone from another culture.
You can also take language classes, cooking classes, study history and geography, read literature, watch foreign films and documentaries to deepen your understanding of other cultures.
So many low-impact ways to really learn about other people.
128
@Rose That sounds way more fun than seeing the Eiffel Tower
15
@Rose I think you missed the point. The article is about exposure to natural habitats and ecological tourism, not exposure to people from other cultures. And, meeting people from other cultures in the US is not all the same as exposure to those cultures where they exist.
77
@Rose
Your low-impact contact, as worthy as it is here in the United States, will do nothing to help the economies of low-income nations around the world, which otherwise depend on tourist dollars to sustain themselves.
43
This is splitting hairs, but it's something that's always bothered me and is a representation of the lack of scientific literacy, even in journalism: It's "CO2", not "C02"; as in, "O" for oxide, not a zero. (Although we should be aiming for net-zero CO2.) Just my two cents...
5
Yeah, I noticed that too. Annoying.
No matter how much shame people place on the industry, flying isn't going away. Airlines want to be as efficient and consume as little fuel as possible. As fuel consumption decreases, profits and reinvestment opportunities increase. I appreciate the thoughts brought in this opinion as there is a way for environmentalists and the travel industry to work together to achieve common goals. It has to start, however, with knocking-off the finger pointing and "flight shaming".
113
@Cory - sure, everyone is in favor of making airplanes more efficient, so that's a win-win situation. But (assuming airplanes continue to run on fossil fuels) it's not enough.
Voluntarily reducing air travel (no one is suggesting eliminating or banning it) is one of the single largest things that an individual in a developed country can do to reduce their carbon footprint. For example, I have a family member who flies for work and for vacation roughly 12 times per year. If he could cut that in half (and he easily could), those 6 avoided trips would save 10 tons of CO2... more than half of the average American's annual emissions.
Almost every other single action that we take (recycling, composting, even walking/biking instead of driving for short trips) is a drop in the bucket compared to flying. I hope our culture can quickly change so that we regard flying as something as truly special and important, instead of something that we do at any time for any reason.
22
@Cory How about making serious commitments to mass travel and infrastructure?
4
@lee4713 You mean mass travel from NY to LA?
2
One thing we gotta look out for is to not cut back the carbon dioxide emissions too quick or we may get a lot of plants dying off. Our green growing friends over the past fifty years have gotten so used to recognizing these high levels of CO2 as 'normal' that any drastic declines could be every bit as catastrophic as the melting ice caps etc. We might end up with spring not starting till the end of May and autumn beginning in late July. Not to mention the subsequent decline in oxygen resulting from these truncated seasonal photosynthesis cycles.
I don't worry so much about the melting ice... if it's warm enough to sustain dangerous polar melts, then it's even warmer in between the tropics. Higher temperature in the tropics means more ocean evaporation, ergo more clouds. Low flying cumulus clouds reflect sunlight and cool the earth underneath. With that going on and everyone switching to electric cars, things shouldn't be a problem. Except for the all the new earth-cooling cloudy days that zaps the solar industry right in the.... well, you know where.
Go nuclear!
This argument doesn't make flying ok.
Even if tourism could help conservation efforts in some areas of the world, the millions of miles flown back and forth to New York, Paris, Barcelona and other NON eco-tourism destinations, are impossible to justify other than tourism is good for the world economy.
But justifying the destruction of our environment for financial reasons is what brought us where we are today. If that's the only reason for flying (at least for those who prefer London to the Serengeti) then we should fly far less.
224
Great points in this piece, that really make sense. Perhaps the idea is to cut back on unnecessary personal and business travel to make a dent in airliner CO2 emissions. Instead of flying somewhere domestically for a short vacation, how about doing that within driving distance? And corporations could go a long way to reducing travel. I worked at Microsoft through two recessions (2000 and 2008), and generous travel budgets were the first things cut at the first signs of trouble (despite the fact MSFT was always sitting on a ton of cash). The reduced travel did not damage our ability to do business with partners, we used other means of connecting instead. Today, I see a lot of friends routinely hopping planes for business, even if they don't really need to be there in person. It's almost an after thought. Companies could pledge to reduce their overall CO2 footprint by reigning in flights, without a material impact on their business.
103
@JS : I love your point about companies getting on board with dramatically curtailing required employee travel! Talk about increasing the triple bottom line. It's good for the environment, it's good for company finances (think of all the money saved), and it's good for employees. Because really, who relishes corporate travel? It's exhausting, it leads to extremely long work days, and it separates workers from their families if overnights are involved.
I think this is a movement everyone could get behind.
19
@JS Reasonable suggestions except that they don't cohere with known facts. On a passenger mile basis, flying to grandmother's house and driving to grandmother's house have about the same carbon footprint. Taking a train or bus would be better. Although videoconferencing technology has the potential for reproducing the social conditions that make face-to-face meetings worth flying to, the free software most groups use doesn't come near doing that. Installing high-end conferencing technology is a capital cost, while companies seem to prefer dribbling out equal or greater amounts of money as operating expenses.
6
Very true. And please add in academic conferences, too, which are unconscionable junkets pandering to the vanity and amorality of their attendees and could be accomplished virtually.
5
Thank you for this perspective, but maybe change the headline to "What is SOME Flying Is Good for (PARTS OF) the Planet?"
Your overall argument makes a lot of sense to me, as long as our air journeys are for purposes that foster more connection to and protection of the natural world. You are correct -- many African game parks (for example) would not continue to be viable without tourists flying to Africa to visit them. This may be a self-serving logic (as in, I want an excuse to go there) but it is nonetheless also a fact. The business of game parks is what sustains the game parks, not the earnest desires of those who watch the videos at home on PBS.
Where your argument breaks down for me is that most air travel is not for these purposes. So maybe, instead of looking to ban air travel (would that ever happen?) we should examine the purposes and effects of our air travel much more carefully than we do right now. And then act accordingly. Support ecologically aligned organizations, businesses and resorts on your trip. When you come home, continue to help with the ecological efforts you have encountered, be it supporting a national park or getting involved with a wildlife conservation group or passionately spreading the word on what you have experienced. And fly as little as possible for objectives other than these.
1
It does seem a lot of these efforts harm the poor and disenfranchised more than anyone, or would so if implemented.
18
What really seems to be harming the poor and disenfranchised is climate change, not cutting back on air travel.
And while there is this tiny niche eco-travel experience the author is focusing on, most travel is to places that are being destroyed by travel (think Venice, Prague, etc.). In most tourist destinations, the poor, the working class, and even the middle class are being displaced for luxury hotels and airbnbs.
14
This is ridiculous. Flying is a "small" part of the problem. But is is a HUGE part of the carbon footprint of the global 1% and the the western 10%, and it is also one of the easiest places to cut back. Thirty years ago Americans who went to Europe stayed for weeks; now some fly over for a weekend. It is good to see the world, but seeing it is not usually preserving it. Many cities, including Venice and Barcelona, are hardly for residents anymore, while in others, such as Dublin and Paris homelessness is much worse than it would be without Airbnb, not to mention the pressure to build more hotel rooms.
155
@kate - totally agree. And this article was literally written by the founder of a travel company. I don't suppose he could have any skin in the game, could he? Hmmm....
23
@kate Exactly - took the words right out of my mouth - to promote flying as "green" in today's context is sick. So easy to cut down on flying and would have a huge global impact if we all did it.
6
The author pays lip service to the climate crisis but softpedals its urgency. We do NOT "have the tools today to build a renewable energy future" -- not in time. Pressuring the aviation industry, design electric planes etc. - we needed that 25 years ago. There will be no travel industry -- sustainable or otherwise -- to tweak in 10 years.
4
What a cynical failure of imagination. Sustainable development to this author means a world with a division between the rich and the poor so stark, so insurmountable, so permanent, that the best developing countries can hope for is for some of the West's wealth to trickle down while we pass through to gawk at the habitats our lifestyles are eroding. It's either subjugation or starvation. The idea that the West might sacrifice a bit of our privilege to help set poor countries on a path that is both sustainable and independent is so far-fetched that it fails to warrant a mention even as an aspiration.
10
@Peter Cernauskas
Your comment is my vote for the top-of-the-page NYT pick. This is really nothing more than a shameless advert for Mr. Christ's "Beyond Green Travel".
"Beyond Green" does not equal "Better than Green" !
And while the ever-growing aviation industry may not be a yuge contributor to the CO2 emission count (yet), I have read sources which place it quite a bit higher than the 2.5% the author states. Further, that CO2 is mainly going directly into the atmosphere at 36,000 feet, where its presence has more immediate impact than terrestrially emitted CO2. Not to mention the water vapor emitted at that level. These are important factor and should be part of the conversation.
3
"There is also a strong argument to be made that a key reason the mountain gorilla is not yet extinct is because tourists are willing to fly to Africa and pay handsomely for the chance to see one in the wild, proving to governments and local communities the importance of protecting them."
So gorillas are not worth protecting other than for the benefit of wealthy tourists?
4
@Camille That is a complete misinterpretation of the article. The fact is, whether we like it or not, nothing was protecting those gorillas until there was an economic incentive to do so.
The write is a conservationist and would obviously want to see these species protected for their own sake.
3
@Camille
The goal is what's important, not the motivation.
2
I am positive that anyone can make an argument for doing whatever they want to do, that if you just look at all the factors that people haven't thought about then you'd understand that I'm one with the universe. My gosh, my driving an SUV 30k miles a year from my manse in westport to Manhattan --- is actually good for the planet. See, if you take the square root of the distance from here to the sun, divide that by the cosmic aspects of being able to drive our lovely parkways in CT and NY and all the jobs the SUVs, the tire factories, the refineries, etc. create, why, just that alone makes up for whatever CO2 my little guzzling honey drinks.
While I personally think climate change is politicized junk science, hey that's just me. Meanwhile, all the people I know who are huge alarmists also have huge carbon footprints. They just haven't figured out how to justify what they do yet.
3
I'd be happy if all those who lecture us about reducing our carbon footprints would simply fly coach, instead of taking private jets to "sustainability" conferences.
2
It seems like a distinction can be made between travel that supports environmental goals and travel that is largely pointless. Spending dollars at a national park in Africa is one thing. Attending a face to face meeting with business colleagues that could just as easily been done online is something else.
5
I've already been shamed away from my next eco-tourism flight -- by my bank account!
I'm curious as to how automobile-shaming is going to shake out. Will it be propelled by shame or unfold like a cooperative 12-step, one with more bike paths, better bus systems; and even more car pools, if we're not too ashamed.
2
No one other than a few zealots is going to curtail their driving, flying, eating or any of the other assorted items that affect the climate. Those calling for extreme changes will never see the masses participate when they find out that they have to give up everything they like doing to "save the environment". As soon as someone says no more Starbucks you'll lose 1/2 the population.
7
What we need to do is educate everyone about climate change and persuade them that it is a real and immediate threat. One way to do that is to subject every activity -- and I literally mean every one -- to scrutiny whether it is worth the damage it causes to the environment. Anything less and we are sending the message that climate change is not a real and immediate threat, that we have time to gradually work on the solutions and only need to tackle the "big" offenders now.
Even if air travel is among the smaller contributors, it is the camel's nose under the tent. If air travel is ok, even good according to some distorted reasoning, then what is so bad about me driving a gas guzzler if I only make a few short trips a week compared to those who commute long distances. And why do I need to invest in solar power when the manufacturing facilities and towering office buildings in my area use so much electricity?
I am a child of the 60s and still subscribe to the motto: Think globally, act locally. It all adds up, but more than that, it establishes the state of mind we need to tackle this existential problem of climate change.
8
Then sell the trips to these places as carbon-offset trips. That will be good PR, assuage flygskam guilt, and highlight the fact that trips to other places (non-essential travel) are not good for the planet.
1
The argument seems to be that the developing world will destroy itself unless we, the rich enlightened westerners, go there to save it by imposing our will. Where have I heard that before?
10
@Samuel Russell : Exactly. White savior, anyone?
2
Conclusions do not follow the premise. A good example of non-quantitative wishful thinking pretending to be analysis. Even if we thought ecotourism involving air travel was vastly larger than it is, or even might be, the conclusion that this will somehow prevent destruction of these sites can’t possibly be connected, other than in the most vague, unsubstantiated ways.
We’re still going to strip mine, clear for planting, exhaust aquifers, exterminate thousands of species, regardless. It’s what we do.
7
There are reasons to fly and travel less, other than fuel emissions. Airplane flights are unpleasant, and getting x-rayed at the airport is unhealthy. I have no wish to fly to a destination that is currently mobbed by tourists. If you’ve seen the film “The Beach,” for example, you saw a beautiful remote beach in Thailand that is today swarming with tourists and sustaining damage to its coral reefs from boats dropping anchor. Iceland and the Isle of Skye have apparently also been loved to death by mobs of tourists. Let’s not even talk about Venice or other cities where cruise ships stop. I have a friend who visited the Galapagos Islands and kept thinking as she tried to carefully walk around bird nests, “I shouldn’t be here.” With current traveling populations, too much travel is harmful to everything.
16
Our environmental problems have a way of fixing themselves. Think of how the catalytic converter wiped out most of our urban smog.
In the same vein: solar power is now cheaper than coal and electric cars can go 300 miles on a charge making it highly likely Climate Change will also fix itself with no adverse impact on living standards.
There seems to be a great number of people who want to use this climate crisis as an excuse for social engineering, and they should be ignored.
4
@Will A hopelessly complacent perspective.
Catalytic converters were mandated. Electric vehicles are not.
Catalytic converters did not have the might of the Fossil Fuel industry opposing them.
Might I suggest you read NASA's pages on the subject? We are far beyond glib, 'oh it'll all be fine' comments.
https://climate.nasa.gov/
But I do agree that the problem will fix itself - sadly it will take 95% of humanity dying and a return to the dark ages for 10,000 years for that fix to apply.
10
@Will Great post and spot on correct. Provided that government does not get in the way with unwarranted mandates, the days of coal and then gas as fuel sources are numbered. The technology of renewables and electrically powered land vehicles is improving at a remarkable rate.
1
@Edward We'll be fine. Man can adapt to any problem thrown his way and will continue to do so. Throwing around exaggerated numbers like 95% of humanity dying does not add to need to make adjustments.
2
I'd like to read more about the potential of air travel to become green. Building, maintaining and repairing millions of miles of roads, highways and railroads, and the vehicles driving on them, can't be exactly green. If nothing else, it consumes huge areas of land that could be renaturated instead.
An airplane needs only air and two airports. I'm fairly sure it must be possible to make air travel a much more environmentally friendly form of travel than the car or even a train.
6
@GS Unfortunately, air transport is necessarily much more fuel expensive than land travel since you are fighting gravity the entire time. Land travel does not have this energy cost. The only impact of gravity on land travel is to cause rolling resistance of your tires.
2
@Rob-Chemist Sure, if you just consider the direct fuel consumption of the vehicle. But with all those indirect costs of land travel I'd need more evidence to believe that making air travel environmentelly viable is technically impossible. I've not heard that anyone has even tried to do research in that direction.
In other news today, a breakthrough in solar power was announced that enables the high temperatures needed for cement-making, which accounts for three times more CO2 than air travel (7%).
It's not too difficult to see that similar technology might be employed someday to power air travel either directly or indirectly.
Maybe it would make more sense to funnel the energy being used for things like flight-shaming into more productive things like problem-solving, as this news suggests.
17
@Tom -- False choice. Since when are we incapable of doing both?
And I am not into the magical thinking that premises your argument: "It's not too difficult to see that similar technology might be employed someday to power air travel either directly or indirectly." Some day we may be able to close our eyes, tap together our heels, and return to Kansas, Dorothy.
3
@Tom And Ford unveiled a new electric powered SUV that can go 300 miles on a charge. More problem solving going on
1
Driving cars is far more damaging to the environment and the quality of urban life than air flight. How about car shaming, not flight shaming? Get out of your car and start walking, bicycling and using public transit.
9
@Mitch People look at cars only in terms of fuel burned.
But, tires are a huge problem, both in being manufactured and in disposal, not to mention all the residue left on roads that washes into the ground water.
Brake dust is an environmental problem both in air quality and runoff. There is anti-freeze, brake fluid, oil, transmission fluid, washer fluid, and a whole are lot of other consumables that are used up through the life of the car. There there are the myriad of non-recyclables that need to be disposed off when the car is eventually junked.
1
@Mitch : How about both? Walk, bike, use public transit, and significantly curtail flying.
This does not have to be an either/or choice.
4
@Mitch Humorously, while I completely agree with you regarding biking and walking rather than driving, they both can require the consumption of more energy than driving! A major energy user is agriculture to produce food. If one considers the energy needed to produce the food a biker needs and assuming they eat a typical American diet, a biker gets the equivalent of around 75 mpg. A walker gets around 30 mpg energy equivalent. If you eat a meat heavy diet, your mpg equivalent as a biker/walker will be lower and if you eat a plant heavy diet, it will be higher.
1
Thank you for this informative article.
It makes me feel better about flying.
4
I never thought about it that way, interesting article. Greener planes and less unnecessary flying that isn't tourism til we get there.
4
Something we don't think about when discussing any form of transport, is that its effect on the environment goes far beyond what the engine burns.
Cars for example: what is the total carbon and pollution footprint when you factor in: tires? How many millions of those are being produced worn out and then disposed of? Brakes? (brake dust is a major runoff and air quality issue).
Brake fluid, antifreeze, plastics etc etc etc...none of these things will go away even if suddenly everything is electric.
These or similar materials are of course used in aviation as well.
What I would like to know is what is the total per-capita impact for each form of transportation, factoring in fuel, parts, manufacturing and infrastructure? How much extra heat is reflected by a new highway vs a large airport? How much energy went into producing each?
What if all tarmac parking lots were eliminated for example and replaced with gravel? We cannot look at transport as though it is only about fuel, important as that is.
3
Our use of resources has to be balanced with our needs as species. I have no doubt that travel to far away places helps us not only to appreciate our planet but also other people and culture. As we become more mobile and forge friendships with people different from ourselves, we learn to see all human beings as our family.
It's time to encourage air travel for this reason and work to eliminate CO2 from less important sources.
2
I think this kind of article is needed, I am not Republican (and therefore not a fossil fuel today, fossil fuel tomorrow, fossil fuel forever/climate denial dogmatic), but we need to approach climate change looking at the whole picture, rather than either deciding it is an all or nothing ban on fossil fuels or an all or nothing trying to keep them going. If aircraft are responsible for 2.5% of carbon emissions, then they are a small player, even if we grounded every plane flying it wouldn't reduce CO2 all that much. The big emitters of carbon are power plants (especially coal fired ones), transportation outside aircraft (you know, trucks and cars and to a certain extent trains), and a big one is producing meat, between the methane the animals emit, the fuel it takes to grow the feed they eat and transport them, and the net loss of forest thanks to cutting down forests to graze animals, they are huge.
That doesn't mean I don't think people should be aware of flight and try to reduce flying, but for example, the idea that overnight shipping is the problem is ludicrous, if packages aren't flown, you think they are using sailing ships? Packages that aren't flown are shipped by truck, and they produce a lot of carbon emissions, I would bet on a package per package basis the 3 or 4 days it takes a truck produces more carbon than a plane flying in a couple of hours does.
Aircraft also could be helping climate change, supposedly the water vapor they put out cools the air....
3
Ecotourism air travel: GOOD.
Now what about the remaining 98% of air travel?
8
I'm stunned at all the "haters' of air travel. Unquestionably the climate crisis is just that, but to summarily dismiss the author's ideas out of hand is a bit dogmatic itself.
Here in the comment section I've read about the greedy capitalist manifesto (my words). If his numbers are right, where are the people involved in tourism going to work when air travel is banned?
I've been to the places he is describing. I believe the odds of the ecosystems succumbing to this fate is rather high even if tourism flourishes. Without tourism and the "status Quo" NGOS, this degradation is assured.
And what about the educative effects of tourism and travel? The more one is exposed to disparate lands and cultures, presumably the more-open minded they become, and I'm not talking about the Richie Richs of the world. Real people like myself are open-minded, liberal, environmentally active and like to travel.
Please don't make it seem like I'm "bad" because I want to fly somewhere. I didn't own or drive a car for 17 years, so now if I want to go on holiday I should just drive? I don't eat meat, but I should encourage the cattle industry by stopping by the freeway-side McDonald's and enrich them and the meat industry instead?
I'm with the camp that says there are far bigger fish to fry before we start bashing the once a year flyer. Go catch some of those fish first please.
21
@smm : You do realize that many people who fly are flying a LOT more than once a year, right? I know many people who fly 6--10 times/year. For leisure.
Also, I didn't read anyone saying you should eat meat at McDonalds.
As for work, there is so much work that needs to be done on this planet. If tourism-related work falls, we need to think about how to support people in doing the meaningful work that actually needs to be done -- small-scale, carbon-sequestering farming; planting trees; building low-carbon infrastructure (mass transit, location-efficient housing, renewable energy); training doctors and other healthcare providers (needed both here at home and desperately needed in many places abroad; etc.
5
@smm: Whatever we do, we need to develop the technology to do it renewably, with a minimal harm envelope in Hilbert Space.
1
Most of the fuel use and emissions occurs during takeoff. Environmentalists should focus on eliminating flights under 500 kilometres (300 miles, e.g. Los Angeles to San Francisco) by investing in electric-powered high-speed rail. On long flights such as U.S. to Africa, the impacts per-passenger and per-kilometre are relatively low.
The problem with electric aircraft is that they have to carry the weight of the batteries throughout the flight and landing. The weight of conventional aircraft decreases continually as fuel is consumed while airborne.
I try to minimize my air travel and book direct flights whenever possible, continuing to final destination by rail, bus, public transit, and/or bike. Visiting Milwaukee recently, for example, I took direct flights into and out of Chicago O'Hare, connecting to Milwaukee by transit and Amtrak.
9
@Robert Bottom: Modern jets have glide ratios like sailplanes. It can take them over 200 miles to lose altitude without spoilers.
1
Everyone pointing fingers at one another in the USA. Meanwhile in Europe, China, Japan and other countries excellent mass transportation systems have been in place for decades. The USA never had a master livable transportation design. It was built haphazardly individually state by state and then dominated by the oil and gas industries. So here we are in the 21st Century, a "first world" nation held hostage by private polluting combustion engine vehicles with virtually no other urban or rural transportation options other than planes, which is not only polluting but also hobbling the economy.
18
From Yale:
"Flying, particularly on long-haul flights, is so highly emitting that it dwarfs everything else on an individual carbon budget. Many climate groups have calculated that in a sustainable world each person would have a carbon allowance of two to four tons of carbon emissions annually. Any single long-haul flight nearly 'instantly uses that up,' said Christian Jardine, a senior researcher at the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University."
7
@Polaris At last, some sanity and facts in a response.
Ok Boomer, writ large from many others.
@Polaris having kids dwarfs it all.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/12/want-to-fight-climate-change-have-fewer-children
I get so tired of the virtue signaling in these comments sections. It is especially bad when there is an article on flying. Curtailing flying will do nothing to save the planet. Neither will using canvas bags at the supermarket instead of plastic or rinsing your cans before putting them in the recycling bin, the contents of which are rarely ever recycled. What about the pollution generated by recycling? You think it’s some sort of magically clean process?
Our way of life has to completely change. Use of fossil fuels has to stop immediately. Of course this will never happen with 7 billion people on earth all wanting air conditioning and smart phones. I know I definitely don’t want to change. What about all the toxic pollution generated by mining for the rare earth metals used in our smart phones and computers? Are you ready to give up the internet? I didn’t think so. So spare me the hysterics.
6
@N : I agree with you that our way of life has to completely change. So why knock something that is a start to that: giving up recreational flying.
And I totally agree with you on the toxicity of mining of metals for smartphones. Unfortunately, the phone companies are doing away with their 3G signals, so consumers are forced to upgrade to 4G phones, leaving so many perfectly good 3G devices to go to waste.
Add to that landlines that are double to triple the cost of a cell phone, the almost complete disappearance of pay phones, etc. The cell phone companies have us stuck between a rock and a hard place. That said, it turns out there's a fair number of used 4G phones on the market (see eBay and the like), so there's no reason to buy new. And no one obligates you to use a costly data plan.
2
@N
Wait until century end - 11 billion people.
I will never give up air travel. Sorry. Also I really don’t think anything we do would matter. The climate shift has already started. We should have nipped this in the bud in the 1970s when global warming started to emerge as a problem.
It’s all too little too late. The only way for any mitigation is for the entire world to stop burning fossil fuels right this second. I don’t think that’s very likely. Besides that the earth will continue to warm with or without humans.
Keep in mind that in 500 million years the earth will no longer be able to support life because of the increased intensity of the sun. Not too mention the earth will eventually engulf the earth once it becomes a red giant. We are but an insignificant blip. Book that trip!
1
This title of this article misrepresents the content. The argument is that green tourism is good for the planet, because it provides an economic reason for countries to preserve life. It does not suggest that flying to a beach vacation of Disneyland is good for the Earth.
8
@Alex
Yeah, the title should be "what if a small fraction of flying is good for the planet".
I love to travel, I love the environment, I think figuring out the ways to make air travel (travel in general) greener is good, I think flight shaming at airports is too much, I think calling celebrities out on social media about flying gets an eyeroll from me but also a "they can handle it", I think we do need to be pragmatic about real world cause & effect but we also can't say "if we stop committing THIS evil we're opening the door for a DIFFERENT evil." We need to be disciplined to take multiple lines of attack where environmentalism is involved. We can't ALLOW overdevelopment to claim all of our natural areas, and we can't let the only reason one form of economic exploitation of a region isn't happening be a different kind of economic exploitation. It can't only be about our short term economic gains.
1
Love this article! I was recently cornered by a flight-shaming activist at a party, and it was unhelpful to me and to the planet. It did, however, do me the service of making me realize how unpersuasive we liberals must sometimes sound to conservatives.
7
sounds to me a bit like the German auto industry´s arguments against e-cars. Flying is subsidized by non taxation of fuels, direct subsidies to airports, noise abatement rules that are a joke compared to any other industry and the like. Cut this and you may get it to a more sustainable level. And there will still be more than enough tourists in the Serengeti.
3
@Andras Of course jet fuel isn't taxed. There are no plane highways that need to be maintained.
2
@Will : But the airports are often subsidizes by the government, as well as transit to and from the airport, air travel control, security, etc.
Also, a tax on jet fuel would be a way to build in the cost of carbon-related destruction that's happening as a result of climate change.
1
@Will jet fuel is most certainly taxed. Federal Taxes
For noncommercial operations, the federal excise tax is 19.4¢ per gallon on aviation gasoline and 21.9¢ per gallon on jet fuel. For commercial operations, the federal excise tax rate for jet fuel is 4.4¢ per gallon.
1
In a time of climate crisis, we can sharply reduce tourism flying and still preserve the joys we seek in adventurous travel and cross-cultural connection.
4
And what do tourists do when they get to their destination? Surely many drive, and perform other high-impact behaviors (another towel, Mr. C)?
Nice that you get an overseas vacation this year. Guess the elite get to do that... I'll drive my family 2 hours to Wisconsin Dells for a weekend, and punch myself in the head for the resulting carbon footprint. Wish I was as sustainable as you!
10
@Gideon Strazewski
And we'll stay home in our fast-warming town in the middle of Alaska (ridiculous weather all across the state) and tend to our commitments. This article is just so, well self-righteous (as are many of the comments). Air travel is not only destructive, it as a fast-growing industry. We are looking at today's air travel impact on the environment, where are the projections as to what that impact will be if growth rates continue or accelerate ?
We do a lot of 'couch traveling' in the winter, thanks to the excellent and enjoyable travel shows which, like football game broadcasts, take you many places you'll never get to as a tourist. Very affordable and no need to arrange a cat-sitter or get vaccinations against exotic diseases !
We need to nip the environmental opposition to flying before the flight cancel culture completely overtakes our aviation system.
4
@Jay Orchard
....there is NO, definitely NO danger of "flight cancel culture" (which isn't even a thing) creating more than a blip on the international aviation industry.
Every airline, municipality with an airport, and air traveler should be doing more to make flight greener.
3
@AP
I guess you had to be there. That was intended as a pun. Get it?
1
Apparently most NY Times readers are addicted to flying - based on the comments I am reading.
How about this - you are allowed air travel - but only if you have never had any children.
Children are the greatest source of greenhouse gas emissions. All the food they will consume and trash they will create and miles they will spend flying somewhere just to take a selfie. If you have children - well that is your lifetime of discretionary carbon right there...
International travel is, by its very nature, selfish. Why do you have to experience something? Is it not enough just to know that Africa exists?
We can preserve the species and ecosystems mentioned by simply paying people in Africa or South America (or Alaska) directly and sending monitors over to make sure that they are preserving the environment. Much more effective than sending ridiculous Americans in Bermuda shorts around the world to complain about poor cell phone service.
31
@Brother Shuyun
Ha!! Great comment!
3
@Brother Shuyun
Sweet, I'm in! Also, no carnivorous pets. Ha!
2
@Brother Shuyun,
Love this comment!
2
Thank you Mr. Christ. Flight-Shaming is another in a long list of uninformed overreactions to important problems.
135
I fully agree with the author and Average Human. I am currently on a long trip from Vancouver to Vietnam and bought the full carbon offset of my trip for $33. This would help to reduce the equivalent of the 3000 kgs of CO2 emissions by sequestering ethane emissions from garbage dumps.
7
@Brian - it's good you bought the carbon offset - and too bad it's optional. But the average American produces 20,000 kg of CO2 annually. If it really was as simple as chipping in $200 per year to offset the carbon, we could have the problem solved tomorrow.
4
@Brian
Wow - do you REALLY believe your carbon footprint is erased by $33??
14
I fly internationally on a regular basis. I can't avoid it for my business. I also buy carbon offsets.
If you're fortunate enough to be able to fly to exotic locations, take the extra time and money to offset your carbon footprint.
https://www.atmosfair.de/en/
3
This beauty should be in the weekend travel section.
7
Thanks for this red-herring article that allows people to fly frivolously around the world producing millions of tons of CO2 without responsibly reflecting on how their own personal choices are affecting this planet. It's articles like this that leave climate change in the realm of "debate" and prevents people from actually making the personal sacrifices that will be required if we want to save this planet.
145
@Gunnar
Thank you for your comment. Articles like this actually do harm, as you state. It is depressing how people still try to rationalize their climate destroying behavior. Now they have this article to justify their next trip to Pago Pago.
34
@Gunnar But what if the overall effect of flying is that it prevents more co2 emissions than it causes? That's the argument of the article. If that's true, isn't that an argument for caution regarding flight shaming?
31
@stumpnugget
it is too much of a hypothetical to argue, and it assumes that we stop flying and make no efforts in other areas to curtail greenhouse gas emissions. This is not a straight up either/or situation.
2
How many planes are out there versus how many cars? How much time do most people spend flying compared to driving? Flying seems like the wrong thing to focus on. It makes a much bigger difference if you give up your daily car routine than if you cancel that one vacation a year when you fly. As usual, climate activists are focusing on the wrong things, and being unnecessarily confrontational about it. Forget flying; let people have their vacation; let's focus on making our cities car-free, investing in public transportation, especially high-speed rail, and getting people in accessible affordable housing where they can live their lives happily without driving. Almost nothing is being done to promote these things. Stop protesting in Heathrow and get this done.
4
@Samuel Russell : The issue is not the amount of *time* people spend driving versus flying. The issue is how much carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere from flying.
And when you look at the numbers, people who fly are putting a lot more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere compared to people who only drive.
This isn't to say that we don't need the other things you're saying we need. We absolutely do. But we need to curtail flying as well.
The good news is that it sounds like you have a passion -- and our collective future needs your passion to go out there and advocate for car-free cities, high-speed rail, public transit, and location-efficient housing.
It's a huge project, but I hope you'll pick at least one of those causes and put your heart and soul into it -- and bring others along to fight with you. Your passion, conviction, and vision can be an inspiration to others, and the climate crisis is really an all-hands-on-deck moment.
5
@Samuel Russell
- Flying isn't just about vacation; flying is also clearly about business
- We can do both. It's false to act as if just because some people target the airline industry other people can't/aren't attempting to tackle public transportation, car culture, and other ways to make our daily lives greener.
1
@Samuel Russell
Cars are used much more for necessities than planes so it is much easier to reduce the usage of planes.
Costas, this is a great op-ed that speaks to the intricacies of sustainability and actions happen in a system and do not happen in a vacuum. Humans are more comfortable with black and white thinking and strictures from which to live moral lives. This has sparked the all-natural, no flying, no plastic, zero waste tenets that people are demonstrating their care for the ecosystem and climate. While I applaud their efforts, willpower and dedication to these goals, I wonder about their ability to be scaled up and impact policy to make a real difference and the unintended consequences of their actions. In the meantime, maybe we can focus and be more comfortable with gray area 'it depends' whether or not a product or action is ecologically moral based on the context and costs of the actions within the system compared to the alternatives, especially factoring future costs or costs that are not intuitively grasped.
7
Tourism including flying to get there may produce less carbon dioxide than what would happen in those places without the tourism.
However, there are ways to fly that produce less effect on climate change. Flying does not have to be done at 35,000 feet spreading big-jet emissions directly into the upper atmosphere.
Furthermore, not all the flying of those big jets is done for that economic effect of tourism. That seems like an excuse for a lot of flying done for other purposes.
Smaller planes flying at lower levels with fewer people would pollute a lot less. They'd still allow tourism to happen.
It isn't either/or. I see a lot of excuses in this line of thinking, instead of creative ways to get the best out of the situation.
3
@Mark Thomason Jets fly at 35000 feet because it is much more efficient to do so.
8
@Mark Thomason
Smaller planes flying at lower levels with fewer people means a lot less tourism.
4
@Jeoffrey -- That is true only if all the people on them are tourists. That is not true of most places, which was my point regarding justifying air travel with needs of tourism.
@Bill -- A more efficient aircraft may not find it more efficient to fly at 35,000 feet. Yes, a big jet does. A small turboprop would not.
It isn't just the carbon dioxide from the fuel burned, though that might well be less in a small turboprop. It is also other emissions, where they linger instead of washing out in the rain of lower altitudes, and cause problems. Even the water vapor of contrails can be an issue when formed in sufficient volume at very high altitudes.
This is a really interesting take.
But here is my question: what about FedEx? Other than organs needed for transplant, why do we have a society that insists on overnight delivery?
Why do we have stuff shipped by Amazon by air? It used to be you could choose to have stuff shipped the slow way. Now, it is often not even an option.
Do we really need fresh flowers flown in from all parts of the world for our weddings and funerals?
There are a lot of flight miles out there that have nothing to do with tourism.
23
@Bill : It's a good point. All of it needs to go if we are truly to tackle the climate crisis: the Amazon flights, the fresh flowers from another continent, *and* the tourism.
5
First things first. Give more time and more money than you planned to a Democratic sweep. It will restore voting rights and the majority will not let the horror return. Then sanctions will emerge against the ranchers, the poachers, the contraception-preventers. The reduction of carbon will be rewarded. The transition to renewable energy will occur. First things first.
10
I don't really want to fly, but most of us don't have jobs where we can budget the extra couple days for a cross-country trip to see family, or live in smaller countries where our extended family is much closer.
I also don't have access to a luxury sailing yacht, or any twitter followers that do, so flying unfortunately remains the only reasonable option for longer distances.
13
@Oats : I understand your quandary about seeing family. Though it's worth noting that it used to be the case that when people chose to move far from family (for love or for money or for school), they were also choosing to see their families a lot less than current flying allows for.
More importantly, no one needs to travel off the continent they were born on -- unless they moved for love for money or whatever *before* they understood the climate impacts of that choice.
And finally, to be clear, I sense you're making a reference to Greta's sailing to the U.S. Have you seen the photos? Have you read about what it was like in there? It was *far* from a "luxury" yacht. She had a very tiny space to sleep in, no way to cook food, no shower, no toilet. It sounds like a rough couple of weeks of travel.
5
@Rose -- "It used to be the case that when people chose to move far from family (for love or for money or for school), they were also choosing to see their families a lot less than current flying allows for."
Yes, that USED to be the case. In those days, people who could not tolerate total separation from their families chose not to move. In the past several decades, those of us who chose to move far from our families did so on the assumption that we would still be able to see them once or twice a year. It is disingenuous to say "But earlier generations knew they'd seldom see their families again!" The point is, that was NOT the bargain that we thought we were making.
10
No question that reducing air travel will reduce carbon emissions. But not all air travel is created equal. The longer the distance, the more efficient flying becomes, because cruising requires less fuel than other stages of flight. That means that the short 40-minute flight I take from Oklahoma City to Dallas-Fort Worth and the long flight from DFW to Paris are the same in that both consume heavily at the front and rear stages of the flights. With an investment in high-speed, electrical rail to replace the shorter route, I can reduce the carbon footprint of my trip from OKC to CDG by adopting a mixed mode of transportation. It makes sense to pursue such courses where there are alternatives, but until we return to transatlantic QE2 — itself a significant carbon producer — there is no alternative to flight across the ocean.
30
@Ockham9 : Such a great point about the destructiveness of short-haul air travel. What we need is actually a two-pronged approach:
First, high-speed electric rail to move people around efficiently -- and pleasantly -- and replace all of those short-haul flights and substantially decrease the carbon footprint of travel.
Second, we need a lot fewer long-haul flights. Extremely long-distance travel needs to become rare if the climate is to remain habitable to humans for a longer period of time.
9
@Ockham9 -- That is true if both aircraft use the same technology.
How about if the short flight is done in a more efficient small turboprop, and stays lower, instead of a 737 zooming high? What would that cost the traveler, 10 minutes?
2
@Mark Thomason. A smaller, more fuel efficient plane would help, but there are some liabilities. One is the space for luggage. In January, we will be traveling from Oklahoma City to Paris for four months, which means that we will each take clothing for at least two seasons. That's an easy fit in a larger plane, but not so much in a small turboprop. A train, on the other hand, would handle this easily, and if designed well could even eliminate security screening in Dallas. [I've also taken a turboprop from Chicago to Kalamazoo, a little too close to the water for my taste.]
As I've mentioned in previous comments, train travel in the US will never wholly replace air travel; the distance from one coast to the other make this impractical. But with a carefully designed multi-modal system of a handful of large air hubs fed by trains from secondary markets, we could greatly reduce air transport. Whether those secondary cities will accept that is another question, especially when local chambers of commerce still think that having an airport signals importance.
4
I love this kind of out of the box thinking. This reasoning makes great sense and should be considered seriously. It's like the argument that nuclear bombs have prevented war and saved lives. It doesn't make sense unless you look more closely and realize that, oh, it actually does. Great piece!
8
Some statistics...as a basis for argument.
According to the EPA, here are the major contributors of greenhouse gases, of all kinds, from human activity:
Transportation (both personal and commercial): 29%
Electricity generation: 28%
Industry: 22%
Commercial (running plants) and residential: 12%
Agriculture: 9%
About 1/4 of the agriculture emissions come from animal husbandry, or 2.25% of total emissions.
People have an overblown perception of the impact of raising animals.
Also, driving an electric car doesn't necessarily make you eco-friendly. About 63% of our electricity is generated by burning fossil fuels.
4
@Raz: The US as a collective whole consumes energy of all forms at the average rate of 9200 watts per person, or 9.2 kilowatts. One square meter of solar cells produces about 200 watts from present technology mass market cells. Each person needs 221 kilowatt-hours per day. Each square meter of cells produces 2 kilowatt-hours over a 10 hour day, so it takes about 110 square meters, or a square about 33 feet on a side, to collect it.
Batter technology will probably deliver competitive range and acceptable recharge time in jusrt a few years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_energy_consumption_per_capita
2
@Steve Bolger
A lot of solar panels!
Even if we eliminated all the green house gases produced by residential and commercial buildings by using solar panels, that only covers 12% of the whole.
Just pointing it out.
1
Good points, but ignores another important point:
Tourism is by far the best way for different peoples to encounter each other. Even subtracting the gated resorts where there is no interaction between tourists and locals other than "waiter, please bring me another mai-tai", there is still a huge benefit to Homo Sapines from the mixing engendered by tourism. It's just harder to hate other people once you get to know them.
Dan Kravitz
16
Nano partikler and otter polutants at 40,000 fejet are way more dangerious than the 2.5% carbon.
If our stupidity of allowing Earth resouces to be unregulated could be abated, just forcing Airlines to combine flights when they were not full would help a lot. Schedualing and combining freight shipments, could probably reducere the inpact by more that a quarter.
While it is true that currently air travel causes only makes up a small percentage of overall greenhouse emissions, this percentage is projected to grow significantly as air travel increases. This is why electric planes and other high-efficiency solutions should be developed now. Also, according to scientists and engineers, electric planes not only emit far fewer greenhouse gases, they will be cheaper for the flying public, quieter and safer.
2
I think jet contrails cast shadows that reflect some fraction of incident sunlight back to space before it warms the Earth. The bump in temeprature the day after 9/11 grounded all aircraft over North America supports this hypothesis.
If Exxon does work out how to efficiently dewater algae, there's plenty of new sargasso blooms in the ocean to harvest to recycle carbon in jet fuel.
In this self-created and self-sustaining age of anxiety, Costas Christ merely brings up another tired canvas, this a paint by numbers crusade to rank the climate change offenders and carry only placards to eliminate the most egregious in his order of preference as to not interfere with his holiday travel plans lest it become a total travel ban and we return to the caves from which we came. Rather than engage the rational mind let alone the intuitive one, and challenge prevailing negativity, again Costas Christ merely fans the flame of fear without stepping outside for a moment and looking at the situation from the vantage point of flight providing another glimpse of this still beautiful planet filled with magnificence, uncolored by the smeared epitaphs of the narcissists huddled in fear below.
2
Another thing: flying is by far the safest method of travel. Putting people on trains or highways will cost lives.
1
@Will : On a per mile basis, air travel is certainly safer than highway travel.
But where did you get the data that travel by train is less safe than air travel?
6
@Rose There have been far more passenger train travel fatalities than air travel fatalities in this country despite many more miles and people traveling via plane. This is a well-known stat.
@Patrick
A lot of the discrepancy being that we allocate a disproportionate amount of money for airports, and their associated infrastructure, versus money to maintain rails and trains often dating back to the biplane era of aviation.
The planet will still rotate and revolve if we continue to overpopulate it. Whether we will still be around as a species is another matter. The laws of chemistry and physics can be denied or ignored, but they won't go away, not even under DJT. They just are. Humans can only live in a relatively narrow range of conditions.
To paraphrase Dirty Harry, "How lucky do we feel?"
14
Jet travel has made it so that no two points on earth are more than 1 day apart. We can't turn back the clock on that. Jets have dramatically improved in fuel efficiency and with hybrid or even electric power on the horizon, we need not feel guilty.
5
One more conclusion to add to my previous post:
I believe the UFO I and others saw when I was a youth was mote likely a Soviet military observational craft in the upper atmosphere. I think it was observing the Air National Guard base, which was within about 4 miles of our location.
I'm disappointed that the public has been kept in the dark on such interesting technological and scientific discoveries.
The most compelling argument in favor of my viewpoint: why has nobody heard of any recent researcy into antigravity technology? Clearly there's nothing happening outside of the military, but mostly, they already understand all of it.
@Dave: Gravitation is an exlusively attractive scalar, not a vector like the electric or magnetic fields. Don't buy stock in an anti-gravitation company.
@Steve Bolger
Hello. I won't buy stock in any such company.
However, you call gravity a scaler only because you think you know the direction based upon simple models. But given the essentially infinite effect of gravity, it is only properly described by a vector. One that varies given the distribution of matter in THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE.
So...
Thanks for the investment advice. The military won't let us peons know about this stuff. I really believe it is real stuff.
I could just as easily say that electric and magnetic fields are scaler, because we know the direction given the arrangement of matter.
nyet.
Educated and practiced physics professionals will hate this idea, most likely.
@Dave
Gravity is easily explained by new models. Old models, including Eintein's models, use continuous functions until we encounter gravity waves.
What is a gravity wave and why does it exist in this model?
They only exist because the rapid movement of combining massive bodies are so energetic that displacement waves are necessary to convey the information. Otherwise, the arrangement of matter in the universe at the Big Bang accounted for their positions beforehand.
Is that causal? No.
The fact is that mass conglomerates, such as black holes or huge stars, display vastly different cosmic matrix properties than individual stars or black holes.
They change the effects of internal vs. external pressure so massively that only waves can convey that information.
Raw universal information cannot travel faster than the speed of light, however, life-created things can create things that can travel much faster than the speed of light. Essentially, it's a matter of creating enough energy for travel, a baseline. Above that baseline we can travel anywhere. Then time comes into play. How fast can we get there?
Some things go unanswered. We'll figure it out eventually.
I love to travel, and there are many places around the world that I dream of seeing with my own eyes.
But we can't have it both ways. We can't demand "climate action" and then indulge in activities, like global air travel, that only perpetuate the climate crisis that will inarguably wreak havoc on our descendants. Maybe what is called for from those of us alive now is not personal indulgence but sacrifice for the good of the future.
It is a provocative argument the author makes, but it is, among other things, a sad example of the destructive logic of capitalism and the NGOs who demand on the status quo.
34
@D. Quixote Errr....*depend* on the status quo, not demand.
It’s the eco-nomy, stupid!
2
Everyone is for the environment and against global warming until you ask them to make serious sacrifices, like not flying or not eating meat. Then all the excuses and rationalizations come in, just like they do in this article. Mother nature knows the solution: extinction.
77
@Fester It won't be nature that causes us to go extinct, it's humanity. We are engaged in collective suicide.
2
@Fester
Nail: Head! You hit it! Thank you!
1
It's amazing the lengths that the global elite will go to justify flying around the world in the midst of the climate crisis that is currently unfolding.
26
So... there's *maybe* some short term tourism benefit. The cumulative effect of air travel emissions will undoubtedly be to destroy not just African wildlife (and thus tourism), but the entire biosphere of the planet. Look around -- it's not hard to find the effects already in motion, whether that's oysters dissolving in the CO2 acidified oceans, wildfires ringing the arctic, salmon dying from high temperatures in the Yukon before spawning, wildfires regularly ravaging California, Washington, and a million other places at rates never before seen.
14
What will save our small planet which seems to get smaller day by day with its rising CO2, burgeoning population and resultant needs and economy that demands its profits? Tourism? Technology? Tolerance for each other as millions of immigrants roam around the world trying to find a place? The rich with their gated communities who seek to isolate themselves from the vast changes we are creating?I doubt it will be the latter, but tolerance, respect for each other and the web of life we are dependent upon is a beginning. Tourism if it is to help must be done with an open mind and respect for the people and places visited and without that it does more damage than good.
4
If Africa's population reaches 4.4 billion by the end of the century, as the UN projects, then little will be left of Africa's iconic wildlife, air travel or no air travel.
48
Immediately after a likely mortal diagnosis, the first reaction is one of denial. This article is a prime example of the human tendency to deny a clear science, and it will likely spawn many children in the years to come. Every time I drive my car, whether it be to the grocery store or to the hospital, I could tell myself that driving is good for me.
35
You assume that if tourists do not visit a place, the people who live there will ruin it by exploiting its natural resources but you have no proof of that.
I love to travel and have been looking forward to doing more of it now that I am retired but I realize that it will be better for the planet if I don't. We have the ability to "visit" far off places online and to conduct more business meetings online or through conference calls. We need to take better advantage of our modern technology to cut way down on air travel until we have fleets of electric airplanes.
25
Good to see this balanced approach. There are two sides to every argument.
1
High airborne particulate pollution such as caused by aircraft flights causes reduction in solar energy reaching the surface of the Earth. This was shown by pan evaporation studies conducted world-wide. Studies showed that solar energy was reduced to a significant degree under polluted skies.
What does this mean for global warming overall?
If we reduced aircraft traffic, would that reduce the stratosphere pollution and increase solar energy effects on the Earth and sea and thus exacerbate global warming?
We should do far more studies of all the factors, and quickly.
4
@Bruce Hogman
The high albedo of contrails means that contrails reflect incoming shortwave radiation from the sun. However, contrails only last for a short period of time while the CO2 produced by the same aircraft will remain in the atmosphere much longer.
I'm willing to bet that the long-term greenhouse effect of producing millions of tons of CO2 from air travel are much greater in magnitude than the short-term reflective effects of some small, temporary clouds.
10
@Bruce Hogman : That is what scientists used to think. That theory has since been debunked. Flying less will not significantly increase the temperatures on earth.
5
Your statement the airline travel only accounts for "2.5% of CO2 emissions is a bald lie. Did you read the article you linked to? It states the airline sector is accounting for up to 20% of the carbon load. (Did you read the other NYT article a couple months ago stating that for every 2500 miles a person flies, a pickup truck-size block of the ice cap will melt?)
Are you, Costas Christ, somehow related to the airline or tourism industry?
Tourism should be more localized. Explore your own region or state. People do not have an inherent right to travel the globe! There are many excellent travel shows and videos that will show you what Marrakesh looks like.
It is a human responsibility to reduce CO2 in any and every way possible. This article makes it seem its OK to continue on our selfish and wasteful use of energy. It's just another rationalization to try to keep the status quo which is killing our planet.
41
@Greg
Um... this is a direct quote from the linked article:
"Over all, air travel accounts for about 2.5 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions — a far smaller share than emissions from passenger cars or power plants."
20
@Greg You've misunderstood the article in question. Direct quote:
"Over all, air travel accounts for about 2.5 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions — a far smaller share than emissions from passenger cars or power plants. Still, one study found that the rapid growth in plane emissions could mean that by 2050, aviation could take up a quarter of the world’s “carbon budget,” or the amount of carbon dioxide emissions permitted to keep global temperature rise to within 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels."
What this means is that 2.5% of emissions are attributable to air travel. The remark about the percentage of prospective 2050 carbon budget means that if you assume aviation emissions increase 5% every year for the next 30 years, then you get a number that is 25% of maximum allowable emissions in 2050 to be consistent with an expected 1.5C temp increase. It does not mean that aviation represents 25% of emissions, as you suggest. It represents 2.5%.
44
@Greg: "Did you read the article you linked to?" Just did, and it says: "Over all, air travel accounts for about 2.5 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions — a far smaller share than emissions from passenger cars or power plants."
13
This article provides good evidence that our current rate of consumption of fossil fuels is unsustainable and damaging to the environment. We are at a stage where the things that are routinely assumed to be near essential and even beneficial overall have to be evaluated for their harmful impacts. It would be useful to provide a systematic benefit/environmental impact analysis of all major human activities to determine where curbing routine activities would provide the most benefit while reducing environmental consequences the most.
1
When I last flew from Anchorage to Portland OR on Alaska Airlines, the pilot said that it would take 2400 gallons to fly we 166 people. So around 14.5 gallons/person. That is not zero but, to me at least, far less of an impact than I thought and far less than people burn up going up and down the freeways on the weekend to root for their favorite football teams. We all need to think hard about this but there are many components and air travel seems, by that yardstick, far from the most sinful outlier.
31
@Alan : Assuming 30 miles/gallon, that's about 450 mile. I don't know anyone who travels 450 miles -- or even half that -- round trip on a typical weekend to watch a sporting event.
Averaging 60 miles/hour, that's 7.5 hours driving. And that's assuming no traffic -- rare during a major sporting event.
7
@Rose There are a lot more than 166 people going to a game. I picked a random team: according to some site called statista, in 2018, the average attendance at home games of the Dallas Cowboys was 91,619.
Generously, let's say everyone's car gets 30 mpg, and with parking lot jam, they spend and hour total (30 min each way) driving at an average of 30 mph. And they carpooled, so three people to a car.
That's 30000 gallons of gas. For one game. Alan has a point.
2
@Rose There are a lot more than 166 people going to a game. I picked a random team: according to some site called statista, in 2018, the average attendance at home games of the Dallas Cowboys was 91,619.
Generously, let's say everyone's car gets 30 mpg, and with parking lot jam, they spend and hour total (30 min each way) driving at an average of 30 mph. And they carpooled, so three people to a car.
That's 30000 gallons of gas. For one game. Alan has a point.
When you are trying to really slash a budget you go for the big ticket items that will have the biggest impact. You don;t waste time trying to piecemeal together a laundry list of a hundred little items. Panicking about something which only accounts for 2-2.5% of all emissions per year is to really get lost in the weeds and lose sight of the big picture.
The EPA website currently has the biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions as Transportation 29%, Electricity 28% and industry at 22%. Air travel has no viable emissions free alternative but all other modes of transportation and electricity generation have workable alternatives right now that we could (and should) be focused on.
Turning air travel into some kind of ecological scarlet letter (and the refusal to fly into virtue signalling for those who have to luxury to make such a choice) is completely the wrong approach (and the finger pointing and shaming it produces will only server to further divide people making real climate action more difficult). We need to stay focused on what really will make the biggest impact on emissions. are trying to keep the message positive and focused on actions that will have the biggest impact.
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@Gunnar "When you are trying to really slash a budget you go for the big ticket items that will have the biggest impact. " -- that's half of the equation. The other half is how essential the activity is. I'd say that a farmer burning diesel to feed people is far more important than a family flying to Africa for a week's safari. If we make a decision matrix with axes of importance and impact per unit time, air travel is an EXTREME outlier in terms of its non-essential nature and CO2 impact. In fact, there's probably nothing with more negative impact on a unit of time basis for most of us.
If we're going to give ourselves any chance for continued survival, the elimination of air travel is the "low hanging fruit" that needs to be picked first. If we're not willing to do that (and our track record suggests that this is in fact the case), we need to plan to explain to our kids why our fun was more important than their lives, and those of all who would have followed.
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@Gunnar When I look at my own personal emissions, air travel is the biggest item by far. I would cut it first if I had to pay a carbon tax. Airline travel would largely end.
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@Gunnar : How is not flying a "luxury"? The real luxury is being able to travel anywhere in the world you heart desires, whenever you want. That's a luxury afforded to a small percentage of the earth's people. Many many more -- primarily (though not exclusively) the global poor -- are seeing their homes and livelihoods destroyed by climate change.
Traveling the world for vacation isn't really a human right.
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Using your logic, destroying the environment to mine materials need for building aircraft is justifiable because those planes bring tourists to protected natural areas for ”eco-tourism.” If we didn’t mine these resources, those natural areas would be developed. You state that aviation only creates 2.5% of human-caused CO2 emission, while deforestation causes 20%. Deforestation often results from mining for natural resources used in, guess what, aviation. Mining also hurts eco-tourism in places like the Amazon. Yet you write that we can only save the planet by destroying it. Your circular reasoning assumes that you have incontrovertible evidence that without flights bringing tourists to protected areas, they would be developed. Where is your evidence?
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@Jim "Deforestation often results from mining for natural resources used in, guess what, aviation."
What, specifically in aviation? What specific aviation-use materials require deforestation to be mined?
(Feel free not to answer or just to say "I don't know", and save us all the trouble)
Meanwhile, did you know that producing the batteries for your Prius is one of the most toxic and waste-producing processes on the planet?
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@Jim You could say that even more about cars, your house, the computer you are typing on...
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Why does the wilderness have to be protected at all? Otherwise the default is development and destruction by humans. We are short-sighted and selfish creatures, why wouldn't we just choose not to cut down the Amazon, knowing the life that lives there and the life-breathing oxigen it gives us? Native Americans knew to protect "mother earth." We should be stewards of the planet, not consumers of it. We serve it, it does not serve us. We'll learn this lesson one way or another.
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I don't get the flight shaming. Commercial air travel is such a small part of our overall emissions compared to cars or food that it just doesn't matter. Go outside to your street and look at the incredible amount of gas guzzling SUVs driving around - that right there is the problem, and also one of the easiest ones to fix. Let's start on the ground before we get to the air.
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@Richard M : While flying might only contribute 8% of annual carbon, there are a few issues that make flying a prime source of reduction:
1. It's really only a small percent of the world's population that's flying in any given year. Certainly less than 10%. That small percent of the population is incurring a large carbon footprint from all this flying.
2. Most flying in discretionary. You don't *need* to go on vacation. Many times, you don't *need* to move far from family and friends. Businesses don't always *need* to fly employees to meetings. This is in sharp contrast to food (which everyone needs) and transit to get to/from work, school, shopping, etc.
3. Flying gives people the chance to burn (on an individual level) an amount of carbon that is unheard of with any other form of transit. It would take you a month or more of driving as a full-time job to equal the carbon of a transatlantic flight.
There's a certain logic to going for the low-hanging fruit when it comes to carbon reduction. Flying is a great place to start -- though certainly we need to expand mass transit and overhaul our food systems as well.
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@Rose
"It's really only a small percent of the world's population that's flying in any given year. Certainly less than 10%. "
So what ? The Earth does not care about the percentage of population producing the emissions, it only cares about the resulting amount of emissions.
"Many times, you don't *need* to move far from family and friends."
Not so. Not many of us cherish the idea of moving away from family and friends, but often have to.
"This is in sharp contrast to food (which everyone needs) and transit to get to/from work, school, shopping, etc."
That trip to the supermarket does not require a gas guzzler, yet that is what you see in the parking lot.
Most people go shopping whenever they need anything, instead of grouping their shopping needs into fewer trips.
Online shoppng should eliminate many individual shopping trips. The mail delivery comes six times a week anyway, let it also deliver what you purchased.
Finally, an example.
The clubhouse of my development is a walk of 5 minutes from my home. Yet, I see neighbors who live closer to the clubhouse than I do, but use their cars to get there.
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@Richard M -- if we look at this as a matter of survival (which it undoubtedly is), who are you going to tell to stop their activities first? The family going to work or the grocery store, or the family flying to a far-off destination (and thus releasing more carbon in a week than the other family does in a year) for fun and entertainment. Sure -- entertainment is important, but there are far saner ways to entertain ourselves. We need to hit 90% reductions or better to have any chance at survival. That means we can no longer fuel many activities which are essential to the survival of many. Non-essential activities like flying are a no-brainer.
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There are costs and benefits to every human technology.
Growing human populations plus climate change plus habitat destruction are a danger to every environment and living thing therein.
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This seems like a terrible way to make an argument in favor of conservation--conserving natural habitat and reducing greenhouse emissions from flying is not the zero-sum contest implied here. In addition, tourists flying to game reserves represent a relatively tiny fraction of air traffic emissions.
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For very good reasons of chemistry and physics, electric airplanes cannot have a range of more than about 1000 km. For similar reasons, any synthetic jet fuel will emit carbon dioxide when it is burned, and must be made of a fossil feedstock.
There is no climate crisis, only a gradual and slow warming of about 0.01 C per year. This has been going on for more than a century. We have adapted to it, often without realizing that we have adapted, and will continue to do so.
@Jonathan Katz
A "a gradual and slow warming of about 0.01 C per year" means 1.0 degrees per century — that isn't "gradual and slow" in geological terms, that's lightning fast.
That's 10.0 degrees in a millennium. You won't be "adapting" to that change. You'll be under 260 feet of additional sea water, along with every major city on earth.
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@Jonathan Katz Why, exactly, must synthetic jet fuel be made from a fossil feedstock? What "reason of chemistry and physics" requires this?
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@Jonathan Katz
How about we just learn to travel slower; take the time to enjoy the journey, rather than rushing hither and yon trying to take it ALL in.
I have been traveling to the East Coast by train since 2001. it is a relaxing, less stressful way to travel that is better in terms of carbon output. We need more slow ways to cross the ocean; sail works well.
We have solutions to our problems; we just let greed and indifference tell us to go faster. Travel slowly, comfortably, and enjoy the journey.
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If we had a revenue-neutral carbon-tax, lickety-split somebody would find a way to turn used yoga mats into jet fuel. But one Party consistently and entirely rejects such a tax (that would help reduce income taxes), so people get to feel guilty about flying instead. But it's a win for Putin and Exxon, and that's what's important!
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Brilliant article! All this flight shaming can really hurt the environmental causes around the world. Without tourism incentives, many natural wonders will be erased from the face of the Earth.
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@Ademario
Would it be possible for us who appreciate wildness to donate to conservation groups instead of making the journey? I have always wanted to visit the Galapagos islands, but read that visitors and those who serve them threaten that environment. If my presence endangers them I would rather know that those natural wonders are safe than see them with my own eyes.
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@Ademario - I agree with you on that point, but there will always be people who still go. Still I think a "Give, don't go" campaign would be worthwhile.
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@mrarchiegoodwin
Try E. O. Wilsons' "Half-Earth" project.
See https://www.half-earthproject.org/
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Costas, "Go tell it to the mountain", which essentially is climate ego!
You are presuming that all those tourism dollars are going to preservation efforts or to alleviate poverty. That seems a stretch to me. For example, can you track where those $600 entrance fees really go? As the saying goes, follow the money. And none of this addresses short haul domestic travel.
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@Eric Key It's not a presumption, it's fact. When local communities don't benefit monetarily from conservation, they kill the animals or cut the trees. An example of this is Gabon, where the government created huge eco-reserves but did nothing to ensure that communities had a financial interest in protecting the forest and animals. The measures were lauded by international actors, and locals kept cutting the trees and killing the animals. I haven't kept up with what happened after, but the model is clear, there is no free lunch: if you take away poaching and logging livelihoods, you have to provide an alternative. That alternative is almost always tourism.