Qual é o impacto da aviação no Ambiente? Registaram-se
"3.6 billion individual passenger flights in 2016 — the number is expected
to double by 2035" ... Este crescimento ilimitado é absolutamente
insustentável para o Planeta. O "low cost" flying ligado ao Turismo
de Massas terá forçosamente que ser limitado e regulado ...
OVOODOCORVO
ENVIRONMENT
To fly or not to fly? The
environmental cost of air travel
Though air travel is
more popular than ever, the vast majority of people in the world have never
been on a plane. As that dynamic slowly changes, the environment stands to
suffer. Is flying less the only solution?
When was the last
time you traveled by plane? As little as three percent of the global population
flew in 2017, and at most, only about 18 percent have ever done so. But things
are changing.
According to International Civil Aviation Organization
(ICAO) estimates, there were 3.7 billion global air passengers in 2016 — and
every year since 2009 has been a new record-breaker.
By 2035, the International Air Transport Association (IATA)
predicts a rise to 7.2 billion. Like the planes themselves, the numbers just
keep going up. And given the damage flying does to the planet, that is food for
thought.
Not just the CO2
Many estimates put aviation's share of global CO2 emissions
at just above two percent. That's the figure the industry itself generally
accepts.
But according to Stefan Gössling, a professor at Sweden's
Lund and Linnaeus universities and co-editor of the book Climate Change and
Aviation: Issues, Challenges and Solutions, "That's only half the
truth."
Other aviation emissions such as nitrogen oxides (NOx),
water vapor, particulates, contrails and cirrus changes have additional warming
effects.
Beyond emissions made solely in flight, manufacturing
effects within the aviation industry add considerably to its overall footprint
"The sector makes a contribution to global warming that
is at least twice the effect of CO2 alone," Gössling told DW, settling on
an overall contribution of five percent "at minimum."
But IATA spokesperson Chris Goater told DW the science
behind this so-called 'radiative forcing' is "unproven".
Even if we accept the two percent emissions figure as final,
if only three percent of the world's population flew last year, that relatively
small group still accounted for a disproportionate chunk of global emissions.
A few years ago, environmental group Germanwatch estimated
that a single person taking one roundtrip flight from Germany to the Caribbean
produces the same amount of damaging emissions as 80 average residents of
Tanzania do in an entire year: around four metric tons of CO2.
"On an individual level, there is no other human
activity that emits as much over such a short period of time as aviation,
because it is so energy-intensive," Gössling explains.
The WWF carbon footprint calculator is instructive in this
regard. Even a serious environmentalist who eats vegan, heats using solar power
and rides a bike to work, but who still take the occassional flight, wouldn't
look very green at all.
Just two hypothetical short-haul return flights and one
long-haul round-trip in a given year would outweigh otherwise exemplary
behavior.
New tech can't solve everything
As awareness of the need to reduce our individual and
collective carbon footprints in order to prevent climate catastrophe grows,
several industries have come under sustained pressure to find clean solutions.
The aviation sector made its own promises — in October 2016,
191 nations agreed a UN accord which aims to cut global aviation carbon
emissions to 2020 levels by 2035. Another ambitious target of that agreement is
for the aviation industry to achieve a 50 percent carbon emission reduction by
2050, compared to 2005 levels.
Goater says there are four ways in which the aviation
industry intends to achieve these things: through carbon offsetting in the
short-term, the continued development of more efficient planes, deeper
investment in sustainable fuels — such as biofuels — and through better route
efficiency.
"Basically air traffic control is very
inefficient," he explains. "It creates unnecessary fuel burns and
more efficient use would create a 10 percent reduction in emissions."
He also highlights the fact that a number - albeit very few
- of commercial flights are now powered with sustainable fuels every day,
despite the fact that the first such flight took off less than a decade ago.
"That was something that happened much faster than
anyone was expecting," he says. The key now, in his view, is for the
industry to prioritise investment in the area and for governments to commit in
the same way they have to e-mobility in the automobile sector.
But Gössling and many of his peers remain unconvinced.
There were 3.6
billion individual passenger flights in 2016 — the number is expected to double
by 2035
"I think that essentially we need price hikes," he
says. "We did interviews with industry leaders a few months ago and many
of them agreed, secretly — they were anonymous interviews — that if we don't
have a major price hike for fossil fuels, then there is no way alternative
fuels could ever make it."
Daniel Mittler, political director of environmental NGO
Greenpeace, agrees that fossil fuels need to be more expensive. "The first
step is to end all fossil fuel subsidies, including those going to aviation and
to properly tax the aviation industry," he told DW.
For Goater, that is not realistic. "Fuel is already a
significant proportion of an airline's costs," he says. "Believe me,
if we could fly without oil we would."
The hard truth?
So what's to be done? Gössling, who has devoted more than 20
years of research to the subject, sees only one solution.
"Do we really need to fly as much as we do, or is the
amount we fly induced by the industry?" he asks. In addition to
artificially low airplane ticket prices, the industry also promotes a
lifestyle, he argues.
"Airline campaigns project an image where you can
become part of a group of people who are young, urban frequent flyers, visiting
another city every few weeks for very low costs," he says.
Yet for Goater, the idea of dictating who can fly and when
is as unrealistic as it is outdated.
Two passengers ride a
tandem bicycle in Berlin, Germany
Can we look toward simpler methods of transport than
jet-fueled airplanes?
"Reducing emissions needs to be balanced with allowing
people the opportunity to fly — I believe that's a settled consensus amongst
the mainstream for many years," he says. "It's not up to people in
one part of the world to take it on themselves to deny people in other parts of
the world those opportunities."
For Mittler, it comes down to individual choice as much as
anything else and he believes that while efficiency gains are vital, the first
step is to reduce the amount we fly.
"We need to move towards a more sharing and caring way
of living on this planet," he says, adding that doing without the weekend
shop in New York might be one of the least painful ways of contributing to
that.
"We need a prosperity that is based on community and
based on real wealth of collective vision, rather than one that is based on
relentless consumption. Aviation is a symbol of the kind of consumption that we
need to leave behind."
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