Letters to the Editor
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Huh?
Talking about the carbon footprint of a non-stop flight from Denver to London, Miss Mieszkowski says:
By that measure, flying direct from Denver to London and back puts about 3,600 pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere, equivalent to driving a Toyota Prius hybrid 10,000 miles.
I checked the distance from Denver to London. It is 4670 miles. Double that for a round-trip flight, and you get 9340 miles, or roughly equivalent to the 10,000 of driving a Prius.
So, if the flight and driving a Prius are roughly equivalent, how is flying any worse than driving, carbon-wise?
And, I'm not sure I understand the rationale behind focusing on airline flights for carbon emission problems. By Miss Mieszkowski's own admission, flights account for only 3.5% of the carbon emissions in the US, 1.5% worldwide. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that addressing 3.5% of the problem, even if completely eliminated, is worth, oh, about 3.5% of a solution.
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When the keg's out do you make sure everyone has a thimbleful of beer?
Environmentalism just means we're going to trudge though our last days in scratchy hemp shoes, while pining forever lost road trips to California, flights to Rio, and heavy metal hair chicks with too much make-up. And plastic stuff in crazy colors.
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Post Peak Oil : Airline Travel Will End In 20 Years, Max
From what I can gather by a study of the issue, the declining availability of petroleum in the years ahead, combined with an increasing demand, will soon drive jet fuel prices up to the extent that most people will no longer be able to afford the luxury of flying. So the CO2 emissions problem will pretty much solve itself...no airlines...no pollution.
I have lived in the same location for over 30 years and have noted a precipitous decline in private plane traffic in the last 10 years. Whether this is due to the cost of fuel or not, I haven't any information.
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Start by fixing the stupid rules that force planes to idle on taxiways
At most US airports, planes must push back from gates and sit on taxiways to "get in line" for takeoff. At Orange County (SNA), every single day, planes are idling on taxiways 20 minutes before the airport even opens for air traffic just to hold a place in line. At major hubs (HAS), planes frequently form queues that are over an hour long and idle the whole time.
There is a very simple fix for this. Just change the rules so planes maintain their priority for takeoff from when they radio in that they are ready rather than when they are sitting on a taxiway with engines running. The taxi waiting areas at the airports figured this out years ago. Taxis pull into a lot and turn off their engines until they are told to advance to a loading area. One would think that the airlines and ground control systems could figure it out.
If the pilots can't figure out how to do this, perhaps they can ask the cab drivers. ;-)
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Be an infrequent flyer
For those of you who don't get it, it is JET aircraft which are the problem NOT propeller driven aircraft. Why is this? Because Jets burn kerosene. And that's way worse than any form of gasoline or diesel. Add to this the altitude at which a Jet leaves it's exhaust and you have an environmental disaster. And Jet travel is increasing at an AVERAGE rate of at least 5% per year worldwide for the past 8 years.
If you don't yet believe in global warming just wait a few more years, when it's too late to do anything about it, and explain to your kids or grandkids that it's not you're fault.
If there is even a chance that global warming is a real threat to human civilization, wouldn't it be better to err on the side of caution?
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One more point to add to JumpyD's excellent missive...
Why is the targeted "bad" air travel recreational travel, when biz travel represents the vast majority of flights and with the advent of video conferencing is not essential most of the time anyway? I'd rather people were flying for nice long vacations abroad and staying home to work!
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Something is missing
I agree with the majority of the article, but there is something missing in all this - in many instances, the planes are going to fly anyway, so there is an additive factor in this.
I know that more demand will equal more flights and all that, but at no point in the article is the issue of group versus individual travel factored in.
In a previous job, I used to travel a lot between Albuquerque (where I live) and Eglin AFB, Florida. I learned over the course of many trips to always take the last flight back. The reason for this was that that the flight from Atlanta to Albuquerque was nearly always only about one-third full. It was one of those "move the planes back west to restart the operation" flights. I liked it because it meant nearly always available upgrades - and it not, usually a whole row to myself so I could sleep.
The thing is - as written in this article, I could have driven the 1300 miles and saved some CO2 emissions, but the plane would have flown anyway - so the net effect of my grteen choice would have been additive. I would not have subtracted anything.
Am I missing something, or is it really better for 120 people to drive 1200 miles than for one plane to fly the same distance?
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You are now free to pollute about the country
The Oxford University Centre for the Environment use a multiplying factor of 3 to compare aircraft greenhouse emissions to ground level greenhouse emissions. So the 1.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions from air travel has the same warming effect as something contributing 4.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
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AIrline travel does not contribute much to greenhouse gases
We use about 10% of our oil on jet fuel and it produces around 5% of the CO2 generated by fossil fuels. Want to reduce green house gases by more than 60% and thereby stabilize current atmospheric CO2 levels? 1. STOP burning coal to produce electricity. Ban it's use globally in the next 30 years (unless all of the CO2 produced is sequestered) and replace the coal plants with nuclear, solar thermal and wind powered plants 2. Develop plug in hybrid cars. Good plug in hybrids will reduce gasoline consumption by at least 60% (gasoline consumption accounts for 50% of oil consumption and around 25% of the green house gases) 3. Ban the use of natural gas for conventional space heating in the next 30 years. Ground based heat pumps are much more efficient (Bush even has them on his ranch!) and require much less natural gas or electricity.
The technology for reducing green house gases is all there (I think the best battery technology for plug in hybrids is just a few years away). We just have to stop sitting on our hands complaining about minor problems such as airline contributions to green house gases and start implementing real solutions