Sometimes I tell myself that I may be a bit obsessed with planes. With the consequences planes have on climate, I mean.
And so I was trying to pinpoint the reasons why. Here’s my trail of thoughts.
As said in the introduction of this study, aviation is one of the most energy-intense forms of consumption.
Let’s take a round trip between Paris and New York. The distance between them is about 11,700 km (7,270 miles). The average time to do that seems to be 7 hours and 50 minutes, twice, so about 15 hours and 40 minutes. Let’s round it up to 16h.
The amount of CO2 that’s directly emitted through the combustion of kerosene for this round trip? About 2 tons. Not for the entire plane okay, just for yourself (which is obtained by dividing the emissions of the plane by the number of passengers).
Let’s compare with other ways of emitting 2 tons:
by watching streaming videos, you would need about 30,000 hours
by car, you’d need to drive about 10,000 km. Can’t really give a time for that but, in France at least, this is the distance an average person does over one year.
by eating red meat once a day over 275 days. Or ~3900 vegetarian meals (more than five years of meals if you eat vegetarian all the time).
2 tons is also the carbon footprint one human should stay below, per year, by 2050, to reach carbon neutrality and not warm the Earth beyond 1,5°C (compared to pre-industrial era; that’s the goal from from the Paris Agreement).
It should also be 5 tons by 2030 already.*
(Those deadlines don’t mean that it’s fine to emit to the levels we do today. Every ton of greenhouse gas counts and warms the climate.)
So, just for a 16 hours flight you’ve reached those 2 tons. Your carbon budget is closed. But you still have the rest of the year to live. Today there is no way you can live one full year without emitting greenhouse gases directly or indirectly.
So that was the first point. Now some other things:
Flying is a privilege to a minority of people. The fact that we’ve had ~4.5 billions of plane passengers in 2018 doesn’t mean that they were different passengers each time. That year, only 11% of humanity took the plane, including 2% to 4% that flew internationally (see the study linked above).
The injustice is even bigger when you think that 1% of humanity is responsible for about 50% of aviation emissions (note: the people that are less responsible for climate change are also the ones to deal with its worst consequences, aka people from poorer countries)
Unless you have close family members who live somewhere that requires long flights to go, simple breaks and personal holidays can happen in places closer to where we live. IF we really want to go somewhere. Being able to take the plane to discover a new country for personal enjoyment once a year and more isn’t something vital, it’s a comfort and a privilege**. Again, good times can happen in closer places around us.
So around summer and some other holidays, I often find myself hearing people talking about the plane and fly on a regular basis as if it was a normal, common thing. And often times I like those people/coworkers. And I think that overall it’s not like they don’t care about climate change or other environmental issues. I think they’re earnest and even believe that they’re already doing well for the environment by, for instance, sorting their waste in their daily life.
Except they probably don’t realize that the plane’s impact is so harmful that the positive impact that was gained through their waste sorting is completely wiped out. By a lot.
What I see is that once you’ve taken the habit of regular flights, and as long as you have the money for that, it’s difficult to see and accept that it should be seriously questioned.
Those are the main reasons for my obsession out of my head. Thank you for reading. :)
*Note that the average carbon footprint of a French person is 10 tons/year and about 20 tons/year for a North American person.
You can check this source for comparisons and see the numbers for any country. But be aware that the numbers are lower because only the CO2 is counted, and not the other greenhouse gases. When counting for all GHG and converting them in CO2 equivalent, France should be above China, and the USA should be above Belgium for instance. It also seems that international aviation isn't counted because of attribution difficulty.
**When I was a teen I used to dream of traveling everywhere and visiting as many places as possible. Questioning that may feel like a slap to some of us, but some desires can definitely change over time, especially with a broader view of what they imply. I had the huge luck to travel to Japan three times in my life. It was amazing, but I’ve decided that it was enough. It's hard at first. And I can be nostalgic, but most of the time now I’m fine about it. I know that I still have a lot of possibilities even without that, and my desires have become simpler but still fulfilling.
- Clean plane is coming! -> See point 2/ in this paragraph
- The plane will leave whether I’m in or not -> See point 3/ in this paragraph
- I’m just an individual, it won't change anything -> Do you use your voting right for elections? Yes? Well, you’re only one voice, right? But you still do it.
(Bonus; read only the "last word" at the end if you want.)
- What about private air travels? -> They’re definitely a problem, both from a greenhouse gases and justice perspective, and they should be reduced to the lowest. But changes must happen everywhere, and about 70% of the fuel used by aviation is estimated to come from commercial flights transporting people.
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