The Illusion of Green Flying
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The Illusion of Green Flying Aviation is the fastest way to the climate crisis. Yet air travel is growing rapidly, with hundreds of new airports currently planned – despite local resistance and an urgent need to abate the climate crisis. The aviation industry has announced its intention to become greener in the future. Do its strategies deliver on their promises? Is carbon-neutral growth a realistic goal? Or do we need to set a limit – a red line – for air travel? 1 Published by: Finance & Trade Watch, c/o GLOBAL 2000, Neustiftgasse 36, 1070 Vienna, Austria www.ftwatch.at Author: Magdalena Heuwieser Lectorship: Mira Kapfinger Illustration/ Layout: Sarah Heuzeroth Print: Gugler, Vienna Release: November 2017 Translation: Christopher Hay Download: www.ftwatch.at/flying_green (English) and www.ftwatch.at/gruenes_fliegen (German) Contact: [email protected] / [email protected] Many thanks to Jutta Kill for the support with the writing. Thanks to Paco Yoncaova for the help with the research on the diagrams. And thanks to everyone else for the helpful feedback. Thanks for the financial contribution by the Heinrich Böll Foundation, Lush and the Dreikönigsaktion Austria. DIAGRAM 1: New airports and runways in the offing Currently 423 new airports are planned or under construction. 223 of these are in the Asian-Pacific region alone and 58 in Europe. Additional runways thought to number 121 worldwide (28 in Europe) are also planned or under construction. Residents are protesting many of these projects for a multitude of reasons, thus the realisation of these plans is still contested. What the diagram does not show are a further 205 planned runway extensions, 262 new terminals and 175 terminal extensions. Source: CAPA 2017 Infrastructure projects New Airports: 423 New Runways: 121 Headlong growth in a green guise Right now, at this very moment, at least half a million peo- industry’s profits. This is why airlines, airports, transport ple are in the air.1 Over the past 25 years, air travel has ministries and lobbyists are claiming to have found the transformed from a luxury to a common means of trans- perfect solution: green growth. port. Low-cost carriers have made it affordable to quickly discover the world and have spawned an ongoing boom High in the sky: an industry ascendant in weekend breaks by air. For a growing middle and up- From 1990 to 2010, global CO2 emissions rose by an es- per class, this convenience has become a seemingly natu- timated 25%. Over the same period, the CO2 emissions ral part of their holiday plans, of their choice of where to of international aviation rose by more than 70%.2 Within live and work and which relationships they foster. But how the European Union, as elsewhere, emissions from avia- normal is it really to fly, and for whom? And who bears tion rose more rapidly than those from other sectors of the the cost? economy.3 Aviation is the mode of transport with the biggest climate The number of aircraft and the number of passenger-kilo- impact by far: per 1000 passenger-kilometres travelled, a metres flown is expected to double over the next 20 years flight generates on average 18 times as much carbon di- – entailing hundreds of new infrastructure projects around oxide (CO2) as a journey by rail (see Diagram 5). Yet, air the world (see Diagram 1). The international aviation in- travel is growing faster than any other sector. The industry dustry anticipates annual growth of 4.3% throughout the has successfully resisted emission reductions in absolute next decades.4 This could cause the greenhouse gas emis- terms because any such limitation would impact on the sions from aviation to increase four- to eight-fold by 2050.5 Sulphate CH4 reduction Water vapour Soot Contrails Not considered by CORSIA Cooling effects Ozone (26,3 mW/m2) Induced Cloudiness (estimate ...) Considered by CORSIA 2 CO2 (28 mW/m ) Warming effects DIAGRAM 2: Aviation’s climate impacts Aircraft emit various other substances in addition to CO2. Each of those substances has a specific warming or cooling effect of its own. Overall, they amplify the climate impact of aviation. Their specific contribution depends on the assumptions made in calculations. A key variable in calculations is the time horizon that is taken into account, as most sub- stances have a shorter residence time in the atmosphere than CO2 but during this time, their impact on the climate is particularly strong. Austria’s Environment Agency recom- mends assigning a Radiative Forcing Index (RFI) factor of 2.7 to these additional effects, meaning 2.7 times the impact of CO2. Germany’s Federal Environment Agency uses an Emission Weighting Factor (EWF) of 2. Sources: Lee/Fahey et al. 2009, UBA Deutschland 2012, UBA Deutschland 2016, UBA Österreich 2016 4 5 Aviation: the fast way to fry the planet time, protests mount in regions inundated by mass tour- The problem is that every tonne of CO2 emitted caus- ism driven by cheap flights and luxury cruise travel. Water es about three square metres of Arctic summer ice to dis- reserves dwindle under the dual pressure of climate crisis appear, as a recent study has found.6 For instance, if one and tourism. Landfills grow, meanwhile culture becomes person flies from Vienna to the Canary Islands and back, an attraction and a commodity.15 The annual number of about four-and-a-half square metres of Arctic ice melt as a passengers carried by airlines totals 3.6 billion16 – but this result.7 And climate change is not just a matter of glaciers does not mean that half of the world’s population flies. and polar bears. It is not a marginal environmental nui- sance. Climate change means rising sea levels and regions Who flies, who does not? Inequity in airspace around the world that will become uninhabitable. It means At the turn of the millennium, less than 5% of the world’s increased risk of forced displacement of human popula- population had ever sat in an aircraft.17 Latin America and tions, extreme weather events, potential health crises, Africa account for only 11% of passenger traffic by air, threats to agriculture and the food supply, and conflicts while North America and Europe together account for over access to water and fertile land.8 Climate change is half, despite their smaller populations.18 Products such increasingly becoming climate crisis – and thus a crisis for as electronic goods, perishable foods and semi-luxuries, local as well as global economies, threatening livelihoods cut flowers and ‘fast fashion’ products are increasingly be- and human lives. ing carried by air and are mostly consumed in the Global North.19 Industry representatives like to point out that emissions from aviation account for only 2% of global CO2 emis- Within countries, too, there are major disparities in who sions, and that international flights account for only 1.3%. uses air transport and who does not. These are linked di- What they conveniently omit is that the share of emissions rectly to income disparities within societies. It is therefore from the aviation sector is increasing rapidly. In a 2015 re- less paradoxical than it appears at first sight that voters of port to the European Parliament, the research organisation The Greens are the most frequent flyers when compared 20 Öko-Institut warns that CO2 emissions from international to voters of other parties in Germany. They tend to be aviation may reach a share of 22% of global emissions by among those with higher incomes. Those in the highest in- 2050.9 An even larger share is probable for the aviation in- come bracket in Germany fly 6.6 times on average per year, dustry in some individual countries: For the United King- those in the lowest 0.6 times – the latter still being a very dom, projections indicate that if the goal of limiting global high figure on a global scale.21 warming to 1.5 degrees is taken seriously, and the con- So, flying is by no means normal. Rather, this fossil mobili- troversial expansion of London’s Heathrow Airport goes ty system is highly exclusive and imperial: those who travel ahead anyway, aviation will consume up to 71% of the na- by plane or opt for certain products do so at the expense tional emissions budget in 2050.10 of others: residents exposed to noise and particle pollution from the planes, local ecosystems, future generations and It is not just about CO2 of those in the Global South who are already bearing the The aviation industry not only ignores its growing share brunt of the impacts of climate change.22 in emissions compared to other sectors. Its statistics and climate strategies also fail to mention that CO2 is just one dimension of the climate impact of flying (see Diagram 2). The latest scientific studies Example Box 1: estimate that in 2005, aviation’s London City Airport: who bears the consequences? contribution to human-induced climate change amounted to 5%.11 On 6 September 2016, a dozen activists of the Black Lives Matter group blockaded a runway at London City Various other impacts of aviation are often Airport. Their message: ‘Climate Crisis is a Racist Crisis’. ignored: The combustion of fossil fuel is not This act of civil disobedience was directed against the only a principal cause of global warming; its expansion of the business airport, which is located in extraction and transport also contributes to a workers’ district of London. People living in the flight the broader environmental crisis through paths of the airport – many of whom are Black British ecosystem degradation, geopolitical conflict Africans – have incomes that are far lower than those and war.