Aviation’s big players are facing up to emissions, but too slowly

Aviation’s big players are facing up to emissions, but too slowlyLike the aviation pioneers of last century, the four airlines calling for air travel emissions to be included in a global climate deal are a brave bunch. The world would be a better place if their idea takes off.

Air France-KLM, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Virgin Atlantic, along with airport operator BAA, want greenhouse gas emissions from aviation to be managed under a global deal to replace the Kyoto protocol when it expires in 2012. The new deal will be negotiated by world leaders at the United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen in December.

Air travel accounts for 2% of global emissions, a contribution that is not included in country climate targets under the current Kyoto protocol. By making air travel emissions part of a global climate agreement, airlines everywhere will come under pressure from governments to account for their environmental impacts.

The four airlines have formed the Aviation Global Deal coalition, which met for the first time in Hong Kong in February. Their position is in line with those of many policymakers and environmentalists worldwide who believe that, to be credible, a global climate deal must include both aviation and shipping. Yet the coalition is at odds with the rest of the aviation industry, which has in the past resisted climate regulation. Most recently the industry lobbied, unsuccessfully, against the inclusion of aviation in the next phase of the European Union emissions trading scheme from 2012.

Airlines have recently started taking small steps to go green, but are yet to find the real breakthrough that will make flying cleaner (see our special report). The willingness of some airlines to lobby for global rules to govern the sector’s environmental impacts is long overdue.

The treatment of air travel matters perhaps more than any other economic sector when it comes to climate change. Rightly or wrongly, flying has come to symbolise environmental damage in a way that lower profile polluters have not. The controversy over expansion at London’s Heathrow airport, for example, shows how the sector is a lightning rod for protest against national climate change efforts.

World leaders meeting in Copenhagen will have to strike a tough balance between reducing emissions from aviation and acknowledging the benefits that flying can bring. If they go soft on airlines, customers will have less incentive to change flying habits. But if governments crack down hard on airlines, they could do more harm than good.

The social value of flying, as a means of bringing people together from different parts of the world, is incalculable. A world without flying would be less global, less mobile and less fun. Eco-fundamentalists who judge flying by its carbon emissions alone want us to sacrifice all this. But airlines that downplay their environmental impacts underestimate the scale of the climate challenge facing us all.

The airlines trying to bridge this polarised debate deserve credit. Yet sooner or later, we must accept that we will all have to fly less if the world is properly to address climate change. The airlines that survive the coming century will be those that can best respond to this new reality.

editor@ethicalcorp.com



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