It is perfectly possible to predict the physical consequences of climate change, and from there one can work out the economic consequences.
Predictions of the physical possible consequences of climate change vary enormously, from 'very unplesant but life goes on' to the extinction of over 90% of life on Earth. All that we can be fairly certain of is that, if greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere continue to increase, the consequences will get worse and the likelyhood of catastrophic impacts will also increase.
Nobody wants to ban flying. It’s a straw man argument. Some people want to see aviation levels reduced.
I'm not going to get involved with this thread other than to say that this is not the case. There are people, in this very thread, who want to ban flying:
I consider this a fringe position, and one which has very little sympathy from governments across the spectrum, but it exists nonetheless.
You could argue that I want to ban flying, or that I want to reduce it. Both are correct to a degree since my suggestion was that we should ban all civilian aircraft which have
any emissions while airborne. This, technically-speaking, is
not a total ban on all flying. However, since no suitable zero-emission aircraft are currently available then this is a de-facto ban on long-haul flights.
I suppose the simplest way of saying it is: "I think we should substantially reduce flying by banning most of it."
Making flying unaffordable for the masses is a political non starter, that is why there have been no serious moves in this direction by any democracy.
I suspect this is the main 'selling point' of a Frequent Flyer Levy rather than just an increase in Air Passenger Duty. The latter would be felt by a much larger segment of the population so would be harder to win support for (whether that support is in the form of votes or something else like petition signitures). Both options are flawed in my view since neither has any impact on cargo planes, but the frequent flyer levy seems a fairer way of doing
something than just wacking up air passenger duty for all passengers.
aviation is not even a top cause of climate change so any effects that aviation will only be a fraction of any final cost.
if aviation was a country, it would be among the 10 biggest emitters - how is that not a 'top cause'?
Fuel duty should also be applied. Under the Chicago Convention you cannot tax the fuel already in the tank when the plane landed. Taxing the fuel that you fill the plane with does therefore have the issue of short-haul operators filling up in Europe with enough for the return journey which adds weight. You may also have transatlantic operators stopping at Shannon in each direction to top up. So we need a pan-European response.
Unilateral action is ultimately not going to be enough to tackle climate change however we look at it. While I am arguing for a ban on all in-flight aircraft emissions, I think this needs to be done as an international argeement, a UK-only ban might have unintended consequences like your extra fuel example for fuel duty. I'm not saying unilateral action is pointless - at least if we're doing something ourselves (such as a frequent flyer levy) it would show that we are serious about this - but there are some things that are best done globally. The Chicago Convention needs replacing with a new international agreement on phasing out aviation (or at least taxing aviation fuel through the roof so that it helps pay for decarbonisation of other industries - like electrifying railways).
what behaviours you're trying to drive - to reduce flights by switching people to other modes or to reduce flights by putting people off going at all.
Both - and this applies to other modes too. For the shortest trips, such as popping to the corner shop, (which wouldn't currently be made by air today anyway) then the focus should be 100% modal shift (from car to 'active travel' in the corner shop example). The longer the journey is, the more the focus should shift towards putting people off going at all (or making a shorter journey instead). For UK domestic flights, then perhaps something like 65% modal shift, 15% shorter journey (which in this case would also mean mode shift), 20% don't travel at all (these are very much numbers plucked out of thin air, since I know little about the current makeup of domestic flights).
There are many other things that need to change to mitigate the climate crisis, but they would be off-topic in a thread on flying. Examples include shifting electricity production away from coal and other fossil fuels, something which the UK has been relatively succesful at, and steps to address building heating (e.g. this thread:
https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/heat-pumps-and-other-domestic-carbon-reduction-measures.248726/)
Obviously the fact that a thread focuses on just one strand of the change needed does not mean other strands don't exist or aren't important.
@eldomtom2 has consistently argued for reducing emissions across the board, so suggesting they don't realise work will be needed in other areas is a tad disingenuous
Agreed - this is a topic on aviation emissions - we are not suggesting that other sectors don't need tackling too. What I think is relevant here is that bans
are being discussed openly in other areas - such as whether or not to ban oil-fired boilers. The oil-fired boiler ban could cause real hardship for some people - how is it that mainstream politicians are willing to discuss that but doing anything meaningful on air travel is off-limits?
we run the risk of seeing aviation emissions increase significantly - that's not really a viable option in a world where everything else is reducing their emissions.
My point exactly.
tackling climate change through taxation feels like a bad idea to me.
Climate change is something that needs to be tackled, I'm not disputing that.
Then how do you think we tackle it if not through taxation?
We won't "decarbonise" or even be carbon neutral by 2040, and that's fine. That and other dates are just arbitrary lines drawn in the sand by politicians, most of whom won't be in office to explain when the time comes to explain why the targets weren't met. The world won't end in 2030/40/50 if aviation, or for that matter any industry doesn't comply with the targets. So let's stop fart-arsing and panicking about on the fringes of climate change, and tackle the big issues. That is energy production, energy storage & distribution, and re-fixing carbon. No more silly targets, no more blaming & shaming, just real world solutions. Its time to do what we do best and innovate, its how we've got this far.
I disagree. Not with the sentiment that the targets are a nonsense, because
there is a strong argument that targets are unhelpful, but with the idea that the current slow pace of decarbonisation is fine. The quicker we can cut emissions, and the lowest level of net emissions we can reach, the better.
The issue with these options is that to date they haven't actual lead to a real terms cuts in emissions at the numbers flying just keep increasing faster than the savings can be made.
It's against that backdrop that many would be suggesting something else is done.
Yes there'll be some extreme views that will require a total ban, however the longer it takes for technology to ride to the rescue the more likely that something closer to a hard limit on the number of flights gains traction rather than something which permits a bit more travel but there being a higher cost.
Indeed. It doesn't look like we have a technical solution anywhere near ready for the problem of high global warming potnetial of emissions (including water vapour) from the vast majority of aircraft, which is why I'm calling for an international treaty to introduce a global ban. I've even tried to phrase the wording of that ban in such a way that it wouldn't actually stop you flying if a technical solution could actually be developed - ie. it would be a ban on in-flight emissions.
The planet has been through periods where the CO2 levels and temperatures were much higher than anything forecast for 2050, and some of the periods were with some irony thought to have been caused by explosions of plant life. The world went on. So no, the world doesn't end on 01/01/2050 if we don't reduce or stop flying.
Yes, CO2 levels and temperatures were higher before, but not since we humans have been around. Big changes in climate are believed to have contributed to all the mass extinctions. So you're right, the world goes on, but it could be a very different one. The Great Barrier Reef could be gone, the world map could look quite different (no ice and less land, more of it being under water), we might all have to sleep in mosquito nets as tropical diseases spread towards the poles, or the human race might even go extinct.
To be quite blunt, the drive for battery powered everything has become a distraction. We don't need to decarbonise everything, just reduce our impact so that our impact on the environment reduces.
I agree - the key word should be
REDUCE - it already comes first when we talk about waste, ie. reduce, reuse recycle. Battery-powered everything doesn't necessarily get us where we need to be - yes it reduces our emissions at point-of-use (which, when that point-of-use is at altitude, such as on an aircraft, can be quite significant) but doesn't necessarily reduce our overall energy use. Electric cars are a good example - they have some benefits but reducing the number of cars altogether (and the distance travelled) would be even better. To reduce our impact on the environment, we need to reduce the greenhouse effect, and we can only do that by emitting
LESS greenhouse gas (in terms of greenhouse impact not just volume) than plants etc. remove from the atmosphere (net-negative emissions).
The primary purpose of carbon taxes is not to fund decarbonisation efforts but to disincentivise carbon emissions.
Perhaps that needs to change - there is a shortage of funding for decarbonisation efforts so perhaps carbon taxes need to be seen as more dual-purpose - funding AND disincentivisation?
Will the world end in 2050 if we don't stop flying, yes or no?
The planet itself? Almost certainly no, and even if it did it wouldn't be because of flying. The
living world? Who knows? Does anyone have any idea what the threshold is to trigger a complete collapse? I doubt it, and assume the 2050 net-zero target is an arbitrary one rather than one linked to a science-backed 'cliff-edge', but the fact is those cliff-edges are understood to exist - humantity just doesn't seem to know exactly where they are.
in a couple of generations of engines, aviation engineers have been able to deliver 30-40% more efficiency & reduce noise pollution in things like the A350. Meanwhile Just Stop Oil are defacing works of art or sitting on motorway gantries. Who are the real achievers here?
It depends on what you are trying to acheive. The engineers have achieved
something, but if flights are increasing fast enough to offset the efficiency gains then in terms of
reducing GHG they have achieved nothing. I doubt Just Stop Oil have achieved anything on that count either. Collectively, all the human race has done on this issue so far is fail.
Define "the world end". Will all humans die out? Probably not. Will the world become an unpleasant place to live, with significant parts of it underwater and/or too hot to be habitable? Quite possibly, yes, though 2050 is a rather arbitrary number and isn't really significant. Will there be major wars over limited resources like water and liveable land? Again, probably, yes. It's not a nice prospect.
Yes, a significant reduction in global aviation will reduce the problem posed by climate change. The effect was, if I recall, already noticeable during the COVID near-shutdown.
Good answers, which I agree with. In addition to COVID, I seem to recall Jeremy Clarkson (forget whether it was on 'Top Gear' or one of his other programmes) saying that there was a change in recorded temperatures while North American airspace was closed to civilian traffic following the the September 11th terrorist attacks.
I think humans could die out as a result of climate change, but not by 2050 - there is a chance that we may pass a climate 'tipping point' by then which ultimately leads to our extinction but it would take alot longer than that to actually finish us off.
that would be why global temperature has risen gradually over millenia instead of suddenly spiking in the last two centuries - oh wait.
It has done both,
at least according to this - a slow rise of about 4°C over 20,000 years (from a start point about 4°C cooler than the 1961-1990 average) followed by a sudden spike of about 1°C over the last 130 years. Not even two centuries that.
