Our flights really do fuel global warming
11:16am Friday 25th April 2008
The Argus reported yesterday on fears that the sale of Gatwick could lead to a renewed bid to build a second runway.
The rise of the low-cost airline has benefited holidaymakers but led to a surge in the production of greenhouse gases.
Caroline Lucas, a Green party Euro MP for Sussex and prospective parliamentary candidate for Brighton Pavilion, argues that we cannot keep flying and still stay green.
If some of the debates on the pages of this newspaper lately are representative of public opinion more broadly there is, astonishingly, increasing doubt about the impact of human activity on climate change, despite all the scientific evidence to the contrary.
Though it's heartening that we are engaging in the debate, a number of factual inaccuracies are spilling into the discussion, leading some of your columnists and correspondents to reach questionable, and dangerous, conclusions.
Perhaps the gravest of these has been Adam Trimingham's recent offering which proclaimed that we can keep flying and still stay green.
Most importantly, suggesting that global temperatures have turned a corner, and that they have been beginning to fall over the last few years, confuses climate, the long-term trend and weather, the immediate conditions as actually experienced during any short time-frame.
It's true that recent weather has been a degree or two cooler than in, say, the 1990s, but the long-term trend in climate is unequivocally still one of global warming.
This is perhaps best demonstrated by a report from the United Nations Environment Project, which reported that global ocean temperatures - a much better measure of climactic trends, as the seas cool and warm much more slowly - are rising much faster than anyone had predicted, and that this threatens to harm both wildlife and coastal communities, including those here in England.
Secondly, the idea that climate change might not be so harmful anyway completely flies in the face of the political and scientific consensus - and the daily experiences of the literally millions around the world who are already suffering some of its most devastating consequences.
Regular flooding in Bangladesh, for example, caused by rising sea levels driven by global warming, is set to make large swathes of one of the most densely populated nations on Earth virtually uninhabitable.
Desertification in large areas of Africa, Australia and North America is already driving food shortages and pushing up prices.
For a Sussex columnist to suggest that global warming might not be all that bad seems like extreme parochialism.
Though Sussex will feel some of the worst impacts in the UK (due to its long coastline and dense population), most of us living here aren't on the breadline, and most buildings are insured (though certainly not all).
The worst consequences will be felt by those in the developing world and by the poorest in those societies.
Our moral duty to tackle climate change stems largely from the fact we, in the richer, industrialised countries, are largely responsible for the problem but won't suffer the worst impacts.
If we are to take on that duty, as most (not least the Government, the EU and the United Nations) agree we must, we have to cut our emissions of the greenhouse gases, principally carbon dioxide, which are driving the problem in the first place.
The fact remains that the aviation industry is one of the fastest growing source of these emissions.
Mr Trimingham suggests that flying is only responsible for between 1% and 2% of these emissions here in Britain - but the real figure is more like 13% when the full impact of all aviation emissions are taken into account.
Even more important, though, is the industry's rate of growth and its projected emissions over time.
In Britain alone, flight numbers are projected to near treble by 2030, from 180 million passengers a year in 2007 to half a billion in just over 20 years' time.
Globally, this growth is projected to be even faster.
While it is true the industry is delivering some operational and technological improvements to help reduce emissions per passenger per mile, this rapid growth in total flight numbers means these savings will never outweigh the extra emissions produced by this enormous rise in passenger numbers.
According to scientists at the Tyndall Centre, one of the UK's foremost climate change institutes, aviation's emissions are growing so fast that they will gobble up all reductions from every other sector if we don't adopt other modes of travel.
This means that unless the airlines cut their emissions significantly in the coming decades, we won't be able to emit any other greenhouse gases, not from manufacturing, travelling by other means, heating our homes, building, nothing, if we want to meet our targets and stabilise atmospheric levels.
This is plainly ridiculous.
The only conclusion must be that we can't keep flying and still stay green.
By echoing the Government's arguments in favour of building new runways and airports around the South East, Mr Trimingham also overlooks many of the benefits that could follow any decision to cut back on flying in favour of other means of transport.
In the wake of the Terminal 5 chaos, a perceived increase in the terrorist threat and warnings of long delays for air travellers from Gatwick this summer, the reality is that most people on short-haul and European flights spend longer in the airport than they do actually making their journey - and most people think it's a pretty dismal experience.
On the other hand, travelling by boat or train might take a little longer (though not always!) but getting there can all be part of the cultural journey.
The arguments in favour of expanding aviation, and building new runways and airports, are largely economic but even these are fatally flawed.
In the UK alone, the sector enjoys massive hidden state subsidies and tax breaks, of around £10 billion every single year.
That's about £1,000 a year for every man, woman and child in the country.
Studies consistently show the richest in our society fly further, and more frequently, than the less well-off.
This represents a massive transfer of wealth from the have-nots to the haves.
With the global economy stalling, and The Argus reporting that families living in Brighton and Hove are facing rising living costs of around £250 a year, can we really afford that?
The immediate answer must be to fund and develop alternatives, like more affordable high-speed trains, and ferry travel - but, in the longer-term, structures will need to change to enable us to plan our lives so as to travel more slowly and less frequently, but for longer.