I've voluntarily paid for carbon offsets for every flight I've taken since 2018 or so (it's a checkbox on the airline site I use most), and the added cost to me is really minimal.
And yes, I do realize carbon offsets are sort-of a scam, but willingness to pay for them is sort-of a signal as well, and it's the best one can do, I guess? I also realize that commercial passenger aviation is not a significant polluter, percentage-wise, and that the industry already has incentives to improve their carbon footprint (simply by reducing fuel demand), which it has been readily taking advantage of as soon as it was feasible (737-NG is very much a thing, as are similar Airbus upgrades).
But still, 'polluter pays' is a sound concept. The global (water-based) shipping fleet would do good to take notice...
Water-based shipping is extremely efficient. (However, they should be forced to install pollution controls on their internal combustion engines instead of just injecting raw exhaust into the ocean.)
Of course, reducing their carbon footprint would also be good, but it's currently only 3% of global emissions:
The carbon impact of the stuff on the ships is likely much higher. For instance, this BBC article breaks it down for food, and, for ocean-shipped stuff, the carbon emissions of transporting the food is rounding error:
The only real exceptions to the rule involve highly-perishable food that has to be flown in next day, but that doesn't have anything to do with ocean transport.
As far as I can tell, carbon offsets are a complete scam (vs. putting the money directly into stuff that reduces carbon production).
If anyone knows how to pay an existing company to extract carbon from the atmosphere, and store it in a biologically inactive form for > 1000 years, then I'd love to hear about it.
>>If anyone knows how to pay an existing company to extract carbon from the >>atmosphere, and store it in a biologically inactive form for > 1000 years,
>>then I'd love to hear about it.
They're called trees.
If global warming were about reducing carbon dioxide, we would be planting them in every available square inch of open ground.
We could but global warming makes even that pretty difficult. Trees don't fare so well in droughts or extreme heat.
Though I suppose there's still plenty of areas that are viable and some that were previously too cold becoming moderate.
But trees are also not super great for carbon capture. At night they exhale CO2 as we do and they don't absorb a lot. Even if we did cover every practical inch with them it would still take so long to capture it all that the worst of climate change would have long happened.
You could just cut out the middle man and pay to sequester carbon directly, why do that with an airline at the point of sale?
Some quick searching suggests that on hour of air travel is approximately 100 kg/hr of CO^2 per person.
A 2x4 that's 12ft long weighs around 10 kg, burning a kg of wood releases around 1.5kg of CO^2.
So, to a first approximation if you take a coast to coast flight in the US you'll come out around even if you buy around 35 (100x5.5/15) 2x4's, and then find some way to store those permanently.
That's around a 10ft wide wall of 2x4's stacked side-by-side.
Of course buying processed lumber just to store it is really inefficient, which is where carbon credits/offsets etc. come in.
> the added cost to me is really minimal. And yes, I do realize carbon offsets are sort-of a scam, but willingness to pay for them is sort-of a signal as well
Do you not see the contradiction? They are minimal because they are a scam. And it isn't that some are legitimate and others are scams. Carbon offsets fundamentally misrepresent the actual costs of carbon. The cost of getting someone to promise not to cut down trees that would have emitted 1T of CO2 if clear-cut and burned in the open air is fundamentally different from the fractional cost of redesigning air travel to not emit 1T of CO2 in the first place.
Think about it: Are there enough trees about to be clear-cut and burned to offset all the other emissions we need to cut? If so, we could just prevent climate change by saving all the forests. We can't. We have to actually reduce emissions by far more than offsets are saving. In the meantime, offsets create incentives for people to actively plan to burn carbon that they otherwise wouldn't have burned, so that they can be paid to not burn it. This doesn't reduce emissions, it is just an accounting trick. It doesn't lead to a net reduction in carbon.
"But the biggest problems are structural, related to something called additionality.
That’s technical jargon for a simple concept: A carbon offset needs to fund reductions that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. If you pay someone to preserve a grove, but they were never actually planning to cut it down, then you’re not offsetting your emissions. And it’s difficult to establish the facts in these cases with the level of confidence required for offset programs to work.
Part of the appeal of carbon offsets is the notion that it’s possible to meaningfully combat climate change while living our lives and structuring our society in the same way we always have. For that reason, some experts see carbon offsets as actively damaging, inasmuch as they give people cover to avoid reducing emissions at the source."
> to whom, and what will all this money be spent on?
FTFA:
“Commercial jets being delivered today may still be flying in 2050, and new designs powered by batteries or hydrogen will take years, if not decades, to materialize. So for now, the best option is to fill up conventional airliners with less-polluting copycat fuels that don’t require more drilling for oil.
…
The new RefuelEU rule will require airlines to fill their planes with a 2% sustainable aviation fuel blend by 2025, rising to 6% by 2030 and reaching 70% by 2050.
…
Rather than force airlines to pay for their own carbon cleanup, other proposals have emerged, including a tax on passengers.”
"transfer of wealth" is a political term. SO I am guessing that you want to make a political discussion.
meanwhile, on the "reality" side of things. Air traffic is common and not going away, what to do about pollution?
Consider this statement for yourself: Airlines are in a unique position in the economy. Their profits are fragile, their equipment is highly expensive, they require huge amounts of resources to be useful, and they are very much in demand for many reasons. In economic terms "people and companies are willing to pay for air travel and, people and companies cannot fly by themselves"
There is no law of economics that says that airlines have to exist! The invention of the airplane itself was considered science fiction for a thousand years+. We have to find a social balance that works -- the existing technology is new. There is nothing to say that airlines as they exist today, at the price point they bear, is "sustainable" in any way.
So - an economic change has to happen, and it can be painful and strife-ridden, or it can be negotiated via secret deals, or we could have clear thinking and do what is efficient and fair. But most importantly, these changes are not optional ! Environmental crisis is "real" .
We could have had nuclear airplanes and clean nuclear energy decades ago but here we are burning coal to power our EVs and acting like air traveling is something to be ashamed of…
Jokes aside, I don’t see how this should work, people with lowest income wont be able to travel yet everyone else will
Pay the ticket and go on their marry way. People pay 20$ to select the seat, they will pay 20 more in some made up tax to get where they want to go…
> people with lowest income wont be able to travel yet everyone else will Pay the ticket and go on their marry way.
I was discussing with an older friend the other week, we stumbled on the realization (maybe it's obvious) that progressing up the well-being ladder means consuming more energy and CO2, compare living in an unelectrified village with bathing in the river, and just sitting around with your friends for entertainment; with a villa with a hot shower, TV, and food flown from all over the world.
We were also discussing about how sad it is that when he was a travelling young man, he could still visit the "authentic" places, i.e. places with huts and no electricity, paved roads, or cars, but as time goes on those places now have brick buildings, TV, air-conditioning and asphalted roads, which is what the people living there wanted and got.
Now the poorer people of the world are screaming about the rich west saying "You've enjoyed all the luxuries and now you want to make it more expensive because 'save the planet', the one you ruined gaining all those luxuries? Not with us!". Even the working class French screamed about proposed increase of gasoline taxes...
It’s normal to enjoy development if you come from a less privileged country. But it sometimes happens that consumers in those countries specifically demand examples of development that are more polluting than others, purely for the sake of social status. Think being able to buy a perfectly decent modern, fuel-efficient car, but instead buying a low-gas-mileage SUV because that lets them look like a big man to their community.
Suggesting to those consumers that they avoid the mistakes that the West made, and just leapfrog straight to the modern, efficient tech, is a bit like suggesting average Americans take public transportation: “What, you want me to do something poor people do?”
I'm fortunate to live in a place with ubiquitous excellent public transport and I've not driven a car in 5 years. I don't miss it at all, in fact it's amazing not having to deal with parking, maintenance, damage, cleaning, insurance, road tax, fuel prices.. 20€ a month covers all my travel needs now <3
I zealously shill the values of nuclear power 7 days a week, but unless we discover a physics revelation nuclear airplanes are a horrible concept.
There are no forms of nuclear power production existing or theoretical which don't involve health-hazardous amounts of radioactive material. Even hydrogen fusion reactors activate the housing walls with neutrons. Miracle on the Hudson would have been much less miraculous if it meant terabecquerels of activity floating downstream.
As far as I know, in the 50ies the molten salt reactors where researched exactly with long range airplanes in mind.
My point is that for decades we didn’t invest enough into nuclear research in fear of nuclear weapons that all we are doing now is trying to put a band aid on the severed hand.
An extra $200 a flight is not going to have a massive impact on the average middle class American who goes on an international vacation once every 5 years or so.
None of this will have an impact on the average American because the average American doesn’t fly. More than half of all Americans don’t get on a plane in any one year.
Nuclear power is a great idea. With heavy heavy heavy shielding that is. Maybe even worth using it to synthesize fuel for airplanes. But don't stick it on a plane.
"polluters". Literally the least harmful to the environment gas is getting the most attention. The only gas which actually increases planet growth and is completely benign to humans.
Minewhile, chemical factories, oil refineries, and other real polluters of real harmful chemicals laugh as the climate change narrative took off all the pressure from pollution which causes cancer and death into this insufferable virtue signaling.
This study claims that it is unrealistic to have net-zero air travel fueled by hydrocarbons by 2050[0]. If the fuel is made from biomass, then increase in land use alone would nullify any benefits. If the fuel is made from renewable electricity, then they end up using 9% of forecast renewable electricity production in 2050. This ends up cannibalizing electricity use for other things. It 10 times more effective to displace one coal plant than to use the same electricity to make fuel.
This does assume that clean electricity is limited, so a workaround is simply to build more nuclear powerplants. Without severely curtailing flight this may be the only option.
Greta Thunberg has been right all along in this - the only sustainable way to travel as frequently as we’ve become accustomed to is by boat. I love cheap and convenient world travel as much as anyone, but it’s a guilty pleasure being so obviously unsustainable.
Traveling by boat is unsustainable. A plane can bring people across the Atlantic in 6 hours. A boat needs a few days. Consider how many boats we need to have several days' worth of air traffic floating around. And all the sulphur-laden fuels they use in international waters...
That along with the wasted time.. I think we should focus on the things we can replace.
Flying is bad but it's a huge benefit to our society. IMO it's the one we should look at last especially because the greener alternatives are still a ways away. Unlike most other CO2 producers like energy and automotion.
I'd say how about the world leaders set an example and start having meetings over Zoom instead of everyone flying their private gets to South Germany for an all expense paid retreat on the taxpayer dime.
Sounds good. Let the people and governments figure out how to build out public transportation. We are 20 years behind Asia and 50 years behind Europe at this point.
Is that a problem? The company could always pay the extra to fly you if your work is really that important. I'm pretty sure that's what the paywalled article is suggesting.
Nope, airline travel is 2-2.5% of all greenhouse emissions.
All the coal we burn is at least 10 times that. If we stopped burning coal it would actually make a difference. Air travel is a rounding error in comparison.
To keep it simple, 10 years of burning coal is 100 years of aviation.
100 years of coal is 1000 years of aviation.
And with your analogy, if I have 100,000 dollars and I give you $2000, I still have almost $100,000. If I give you $20,000, that’s going to make a dent. Repeat 4 more times and I’m broke.
Any of that sinking in?
It’s really important that people understand because they’re literally driving us into a climate disaster.
It’s 3% and growing quickly. Also that’s only the burning of kerosene, it excludes extraction and refining as well as all the support services air travel requires.
And yes, I do realize carbon offsets are sort-of a scam, but willingness to pay for them is sort-of a signal as well, and it's the best one can do, I guess? I also realize that commercial passenger aviation is not a significant polluter, percentage-wise, and that the industry already has incentives to improve their carbon footprint (simply by reducing fuel demand), which it has been readily taking advantage of as soon as it was feasible (737-NG is very much a thing, as are similar Airbus upgrades).
But still, 'polluter pays' is a sound concept. The global (water-based) shipping fleet would do good to take notice...