Explanation:
Everything we do, from the food we eat, products we buy to the way we travel, releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and so has an impact on the planet’s climate. But some activities have a far greater impact than others.
Around 2.4% of global CO2 emissions come from aviation. Together with other gases and the water vapour trails produced by aircraft, the industry is responsible for around 5% of global warming.
At first glance, that might not seem like very big contribution. Except, only a very small percentage of the world flies frequently. Even in richer countries like the UK and the US, around half of people fly in any given year, and just 12-15% are frequent fliers.
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Though there is no exact data, Dan Rutherford, shipping and aviation director at the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), a US-based non-profit, estimates just 3% of the global population take regular flights. In fact, if everyone in the world took just one long-haul flight per year, aircraft emissions would far exceed the US’s entire CO2 emissions, according to ICCT analysis.
Looking for locations to visit closer to home during holidays can reveal surprising things about the places on your doorstep (Credit: Getty Images/Javier Hirschfeld)
Looking for locations to visit closer to home during holidays can reveal surprising things about the places on your doorstep (Credit: Getty Images/Javier Hirschfeld)
For those of us that do fly, it is likely to make up a significant slice of our personal carbon footprint. This is because, mile for mile, flying is the most damaging way to travel for the climate. (Read about the Finnish town that is rationing carbon emissions.)
A return flight from London to San Francisco emits around 5.5 tonnes of CO2 equivalent (CO2e) per person – more than twice the emissions produced by a family car in a year, and about half of the average carbon footprint of someone living in Britain. Even a return flight from London to Berlin emits around 0.6 tonnes CO2e – three times the emissions saved from a year of recycling.
And emissions from planes are rising rapidly – they increased by 32% between 2013 and 2018. While improving fuel efficiency is gradually reducing the emissions per passenger, it is not keeping up with the rapid increase in total passenger numbers, which are projected to double in the next 20 years.
“You have fuel efficiency improvements on the order of 1% per year, and flights are increasing 6%,” says Rutherford, “It's not even close.”
Other substances, including mostly water in the form of contrails, as well as soot and nitrous oxides, all have a capability of trapping additional heat at flight altitude – Stefan Gössling
And it is not just the CO2 pumped out from jet engines that is having an effect.
“Other substances, including mostly water in the form of contrails, as well as soot and also nitrous oxides, all have a capability of trapping additional heat at flight altitude,” says Stefan Gössling, a professor at Linnaeus and Lund universities in Sweden who specialises in sustainable tourism.
Yet reducing the amount we fly can seem daunting, especially when we have to travel regularly for business or if we enjoy holidays abroad. But there are ways each of us can lessen the impact of our travel, and when we do fly, keep the emissions to a minimum.
Staci Montori was shocked when she discovered the contribution her own travelling was having on the climate. An integrative medicine practitioner living in Boston, she regularly flew to visit her family in California. But after consulting a carbon footprint calculator, she pledged to go flight free last year. (Read more about why flight shame is making people swap planes for trains.)
“I thought I was so green, but then I realised I'm flying,” she says. “And that's the biggest chunk of my carbon footprint. I had a little bit of a panic moment. I thought ‘How am I going to see my family if I'm not going to fly’?”
