Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
By 2020, the forecasts indicate that demand will be rising by about 15 million a year,
equivalent to a new Gatwick Airport every two years.
Clearly, the political as well as the environmental consequences of such expansion
would be totally unacceptable. These projections only serve to show the nonsense of
assuming the possibility of continuous exponential growth. The old 'predict-and-
provide' model is simply not going to work and has to be abandoned.
Most significantly, climate scientists have concluded that improvements in air-
craft and engine technology and in air traffic management will not offset the projected
growth in aircraft emissions. That means that, in order to reduce the growth in air-
craft greenhouse gas emissions, we will have to slow, and then reverse, the growth of
air travel.
The European Commission's
Communication on Air Transport and the Environ-
ment
(COM(1999)640-C5-0086/2000) comes to a similar conclusion:
The air transport industry is growing faster than we are currently produc-
ing, and introducing technological and operational advances which reduce
the environmental impact at source. The overall environmental impact is
bound to increase since the gap between the rate of growth and the rate of
environmental improvement appears to widen in important fields such as
emissions of greenhouse gases. This trend is unsustainable and must be
reversed because of its impact on climate and the quality of life and health
of European citizens.
(EC, 1999)
Some solutions
We are not short of policy instruments to begin to curb the growth of aviation. Key
among them would be:
•
a European-level charge on aviation, based on emissions;
•
an end to all public subsidies to aviation and to all its tax exemptions;
•
investment in less-polluting travel alternatives; since 70 per cent of European air
trips are less than 1000km, there is huge scope for transfer to alternatives;
•
research into, and promotion of, further alternatives to business air travel,
including video-conferencing, telepresence, etc;
•
optimization of air traffic control, which alone could reduce aviation's carbon
dioxide (CO
2
) emissions by 6-12 per cent over 20 years;
•
changes to land-use planning law, requiring all applications for airport develop-
ment to give full consideration to climate change, health, external costs and
alternative job creation; and
•
a public education programme on the negative economic and ecological conse-
quences of air transport.
The new bottom line
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is calling for cuts of at least
60 per cent in CO
2
emissions by 2050. Aviation needs to play its part in achieving
that goal: this is the new bottom line. And this is where sustainable development
