I tend to agree. Air travel contributes around 4% to increased global warming. That is substantial for a single industry. That said, of all industries, it feels like the practical difficulties of reducing that footprint are enormously more difficult than other industries. Air travel is just enormously energy intensive and has unique difficulties in switching to carbon-free energy that other industries do not.
I think some regulations are great, like the prohibition against short haul flights in France that the article mentions. But I think overall efforts to reduce global warming should be targeted in ways that give the "biggest bang for the buck", and aviation-specific changes ain't it.
> That said, of all industries, it feels like the practical difficulties of reducing that footprint are enormously more difficult than other industries.
Only if we assume that we need to maintain or increase the level of air travel. The number of air travel passengers in 2019 (before the pandemic) was around 3.5X as many as it was in the early 1990s. That wasn't that long ago, and people managed just fine with fewer vacations abroad etc. It's easy to look at what we do today and take for granted that it's whats normal and no change is possible, but we consume the resources of 1.8 earths, so clearly we're living above our means. And since millions of people are currently on their way out of poverty and towards the same lifestyle as we as westerners are enjoying, this overconsumption of the planet's resources will get worse if nothing changes.
4% for only 10-15% of the world population, while most other industries distribute more uniformly. I don't subscribe to the alarmism but the hubris of frequent flyers telling everyone else to cut down emissions triggers me. Most idiotic are the people virtue signalling by not eating meat to offset their air travel as if one category cancels the other while the co2 emissions of one transatlantic round-trip flight are about a lifetime of meat consumption (pork and chicken)...
Hypocrites. Like a friend of mine who drives an electric car and takes 30+ flights per year including multiple trips across the Atlantic, entirely for pleasure, since selling his business and entering partial retirement. He's a bit of a prig about everything, politics included, so he's a constant source of judgment about people's politics and emissions. I don't doubt he buys carbon offsets for every flight he takes and blames lack of regulation of the carbon offset market for any harm he's causing.
I think it's closer to a year than a lifetime but the point still stands. Vegetarians who fly are not prioritizing GHG emissions (they usually have other well-weighted decision factors like the agricultural/nitrogen/pesticide pollution and cruelty).
I think some regulations are great, like the prohibition against short haul flights in France that the article mentions. But I think overall efforts to reduce global warming should be targeted in ways that give the "biggest bang for the buck", and aviation-specific changes ain't it.