[The Practical Nomad Newsletter] Aviation and the environment

Wed Apr 8 16:19:51 PDT 2009

This column with links:
http://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/001666.html

There was no broadcast of "The Amazing Race" this week; the next  
episode will be broadcast April 12 in the USA. That gives me a chance  
to talk about something different, and potentially more serious:  
aviation and the environment.

I was in Geneva last week for a conference on aviation and the  
environment; more specifically, on what the air transport industry  
(aircraft and engine manufacturers, aviation fuel suppliers, air  
traffic control agencies, airport operators, and of course airlines)  
are doing about the impact of aircraft emissions on global warming.

It's big topic, and an important one.

I've been saying for years that when the oil runs out, the era of  
long-distance air travel will end. But I used to think that wouldn't  
be until a generation or so in the future, at least for middle-aged  
people like me. Now, global warming may force us to confront the  
consequences of an end to air travel as we know it even sooner than  
will oil depletion.

What will this mean to our lives and our way of travel? And is there  
anything we can do to preserve the possibility of world travel for  
future generations, or to extend it to the vast majority of the  
world's population who have never been able to afford to fly?

Airplanes can be made more efficient, but all predictions are that  
without drastic change, the increase in total emissions as a result of  
continued growth in air travel (and air freight transport) will far  
exceed any possible reduction in emissions as a result of gains in  
efficiency. For the foreseeable future, there is no alternative to  
liquid fuel with the energy density to be usable for aircraft  
propulsion. The only possible way out would be a renewable liquid fuel.

There was a surprising degree of consensus among both industry  
representatives and technical experts at the Aviation and Environment  
Summit that (1) the only hope for sustainable aviation lies in  
biofuels, and (2) "first generation" biofuels such as ethanol and  
biodiesel, which are produced from plants that compete for land use  
with food crops, must be ruled out. Burning food or potential food is  
not a legitimate way for us to keep flying, or to enable more people  
to fly.

There was equally strong consensus, and greater confidence -- based on  
several successful flight tests in passenger aircraft within the last  
year, and on current refinery technology that can produce liquid fuels  
with the necessary properties from almost any organic raw material --  
that if enough feedstock (biomass) for biofuels can be found, current  
aircraft engines can be operated, unmodified, on "drop-in" replacement  
biofuels.

The air transport industry hopes that "second-generation biofuels"  
produced from feedstock that doesn't compete with food crops (e.g.  
algae harvested from the oceans, or crops grown without irrigation on  
land on which no food or fodder can be grown) might become  
commercially viable, and no more costly than increasingly-expensive  
fossil fuel. That's still unproven. The most that can be said is that  
some such crops seem technically "promising". And that begs the  
question, of course, of how much people would actually be willing to  
pay to travel on airplanes powered by burning plant matter rather than  
petroleum or fuel produced from coal or natural gas.

But at the press conference concluding the summit, Dan Elwell, V.P. of  
the Civil Aviation Aerospace Industries Association told me flatly  
that, "There is no Plan B" for sustainable aviation if biofuels don't  
turn out to be a viable alternative capable of being produced cheaply  
enough, in sufficient quantities, without requiring too much land,  
water, or human labor, and without having adverse effects (such as on  
land and/or water ecology) that offset any benefit in reduced  
contribution to global warming. None of the heads of other industry  
associations on the stage -- representing airlines, airport operators,  
and the industry-wide Air Transport Action Group on the environment  
and climate change -- disputed Elwell's statement.

At the same time, none of the members of the panel of CEO's earlier in  
the day were willing to say, when I asked them directly, what level of  
air travel might be environmentally sustainable. "Let's be clear, the  
solution to this problem is not to stop flying or reduce your flying",  
said Willie Walsh of British Airways. "I think everyone in this room  
agrees that's not the answer."

Samer Majali, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the airline  
association IATA as well as CEO of Royal Jordanian Airlines, went even  
further in his answer to my question, declaring flatly that, "I don't  
believe there should be any limits on growth" of air travel.

For many years, I've devoted myself to encouraging people to travel  
more, especially to the most different places from which, I still  
think, we have the most to learn. Many of those, of course, are places  
we currently have no way to get to except by air. Am I wrong to  
encourage types of travel that require air travel, or to choose to fly  
myself?

I flew 5,000 miles from San Francisco to Geneva and back, at my own  
expense, as part of the process of trying to find a way out of my own  
internal ambivalence:

I'm not a climate change denier, and I believe that there are  
practical and ethical limits to growth. I think people should avoid  
flying where there are other less environmentally harmful  
alternatives. ("Less harmful" is a more honest characterization of any  
powered transport than "eco-friendly".) Much air travel is wasteful,  
even perhaps ethically "wrong".

But I haven't stopped flying. I continue to believe that long-haul  
travel, even by air, can in particular cases have a net positive  
effect on the world, mainly through the secondary effects of the  
permanent changes it can bring about in our worldview, which result in  
changes in how we go on with our lives.

Does this make me a moderate on this issue, or merely a hypocrite? Am  
I alone in asking these questions, or in making a serious effort to  
find the answers?

It's unclear to me if each mile I fly contributes more to global  
warming than each mile I travel in a car, but I rarely drive the sorts  
of distances that I cover on intercontinental flights. There are  
potential alternatives to fossil fuel for surface transportation and  
many other current uses of energy, most obviously through  
electrification and production of electricity from renewal sources,  
and through replacement of fossil-fuel heating and cooling with  
passive solar building designs. But current means of storing  
electricity, such as batteries, are too heavy to use for aircraft  
propulsion. As carbon dioxide emissions from other sources are  
reduced, aviation will constitute a larger and larger share of  
greenhouse gas emissions.

Air traffic is projected to grow rapidly for the next several decades.  
This is not because of increases in per-capita air travel in the First  
World, but because of the growing numbers of people in the rest of the  
world who are just beginning to be able to afford to fly. Today, most  
of the air miles are flown by a relatively tiny percentage of people,  
predominantly from the world's wealthier countries. Equal access to  
air travel for all people worldwide, or even for a significant  
minority of people in "developing" countries, would mean vastly more  
total air travel -- even if we in the First World drastically reduce  
our per-capita flying. This makes it likely that aviation's  
contribution to global warming and oil depletion will rise quickly,  
both in absolute terms and even more as a proportion of total emissions.

Since returning from my most recent trip around the world, I've become  
increasingly caught up in these thoughts, and the research to which  
they have led. But I haven't found anything that really explores both  
the technological prospects and possibilities, and what this means or  
will mean for travellers and the future of travel, in our generation  
and those to come.

Will a sustainable future include long-haul travel at all? If so, what  
will that future look like, and how do we get there? (Trains?  
Trolleybuses? Passenger ships? Changes in patterns of living from  
sprawl to clustering, to living closer to our work, and to using more  
locally-produced goods?) If not, what do we do? In particular, what  
can we do now to make it more likely that such an alternative  
transportation, land use, and housing and employment infrastructure is  
developed and put in place before oil depletion and/or global warming  
eliminate current options such as air travel and air freight?

I'm beginning to think that this may be the topic of my next book, but  
I'm not sure enough people would want to buy it: Do travellers want to  
think about being forced, much less about choosing, to change our  
travel lifestyle? Where might this issue be by the time I could  
research and write a book and get it into print, most likely a couple  
of years from now? And, of course, would any publisher pay me enough  
of an advance to afford the necessary research and writing time?

Please let me know what you think, in comments on my blog or by e-mail.

Post your comments:
http://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/001666.html

(Comments are moderated to reduce comment spam, and I'm still  
travelling, so don't worry if your comments don't appear on the Web  
site immediately.

-- 

Edward Hasbrouck
<edward at hasbrouck.org>
<http://hasbrouck.org>
+1-415-824-0214

"The Practical Nomad: How to Travel Around the World"
(4th edition 2007)
"The Practical Nomad Guide to the Online Travel Marketplace"
<http://www.practicalnomad.com>

Around-the-World and multi-stop international air tickets:
<http://hasbrouck.org/tickets/>