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Title: The environmental question
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(Date Posted: 02/18/2006 11:18 AM)

Without doubt, the most important question confronting the low cost air travel industry - one which has barely beendiscussed so faronattitude Travel- is how rising numbers of passengers and increased air services may be doing colossal and irreparable damage to our environment.It's a simple fact that the immense popularity of budget-priced flights is undeniable... to the point where for most people any environmental concerns are, if anything, an afterthought.So it's time to do something about this.Raising the environmental question just at thepoint when people are actively looking forcheap flights - and highlightingthequestion in new and different ways-will be,I hope, an effective strategy to give theissue a higher profile.

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(Date Posted: 02/18/2006 11:24 AM)


In this article from July 2005 The Age  lays out the case against Ryanair:

"The pressure group Future Forests calculates that each Ryanair passenger journey equates to an emission of 0.6 tonnes of carbon dioxide. To offset its annual impact on the climate, the airline would need to plant 16.5 million trees."

A lean, mean (not green) budget flying machine

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(Date Posted: 02/18/2006 11:27 AM)


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(Date Posted: 02/18/2006 11:29 AM)


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Alan Lansdowne
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(Date Posted: 02/18/2006 11:37 AM)


And here are two more articles well worth reading:

What is the real price of cheap air travel?  in The Observer talks about strategies being employed by conscientious objectors who no longer want to contribute to aviation greenhouse gas emissions - and has some criticisms about the trend towards carbon offsetting.

Flight pledge: Grounding passengers  in spiked by Tourism lecturer Peter Smith asks if driving up the cost of flights does little other than recast flying as a privilege of the wealthy elite. 

 

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(Date Posted: 02/18/2006 11:43 AM)


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Alan Lansdowne
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(Date Posted: 02/28/2006 12:22 AM)


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(Date Posted: 02/28/2006 12:23 AM)


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Alan Lansdowne
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(Date Posted: 02/28/2006 12:32 AM)


Evidently, Monbiot's position is that either

a) we massively reduce how often we fly

or

b) we can basically say goodbye to the biosphere.

Is there no other solution?

If not, what  effective mechanisms can be introduced to ensure that people fly less often?

One  proposed solution is to add  prohibitive financial penalties on to the cost of airfares, so that people have no choice but to fly less.

But if costs are passed on to the passenger as a way of reducing the amount of people flying - and thus the amount of flights in operation  - we end up with a situation once more where those rich enough can fly whenever they want and those less rich cannot.

So we achieve an environmental goal but we go backwards in terms of social empowerment.

It's widely accepted that emissions need to decrease - and the easiest way to  achieve a reduction  is to  force people  to  fly less  - but, to my mind, ability to pay should not be the determining factor in who gets to fly and who doesn't.

An alternative solution might be air-mile-rationing, where people are legally allowed to fly x number of kilometres per year and that is their allowance. The same for rich or poor, for company owners and for employees.

But some people will want to fly more than their allowance and some less. So air-mile permits can be made tradable on the open market (think eBay!) so that those who do not wish to fly can sell some or all of their permits to those who do wish to. (A bit like emissions trading).

Of course those who fly the most would never agree to this. But I think it's a better idea than saying to people with limited budgets - basically, you can't fly anymore.

What does everyone else think? 

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(Date Posted: 03/02/2006 6:49 PM)


I agree that the environmental impact of air travel in particular is unsustainable....

Perhaps we should all aim to reduce our flights to,  perhaps one long-haul and two short-haul flights per year?....At least it would be a start...
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(Date Posted: 03/03/2006 2:23 AM)


That's an admirable target - but in the real world there is a big problem with people not carrying through on their resolutions. What suggestions do you have to a) enforce or b) incentivise this target?

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(Date Posted: 03/07/2006 3:20 PM)


In a comment in the travel section of The Telegraph, entitled Guidebooks that reveal the real you, Judith Woods comments:

Rather ironically, the founder of Rough Guides last week joined forces with the founder of Lonely Planet books to decry the casual attitude to air travel that could have a devastating impact on global warming. Warnings will appear in all new editions about the impact of flying and encouraging readers to "fly less and stay longer".

If she thinks it's ironic that Tony and Maureen Wheeler and Mark Ellingham are now  taking this stance, what's she going to make of attitude Travel increasingly adopting the same line?

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(Date Posted: 04/01/2006 10:22 AM)


Two points of interest in an article published today in The Observer, written by Juliette Jowit, the Transport Editor:

Pollution threat as flights hit 500m a year

The first is that:

Ministers will also reveal tomorrow that politicians and civil servants fly the equivalent of 100,000 trips to New York every year on business

which sounds like a surprisingly high figure for public sector employees  - though it's fairly meaningless without comparable figures showing how much business people, tourists and travellers also fly.

The second is that:

...currently aviation contributes less than 5 per cent of all UK greenhouse gas emissions. But the sector is already the fastest growing source of greenhouse gases. Aviation emissions are nearly three times more potent as greenhouse gases because they take place high in the atmosphere. Because of this, one report suggests aviation alone will use up the entire UK pledged carbon allowance in the second half of this century.

It would be helpful to know the source for these statistics.

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(Date Posted: 04/01/2006 11:15 AM)


Despite the shortcomings of Carbon Emissions offsetting, discussed above, this tool provided by the Carbon Neutral Company provides a useful insight into how much CO2 per  seat will be pumped into the earth's atmosphere during your flight and how you can do something to limit the harmful effects of these emissions.

Calculate your flight emissions

Looking at the whole issue from this perspective raises another question though.  If you opt to take the most environmentally responsible option and choose not to fly - and let's face it, thousands of airliners fly every day with empty seats - the aircraft won't produce less emissions during the flight, will it?

Only when enough people opt not to fly and the airline reduces how frequently it flies can this strategy have any substantial effect.

 

 

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(Date Posted: 04/03/2006 10:34 PM)


Reply to : attitudetravel


Two points of interest in an article published today inThe Observer, written by Juliette Jowit, the Transport Editor:Pollution threat as flights hit 500m a yearThe first is that:Ministers will also reveal tomorrow that politicians and civil servants fly the equivalent of 100,000 trips to New York every year on businesswhich sounds like a surprisingly high figure for public sector employees- though it's fairly meaningless without comparable figures showing how much business people, tourists and travellers also fly.




It's utterly meaningless when they don't say how many politicians and civil servants there are. A quick Google reveals there are around half a million civil servants in the UK. So does that mean they all fly the equivalent of 0.2 trips to New York on business? Shabby journalism -unfortunately all too common when it comes to statistics.
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(Date Posted: 04/21/2006 6:30 PM)


To date the European low cost airlines themselves - largely responsible for the huge increase in short-haul European flights over the last few years - have made  relatively little contribution to the environmental debate.

Recently however the political lobbying group ELFAA (European Low Fare Airlines Association)  commissioned the economics consulting firm, Frontier Economics, to compile a report on the economic issues related to proposals to include aviation in the European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme.

Following the publication of the report, easyJet  issued the following press release:

"An end to sloppy thinking and hysterical persecution": easyJet calls for a balanced debate on the environment

In the release, Andy Harrison, easyJet CEO makes  some claims worth examining:

1) The report published today shows that aviation only accounts for only 4% of EU-15 CO2 emissions and will account for 5% of EU-25 CO2 emissions in 2030 - these numbers are based upon the European Commission's own numbers. This shows that too much of the debate has been based upon inaccurate and one-sided information.

If these figures are anywhere close to the truth then it sounds like the debate so far has been skewed a little... but you know what they say about lies, damned lies and statistics.

If, by 2030, intra-European aviation still only accounts for 5% of the CO2 emissions of the 25 EU member states, then it sounds like the current fears over airline pollution  might eventually prove unwarranted.  But how  is this statistical projection calculated?

2) Calling for more taxes on air travel is sloppy thinking - in itself, this just puts more money into the pockets of governments and discriminates against the poorest in society who until recently were priced out of the sky. Crucially, and most importantly, it doesn't benefit the environment.

Applying additional taxes and charges to increase the cost of flying to the passenger is only effective if the cost of flying becomes so exorbitant that so many passengers give up flying that the airlines have to reduce the number of scheduled flights they are operating.

The net outcome of reducing the number of aircraft in the air by artificially raising the cost of flying is that people who until not very long ago could not afford to fly very often will, once again, not be able to fly very often. The rich will still be able to fly as often as they like.

 

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(Date Posted: 04/21/2006 6:41 PM)


In response to the Frontier Economics report, Mike Rutter, the chief commercial officer  of UK low cost carrier  flybe - another member of ELFAA -   said:

"It is a real concern of ours that the environment debate is based on such inaccurate and one-sided information.

"The result is that some of Europe's biggest offenders in terms of emissions, in particular road transport, are getting off lightly and aviation is being characterised as a major problem."

He added that  flybe always aims to minimise fuel burn, which both helps the environment and reduces prices.

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(Date Posted: 07/01/2006 6:20 PM)


Here's a recent thoughtful comment from The Times by Carl Mortished which talks about the pros and cons of applying the EU carbon emissions trading system to airlines and how else  the polluter pays principle might be applied to the aviation industry.

Carbon tax on airlines would never fly

Mortished makes an excellent point that taxing kerosene itself  at the point of purchase is probably  a better solution  than trying to tax carbon emissions.

Mortished also makes the point that existing flag-carrier subsidies will  need to be abolished

"If green MEPs are genuine in wishing to curb pollution by aircraft, they must first address the continuing range of subsidies available to near-bankrupt national airlines that fly half-empty planes [...] every government helps with privileged landing rights for carriers, sweetheart deals at municipal airports and, best of all, duty-free kerosene. Why impose a tax when you can remove a subsidy?"

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(Date Posted: 09/21/2006 3:21 PM)


There's another Monbiot article here.
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(Date Posted: 09/24/2006 1:27 AM)


Thanks for that, Alsky!

On a return flight from London to New York, every passenger produces roughly 1.2 tonnes of carbon dioxide: the very quantity we will each be entitled to emit in a year once the necessary cut in emissions has been made.

That's food for thought. 

Monbiot is  more or less  suggesting that each individual  can only  achieve the necessary  reduction in their  personal carbon footprint, if - amongst other things - they never  take a return flight  across the Atlantic again.

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(Date Posted: 10/09/2006 6:14 PM)


$%*'`[Jalabeno]%*'`@Sod the environment!
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(Date Posted: 10/11/2006 11:25 AM)


Thanks for your thoughtful input.

Perhaps you can provide some argument as to why the environment is not a concern for you?

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(Date Posted: 10/12/2006 11:52 AM)


Heh, I was kidding, dude.  It's a concern for everybody, but the lure of a nice cheap weekend trip is so much more immediate  And you can't have your cake and eat it.  Or is the problem eating you up inside?  Are you going to rebrand the site as 'the green (but frequent) budget traveller'?

We're all doomed anyway.  Let's see the world while we can.
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(Date Posted: 10/13/2006 6:53 PM)


Or is the problem eating you up inside?

Yes, pretty much.

I am working on a way for attitude Travel  to be part of the solution, not part of the problem, which - and it pains me to  write this - I think, on balance, it currently is.

On the plus side modern fuel-efficient, passenger-full planes which fly three times a week are better for the environment than outmoded, less fuel-efficient airliners which fly half-full seven days a week.

So making the  wider general public more  aware of less well-known  low cost airlines they hadn't heard of before, is a small contribution to limiting the damage we are currently causing to the environment.

But it doesn't touch the root of the problem. Certainly not when people use cheap flights as an excuse to then fly twice as often.

Ideally - at least from an ecological perspective - the emergence of  low cost aviation should allow people to spend less money for the  flights they would have taken  anyway, without increasing  environmental damage.

In the next few months attitude Travel  will increasingly ask readers to consider making their intended journey by other, less harmful - but just as cheap! - modes of transport if it isn't absolutely necessary that they fly.

This is now increasingly possible with the emergence of low cost trains - which have adopted the low cost carrier template for success - such as iDTGV  in France and megatrain  in the UK.

 


 

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(Date Posted: 10/22/2006 10:09 AM)


$%*'`[konangrit]%*'`@Draconian attempts to reduce the number of air passengers by making it too expensive for many to travel are completely the wrong way to go.

Millions of peoples livelihoods rely on the travel industry, many in relatively poor countries where the money is desperately needed. That's something the hypocritical wealthy environmentalists don't have to worry about whilst 30,000 ft in the air on their way to their latest meetings on climate change. Business meetings around the globe like this are completely unnecessary. They can be conducted via teleconference, something which the leasure travel cannot. You can be sure that any increases in airfares will not affect them. The environment would be in a far worse state if everone followed their examples:

Bob Napier, chief executive of WWF, formerly the World Wildlife Fund, one of the best-known environment groups. In the past 12 months he has visited Spitsbergen, Borneo, Washington, Geneva, and Beijing on business trips and taken a holiday in the Falklands, generating more than 11 tons of carbon dioxide. A typical British household creates about six tons of CO2 a year.

Tony Juniper, director of Friends of the Earth, flew to Malaysia, South Africa, and Amsterdam on business and took his family on holiday to Slovakia in the past year. This weekend he is on a business trip to Nigeria. His trips are estimated to have generated at least eight tons of CO2.

Graham Wynne, chief executive of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, says he was acutely aware of such issues when he made business trips to Indonesia, Washington and Scotland over the past year, clocking up more than five tons of CO2. He also takes occasional holidays to New Zealand.

Patrick Holden, director of the Soil Association, has flown this year to Japan, America (twice) and four European destinations, generating about six tons of CO2

Ministers and staff at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), which is leading government efforts on climate change, have also shown a fondness for flying. New figures show Defra spent ?.8m on airline travel in the past financial year ? five times more than the year before.

[http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2383135,00.html]The Times[/url]

These people want to have their cake and eat it. We have a proven technologies which can help to reduce our admissions from power stations. Environmentalists oppose them all. Nuclear could put a serious dent in carbon emisions in the UK, France, for example produces about 75% of it's electricity from nuclear power. Environmentalists like Tony "8 tons of CO2" Juniper vociferously oppose any realistic way of reducing emmisions such as this, disregarding that current nuclear power stations are of a completely different and far safer design than the Chernobyl reactor. Ironically the evacuation of Chernobyl has been a boon for wildlife, with Lynx, eagles, bears, and many other rare animals populating the area now free from danger of humans.

[url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4923342.stm]Wildlife defies Chernobyl radiation[/url]

Environmentalists, oppose all the alternatives such as hydroelectric dams, and even windturbines, on the grounds they kill birds and bats.

The only solution they offer is for us to return to some kind of left wing stone(d?) age hunter gatherer fantasy world.

What is needed are alternatives. Trains are a good alternative for shorthaul flights, but they must be high speed and compete with budget airlines on price. Massive investment is needed, and prices may need to be subsidised. If part of this was funded by reasonable taxes on air travel, without being so high as to stop people from traveling, then I think many would support that, including me. High speed trains have the potential to outperform planes in terms of travel time due to increasing security procedures at airports, they are also a more comfortable environment.

Trains aren't an alternative for long haul flights, there are no realistic alternatives. If we want to travel long distances, we have to fly. So instead of restricting air travel, we need to make it less environmentally damaging. Massive investment is needed in developing Biokerosene, fortunately one man did this recently, Richard Branson, pledging to invest all profits from his transport businesses over the next ten years, around $3bn, into developing biofuels for aircraft, amongst other things.

[url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,1878589,00.html]Branson pledges $3bn transport profits to fight global warming[/url]

Branson is not alone, Boeing and Nasa recently teamed up with a Brazilian firm to produce Biokerosene. Biofuels such as Biokerosene offer potential to dramatically reduce carbon emissions from aviation. Instead of trying to restrict people from flying by negative measures such as large taxes, governments should be attempting to help people fly in a more environmentally friendly way by investing money into technologies such as this to enable everyone to fly in a more environmentally friendly way.

[url=http://today.reuters.com/news/articleinvesting.aspx?view=CN&storyID=2006-08-28T183515Z_01_N28337399_RTRIDST_0_ENERGY-BRAZIL-BIOFUEL.XML&rpc=66&type=qcna]Brazil firm links with U.S. to produce biokerosene[/url]
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(Date Posted: 10/24/2006 1:40 PM)


"Trains are a good alternative for shorthaul flights, but they must be high speed and compete with budget airlines on price.... High speed trains have the potential to outperform planes in terms of travel time due to increasing security procedures at airports, they are also a more comfortable environment."

Well, this is the problem at the moment. A European train network capable of providing an alternative to budget flights even for short-haul routes is nowhere near ready. For example, Brussels and Rome are roughly 730 miles apart. To fly between the two takes about 2 hours. If we add, say, 6 hours for transfers to/from the city centres, plus airport procedures, that gives a travelling time of 8 hours one-way -so a return flight would take you 16 hours. Therefore a train doing 100 mph could in theory beat the plane on this route.
How long, though, does it take to get from Brussels to Rome by train? 16 hours +. One-way.
Another example: it's around 300 miles from Lisbon to Madrid. You can fly between the two in about an hour. Add 6 hours for transfers and airport procedures and we get a total travelling time of 7 hours. A train should be able to beat that easily. But how long does the trip actually take? 9 and a half hours. If it took that long to drive 300 miles, you'd be cursing.
True, very rarely the train is quicker -but that's mainly for domestic routes such as Paris-Marseille, and even then an efficient national rail service and a decent high-speed train are required.
The only significant area in which trains have an advantage over planes on routes actually flown by the latter is in that trains can travel overnight, whereas planes have to adhere to night flying restrictions. Trains really ought to be make more of this advantage -if they could provide comfortable sleeping cars, I'm sure many people wouldn't mind paying extra for the convenience of waking up in the centre of their destination city.
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(Date Posted: 10/25/2006 12:30 AM)


Trains really ought to be make more of this advantage -if they could provide comfortable sleeping cars, I'm sure many people wouldn't mind paying extra for the convenience of waking up in the centre of their destination city.

An excellent point - the train companies in the UK and elsewhere really aren't making enough mileage yet out of how much greener they are when compared to the airlines. When trains can provide city centre to city centre night-time services
for the same price as a budget airline fare, passengers can travel:

a) just as cheaply as they would if they flew low cost

b) much more conveniently because there is no travelling to and from airports, with all the associated hassle of check-in queues, security baggage checks etc.

c) much more time-effectively because they can travel while-they-sleep  so there are no daylight hours lost in transit.

Compared to  the prospect of having to get up in the middle of the night to catch a pre-dawn flight, the passenger will arguably get a much better night's sleep, too.

Here's a real life example:

The First ScotRail Caledonian Sleeper  service departs London Euston station at 23:45 and arrives at 07:16 the next morning at Edinburgh Waverley station. For
that you get a proper berth, so you can stretch out and sleep properly  all night - unlike in an airplane seat where you have a few short hours to sleep in a cramped position.

Cheapest fares on Bargain Berths start at GBP 19 one-way.

The available low  fare aviation alternatives include:

bmi

Departs London Heathrow at 06:40 and arrives at Edinburgh Airport at 08:00

Total Cost: GBP 27.10 one-way including taxes

easyJet

Departs London Stansted at 07:00 and arrives at Edinburgh Airport at 08:20

Total Cost: GBP  19 one-way including taxes

Comparing these three options, is it possible to argue that there is a better choice of transport than the one which is also the most ecologically friendly?

Why isn't First Scotrail promoting its Bargain Berths harder on this basis?

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(Date Posted: 10/25/2006 11:55 AM)


Yes -a good example. Of course, for night journeys, high-speed journeys are not always necessary. No one would want to take that berth to Edinburgh and arrive at 4 in the morning. By the way, going back to what I was saying about Lisbon and Madrid, a high-speed rail link is in fact planned between the two. Scheduled to open in 2014, it will cut the journey time to less than 3 hours.
For more detail on future European rail travel, look at the Trans-European Transport Networks site, especially this report.
See also here. For an academic study of the air/rail issue, see Antonia Cokasova's thesis.
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(Date Posted: 10/25/2006 12:30 PM)


Antonia Cokasova directs us to the report Aviation and the Global Atmosphere, which has plenty of information on the impact of aviation on the atmosphere.
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(Date Posted: 11/06/2006 11:52 PM)
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(Date Posted: 11/10/2006 12:43 PM)


While I applaud the  environmentalism of the people at planestupid, their goal of banning all flights, their crass -  not to mention illegal and  damaging -  methods of raising public awareness and their lack of  information makes them look like a bunch of luddite reactionaries.

Plane Stupid activists have shut down the HQ of Easyjet in London

The easyJet HQ is at Luton airport, not in London. It appears that planestupid shut down the easyGroup HQ. That will be the first blow struck against cheap mobile telephony and men's toilet products then.

25 travel agents across the UK last night had their front doors chained shut by activists

Right, because it's the  companies who sell flights (amongst many other travel-related services) who are the problem. Not the people who buy flights.  Are we honestly expected to accept (unquestioningly) that consumers themselves are  the blameless victims of travel agency marketing campaigns?

At the end of the day it's easier to attack corporate entities, because it gives activists a higher profile and more column inches.

But dealing with the root of the problem  requires  challenging the attitudes of the consumer as well  and giving them  intelligent and well-argued  reasons to consider alternative methods of transport.

This blockheaded approach gives none of  us any credit as intelligent and adult human beings.

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Alan Lansdowne
Editor, attitudetravel.com


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