emilyUK

There was an article in Friday's Guardian that claims the airline industry is heading for the 'neutral zone'.

Is that true? According to the article Silverjet is the only airline that's 'carbon neutral' currently, with the carbon offset included in the price of the ticket. But surely all airlines will start charging a carbon tax soon. Sounds like a good thing. But people flying business or first class will hardest hit and have to pay more to offset their emissions than others.

It's quite revealing to work out how much carbon you could actually be responsible for.

There's a calculator here that lets you work it out. I'm not sure how it's calibrated. This is what came up for a London to New York flight. The offset cost is supposed to be spent on green initiatives like woodland development.

Economy class:
Travelled (km): 5561.3km
Tonnes of CO2 : 0.61 Travel
Offset Cost: Ł5.19

Business/First Class
Travelled (km): 5561.3km
Tonnes of CO2 : 0.92
Travel Offset Cost: Ł7.82

By comparison a Range Rover creates 0.001 tons per mile. So you could drive 920 miles in it to be responsible for the same amount of emissions as your first/business class flight. Or I could do about 3000 miles in my Golf...

rtwa

There's a better carbon calculator here. You can calculate from just about any point on earth:

http://www.carbonneutral.com/cncalcu...calculator.asp

TMOliver

Smoke and mirrors (and abjectly silly)....

1. I presume the amount of CO2 is based on a particular a/c type with every seat filled. Below 100% load, the CO2 given off is not measurably less, meaning that the "tax" per head should be higher.

2. Why does a Business of First Cl;... passenger cause more CO2 to be emitted? Are they fatter? That's simply an artificialized allocation, with no rational basis.

3. Theoretically, C)2 emitted at high altitude likely would contribute more to global warming than CO2 spewed at sea level, where there's vegetation to "eat" it.

4. As for your tax, who gets the money? Does it go toward "eating" CO2. Better you should spend money to cork a volcano....

About 8000 years ago, when the average temperature was about 4.5C higher than today, climate and available food supply allowed man to migtate to and live successfully over most of the globe It was a time when agriculture flourished far North of today's frigid limits. Maybe we'll get there again....(and yes, seacoasts will change, just as they always have and continue to do so every moment of every day).

carpboy

I was under the impression that oxides of nitrogen were far more a concern than carbon, due to their being emitted at an altitude where they are not normally found.

Rejuvenated

Wow. That is a great tool. Thanks! ^

htb

If your business or first class passenger agreed to sit closer together two, three or even more people could be transported for roughly the same amount of CO2 emission.

The world population about 8000 years ago is estimated to have been around 5 million (http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/worldhis.html). I don't think any comparison to today's situation with more than 1300 times as many people is pretty much invalid.

HTB.

winkydink

Non-government subsidized airlines are profit-motivated. If it makes economic sense, they'll do it. If it doesn't, fat chance.

etch5895

If the programs actually remove the produced CO2 out of the air, that is one thing. But using BA's scheme for example, one of their projects goes towards safe drinking water in India for children. A noble cause to be sure, but what in the world does it have to do with removing CO2?

You can't 'offset' anything until your efforts actually remove CO2 from the air. I am starting to look at these programs with suspicion as false advertising.

TA

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I have to agree. I am kind of surprised at how quickly this carbon neutral thing has caught on. I'm all for reducing the consumption of fossil fuels. But it hasn't been extensively studied or shown where my money would be going if I were paying for one of these schemes. And whether it actually does what it says it does. And, why should I (or a company, for example) put myself at a disadvantage in terms of higher costs, etc, if no one else is going to do it?

Does anyone have any useful, informative information about the other side of the argument?


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rtwa

I'm not sure there is another side to the argument, except 'let's all burn in hell!' Seriously, there are some scientists who say that global warming isn't caused by humans, but by the workings of solar system: it's just a natural thing outside of human control. Therefore all our efforts to be carbon neutral won't make any difference, global warming is going to happen anyway. These scientists are generally considered cranks, however. The vast majority agree that we can do something and we need to now.

So if you pay to have a tree planted somewhere to offset the emissions your trip on an aircraft creates, you're doing something very worthwhile. The problem is that if carbon offsetting is voluntary, then it's not going to work. If 2 people on a plane offset their emissions and the other 298 don't, the effect is almost useless. That's where including a carbon offset in the ticket price is smart: the flight is then definitely carbon neutral, the offset has been achieved.

There's an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal about Jet Trends:
http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2007/02/27/jet-trends/

Just as movie stars have been making a thing of driving a hybrid car like a Toyota Prius that's environmenttally friendly, it going to become trendy to fly responsibly.

Silverjet are the only carbon neutral airline so far, but according to the article private jet firms are getting in on this too.

rtwa

Article here on movie stars going green. Woody Harrelson apparently wears hemp underpants. Now that's how to save the world...

Ben Affleck: "I don't fly on private jets any more. They're horrible for the environment. I go commercial." (on Silverjet?)

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/tm...name_page.html

SmilingBoy

Anything to back up this theory?

SmilingBoy.

SmilingBoy

I am generally amazed at the low figures these calculators give. Makes me feel much better when flying

I am a proponent of reducing CO2 emissions, but I find the way these carbon neutral companies work very awkward. The simplest solution would be to make producers of jet fuel/kerosine/petrol/diesel/coal take part of an emissions trading scheme. There would be a certain number of allowed CO2 emissions, and these are auctioned of. For each ton sold, every producer of fossil fuels would then need to purchase the equivalent CO2 certificates. On top of that, companies that offer to offset CO2 emissions (tree plantation, pump CO2 into empty gas fields etc) can sell certificates.

Why do I suggest that producers need to acquire certificates, and not the users? There are far less producers than users of fossil fuels, so the costs of running the scheme would be significantly reduced.

SmilingBoy.

TA

a few points:

1. I really dislike things such as the UK is doing now. OK, part of it is that fuel for intl aviation has been taxed lower than any other use, so this is partly equalizing the tax burden. But above and beyond that, they're loading on these taxes, while the benefits are not really solidly explained or known at this point (in terms of what your carbon-tax dollar is actually going towards, and how much it helps), and also they're based on a clearly political scale. I.e. flights within the UK, and to Europe, although there are more of them, and generate just as much carbon per mile (and even more probably, due to a higher fraction of flight spent takeoff/landing/taxiing), are taxed at a lower rate than transatlantic flights to the US! How can this be self-consistent? And what about the tax being higher for the business class/first class passenger? Why? Did they travel farther?

2. Why don't governments who are in favor of this sort of approach, simply tax *all* fossil fuels, per gallon used, rather than based on what they're used *for*? ie. especially penalizing air travelers, rather than car commuters who consume far more in total? This again strikes me as a very political choice about who they're trying not to antagonize. Kind of like some cities in the US trying to tax cell phone users.

3. another recent WSJ article points to the fact that the planting of a single
tree can be expected to remove about 3 to 15 pounds of CO2 per year. I am all for the "you've got to start somewhere" approach, but this is really a negligible help.

I guess what I'm saying is that I'm in favor of reducing consumption, reducing unnecessary travel, etc, but the way people are going about it, and especially latching onto this fad of carbon offsets, is discrediting the movement. I don't want to be paying for something that I hasn't been well researched, especially implemented on this huge scale!

Am I sounding completely unreasonable?

(a side note, I am a scientist, and I do think we should do something about these issues, but not in this way...)

stut

The biggest problem I have with the current UK government's approach is that it risks seriously damaging a worthwhile cause. We're already seeing a backlash, and unfortunately, there are many people who will simply associate environmental issues with taxation, and therefore seek to go against them. Which is in nobody's interest.