Air Travel Is Killing the Planet

Global warming is now at the top of world concerns as scientists, politicians and everyday citizens ponder how to take immediate action against this slow-burning crisis. Yet British environmental activist Mark Lynas warns that all our success in conserving energy and using new fuels might be overwhelmed by a major greenhouse problem no one talks about: air travel.

"We could close every factory, lock away every car and turn off every light in the country," he writes in New Statesman about Britain's ambitious goals to cut carbon use, "but it won't halt global warming if we carry on taking planes as often as we do."

Lynas is referring to a report from the respected Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, which notes that if the UK's annual 12 percent rise in air travel continues until 2050, the resulting increase in carbon dioxide (a leading cause of the greenhouse effect) would overwhelm progress in every other sector. Indeed, factoring in the projected growth of air travel, carbon emissions would have to be reduced to zero in manufacturing, ground transportation and private households to meet the British government's 2050 green goals.

The story is the same in most other countries where the rise of budget airlines and globalizing businesses along with steady increases in tourism, immigration and people's innate curiosity to see the world add up to more air passengers every year. Globally, air travel has increased 9 percent annually for the past 40 years, notes the French magazine Alternatives Économiques.

I am, I confess, part of this problem. I never set foot on an airliner until age 23 but now I fly as many as 10 times a year for work and vacation. I think of myself as an environmentally conscious person -- riding my bike for most trips around town and trying to recycle every last scrap in the house. Yet a look at the Atmosfair website (www.atmosfair.de) is sobering. The round-trip journey from my home in Minneapolis to the Ode office in the Netherlands (which I make several times a year) creates 4,560 kilograms (5 tons) of carbon dioxide.

While that sounds bad enough, Atmosfair (a joint project of German environmental groups and travel agencies) informs me that this is equivalent to the carbon output for the entire year for five people in India. As for my conscientious bike riding, well, one transatlantic round-trip flight contributes to global warming at twice the rate of driving a medium-sized car 12,000 kilometres (7,500 miles) a year. And the U.S. green group Natural Resources Defense Council notes carbon isn't even the whole problem -- nitrogen dioxide and water-vapour emissions from jetliners also worsen the greenhouse effect.

What are travellers, especially ones whose livelihoods depend on frequent flying, to do? Atmosfair and other websites will calculate the carbon output of your flying (or driving or home-energy use) and offer you the chance to offset these environmental costs with a donation to various projects that eliminate greenhouse gases. Al Gore, who constantly jets around the world to draw attention to the problem of global warming, told National Geographic Traveler magazine, "I buy offsets for every bit of it... My wife and I put money into a project in India that substitutes highly efficient solar units at $300 (240 euros) a pop for very dirty kerosene burners, which verifiably reduces a lot of C02."

Climate Care, a British non-profit group, will offset the C02 of my U.S.-Netherlands trip for about $10 (8 euros). (Carbon calculation is still a new idea and there is some discrepancy on the price of my carbon "bill" between various websites; Climate Care came in the cheapest.) Its projects range from funding energy-conservation programs in Kazakhstan and South Africa to providing efficient cooking stoves in Honduras and Madagascar to backing reforestation initiatives in Uganda.