by Andrew Miller
7. September 2009 04:21
“The UK may have to cut emissions of greenhouse gases by 90% by 2050 so the aviation sector can continue to grow” reads the BBC News headline in Roger Harrabin’s article Planes ‘threaten climate targets’.
This would mean an extra 10% reduction on the originally planned 80 / 2050 that was set out by Ed Miliband earlier this year, which, as Harrabin points out, is a target “so ambitious that it might be easier for some sectors to make the leap to zero carbon emissions rather than trying to whittle down pollution decade by decade.”
A highly laudable aim, and of course there is little doubt that a swift and decisive move to a zero carbon economy is desperately needed, but the pragmatist in me is still looking for some kind of conceivable connection between what is being advocated and what is feasibly possible and feeling ever more perplexed and defeated.
How we can we possibly hope to move to zero carbon emissions, substantially and fundamentally changing our psychology concerning the way we see the world and how we act within in, if we are going to make exceptions for certain industries? That’s not changing our psychology at all. If we are going to take this seriously we need to bite the bullet and take on the biggest and most important elephants in the room, not tiptoe around them. Why should flying be treated as a special case at all?
The Climate Change Committee (CCC) has urged that aviation emissions reductions should be in line with the global reduction in emissions of all greenhouse gases of 50% by 2050, and has presented a number of options for looking to reduce emissions without substantially reducing the number of flights (Harrabin’s article includes a link to an interesting debate about this on the Today Programme). Surely this debate should be dominating climate change talks, and should be a centerpiece of our emissions reductions targets. So far it hasn't been.
And with the 3rd runway planned to go ahead at Heathrow, and Copenhagen now just 3 months away, let’s all just hope that the CCC’s advice doesn’t fall on deaf ears…
