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1% of people cause half of global aviation emissions
- babyyoda91 6y agoThe title of the article should be "1% of people cause 1.25% of the total global CO2 emissions", considering that aviation accounts for 2.5% of CO2 emissions globally.
- nicktelford 6y agoThat would be less accurate than the title, given that those 1% of people will also be responsible for some non-aviation emissions too.
- mlthoughts2018 6y agoGiven that 1%’s disregard for the climate impact of their outsized air travel consumption, it’s plausible they are generators of much more than average emissions in other parts of the economy too - cars, induced load on delivery trucks, vacation homes, heating oil, lawn care, having many children, etc.
- adrianN 6y agoJust by being in a group that can afford to fly at all you can be certain that they'll emit much more CO2 than average.
- bsenftner 6y agoReminds me of someone I knew in college - uber wealthy rebel kid of the owner of Empire films. Wore an oxford button down with the stenciled words "kill the rich their kids are evil" at Harvard. Not ironic at all, last I heard, he was on the ICAAN board voting against net neutrality.
- smabie 6y agoDude you probably are in the 1% of people ordered by carbon emission.
- mlthoughts2018 6y agoEven if true, how would this undermine the point in any way? What a bizarre reply.
- lm28469 6y ago> CO2 What about all the other pollutants (nox &co) ? Don't forget they're released at very high altitude too, which generates a whole other set of problems than sea level pollution
- itcrowd 6y agoThe 1% figure sounds insane, but remember that "11% of the world’s population took a flight in 2018". In other words, about 10% of the flyers cause half of aviation emissions.
- 7373737373 6y ago> 11% of the world’s population took a flight That sounds implausible to me. Perhaps by dividing the number of flights by the world population. But I can't conceive more than 800,000,000 different people flying last year
- itcrowd 6y agoSource: TFA
- Etheryte 6y agoLooking for references, this seems realistic. According to Boeing's then CEO Dennis Muilenburg in 2017 "Less than 20 percent of the world’s population has ever taken a single flight" [0]. I couldn't find a clear figure for how many unique people fly at least once a year. So while the specific number would be up for debate, I think the order of magnitude sounds reasonable. [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/07/boeing-ceo-80-percent-of-people-never-flown-for-us-that-means-growth.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/07/boeing-ceo-80-percent-of-peo...
- postingawayonhn 6y agoApparently they're were about 40 million commercial flights per year pre-COVID. If we assume the average flight has 150 seats available (that may be too low?) that's 6 billion seats available for sale each year.
- scrollaway 6y agoMost flights are return trips, so that 6bn seats corresponds to 3bn potential unique people. Then there's the percentage of multi-leg trips. (For example, on my most recent Athens-Istanbul-Stockholm return trip, I alone took 6 seats total). Finally, we have to consider the percentage of flights taken by people who fly more than once a year, which probably represents a majority of seats. All in all, it probably still lines up with 10%. It's shockingly high to me as well…
- voqv 6y agoIf we must truly progress to a world where flights become a luxurious rarity, what will happen to economies transformed by tourism, I wonder.
- gnrlst 6y agoWe won't progress to a world where flights become a luxurious rarity, rather we will progress to a world where flights cause less emissions. The desire to travel and the mobility expectations we, in developed countries, have grown accustomed to are here to stay.
- brutusborn 6y agoYou beat me to it :)
- aphextron 6y ago>We won't progress to a world where flights become a luxurious rarity, rather we will progress to a world where flights cause less emissions. I wouldn't be too optimistic on that. We've already reached a point of massively diminishing returns on fuel efficiency with commercial airliners. Boeing spent billions of dollars and a decade designing the 787 to achieve a fuel efficiency gain of <10% over the 30 year old 777 [0]. The reality is that airliners are just extremely carbon intensive by their nature. And there is almost zero possibility that jet fuel will be replaced by battery or fuel cell technology for a long long time to come. [0] https://theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/Transatlantic_Fuel_Efficiency_Ranking_20180912.pdf https://theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/Transat...
- brutusborn 6y agoEven if net emissions are outlawed, carbon neutral synthetic or bio-fuels will still be available. They will be significantly more expensive, but probably not to the point where flights are any more of a luxurious rarity than they are now (for most people). Tourist based economies will be viable as long as there are wealthy people who want to go there.
- thaumasiotes 6y agoI bet that nefarious group is "airline pilots".
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago> Airlines [...] benefited from a $100bn (£75bn) subsidy by not paying for the climate damage they caused. That's a very weird phrasing to use, designed to cause shock and outrage for something that - if I'm deciphering the phrase properly - means "They burnt fuel without paying for the emissions", which as far as I know is something nobody does.
- bennysonething 6y agoThe guardian has become the left wing equivalent of the daily mail. Which is a shame.
- 9HZZRfNlpR 6y agoIt always has been, not a recent change. They are dailymail masquerading as being more intellectual by using academic terms :)
- Sharlin 6y agoNobody? Fuel is usually taxed in part to pay for the externalities of burning it (although in some parts of the world taxation is way too low). But aviation fuel is traditionally not.
- tbihl 6y agoIn the United States (the extent of my experience on the matter), the fuel taxes are normally understood to pay for roads, which is really the opposite of addressing the externalities (since building more lane-miles fuels more demand.) To make matters worse, they don't really cover even that cost, in most (US American) locales.
- Sharlin 6y agoMost Western European countries have had a carbon tax of some sort since the late 90s–early 2000s, although implementations vary quite a bit.
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- swiley 6y ago"yeet the rich."
- batt4good 6y agoArticles like this are almost infuriating, in most cases it's lazy journalism highlighting a problem or grievance from an angle or statistic some journalist finds "interesting" without giving any thought to a reasonable solution. The only solutions I've seen are "everyone should travel less" basically making the proposition that poor people don't deserve air travel or making grandiose claims about building huge high speed rail networks. The rail networks bit is ironic since building them wouldn't solve any energy production or distribution carbon emissions and would likely just take money that should be spent on research into promising renewable sources.
- thinkcontext 6y ago> ... basically making the proposition that poor people don't deserve air travel Glad to hear you support progressive approaches to addressing climate change.
- Proven 6y agocan't say i care. it's harmless. besides, they already pay too much tax for flying and for no good reason. i'd say "1% of flyers pay 50% of global airplane CO2 tax". it's insane and not that different from income tax.
- kypro 6y agoI don't think this is a 1% problem, the problem is simply that aviation produces a lot of emissions, or put another way, we should expect 1% of people (or some equally small fraction of the population) do 50% of most things. As for tackling the emissions problem, why can't we introduce an emissions tax on the aviation industry to fund investment into carbon capture technologies to offset emissions? It seems to me the costs of carbon capture could quite easily be passed onto the consumer in this case given I know so many people who buy flights just because they're cheap.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago> we should expect 1% of people (or some equally small fraction of the population) do 50% of most things. I wouldn't expect 1% of people to produce half of auto emissions. I wouldn't expect 1% of people to consume half of the electricity.
- kypro 6y agoI suspect the 1% are mostly people travelling for business not purely leisure. If you consider the amount of auto emissions say a truck driver in the US emits compared to most of the world where even access to auto mobiles is expensive, I wouldn't be that surprised personally. That's that's why I included, "(or some equally small fraction of the population)". We should expect a small percentage in any sample like this to be extreme outliers. We call them "power users" in tech, but the same applies to most activities.
- justnotworthit 6y agoCommentor is probably thinking: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution
- cwhiz 6y agoThis question is actually pretty complex. If the plane is flying it doesn’t matter if people are on it or not. I might actually argue that frequent flyers are flying to hubs and on flights that haven’t been canceled in 2020. Regardless, you can’t just make assumptions like the one in the article. Flying frequently is not the same as driving frequently. Your car doesn’t take off whether you’re in the car or not, but a plane does.
- ryanbrunner 6y agoFor a sufficiently large reduction in people taking flights, the plane actually doesn't take off (either by reducing the amount of flights on a route or cancelling it altogether).
- Symmetry 6y agoYes, it's not that every flight you don't take across the Atlantic saves 2 tons of CO2. It's that it has a 99.9% chance of saving almost none and a .1% chance of being the straw that breaks the camel's back in causing a reduction in flights on that route and saving 2000 tons of CO2. But they're the same in expectation.
- davidn20 6y agoThis isn't surprising and borderline clickbaity. The article is about 1% of the world's population, not 1% of the people who flies. Most people who are in a first-world country and make an average living is in the top %1, when compared to the world's pop. So few people on the internet realized, they are the 1%.
- ThePhysicist 6y agoWould be interesting to know how many of those frequent fliers work at large consulting companies. Besides "CEO-types" those are the only people I know that take two flights per week. I really can't imagine that most of those frequent fliers are people that take a flight every week to go on a vacation "just because it's cheap" like the article says.
- CamelCaseName 6y agoI know a consultant who (pre-pandemic) would fly twice a week, every week, in and out of remote areas.
- vincnetas 6y agoI was that kind of consultant for 5 years. At least two flights each week. Sometimes 4 if doing a connecting flight. Sounds crazy now but then main thing i was concerned was how to get more Hilton or frequent flyer points.
- thinkharderdev 6y agoYeah, I know many people who worked in the consulting world and fly to client site Monday morning and back Thursday evening was pretty standard (every week). The only people I've know who flew more were in software sales. They would sometimes take 3 roundtrip flights per week (although it wasn't as consistent)
- taneq 6y agoA lot of remote mining workers are "FIFO" and will average a round trip every 1-3 weeks. These are regular workers, operators, fitters, electricians, project managers etc.
- nateburke 6y ago>> Would be interesting to know how many of those frequent fliers work at large consulting companies. Apparently enough such that flight avoidance due to covid has had a large impact on the management consulting industry: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/coronavirus-causes-losses-for-global-management-consulting-industry-beroe-analysis-301083470.html#:~:text=The%20global%20management%20consulting%20industry,Inc%2C%20a%20procurement%20intelligence%20firm.&text=Demand%20for%20consulting%20services%20might,cost%20cutting%20by%20client%20firms https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/coronavirus-causes-.... "The global management consulting industry is expected to lose around $30 billion of value in 2020, as clients tend to delay projects, decrease scope or cancel them altogether, according to Beroe Inc, a procurement intelligence firm."
- monoideism 6y agoThese are, to a large extent, the same people lecturing the rest of us about global warming.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 6y agoWhat is your source?
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoI seem to recall seeing a headline here on HN, within the last week, that said something along the lines of "Climate activists are the most frequent flyers", though I don't remember the exact words. Maybe somebody with better search-fu can find it?
- sjmulder 6y agoThis is a flame (or troll) and has no place on HN.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y agoI don't believe that's true, it is a valid point: a lot of us talk a good game about caring for the environment, but when push comes to shove we are unwilling to give up luxuries we've grown accustomed to.
- sjmulder 6y agoThat might be the case for many people^, bit it's a different thing to say than "these are, to a large extent, the same people who..." which imo is a flame if it goes without figures to back it up. ^) Although not for me, many people I know in the climate movement, and some figureheads like Greta Thunberg. There have also been comments from scientists who find having to fly to conferences problematic. But that's all anecdotal.
- flexie 6y agoHasn't the last 8-9 months proven that the world goes 'round, money is made, innovation happens, vacations are had, with most people flying very little? I now have close to 100 percent of my meetings online, and for me it has been far more efficient than meeting up physically.
- smabie 6y agoWhat vacations have been had? And a lot of businesses have been absolutely destroyed by covid, so no, everything isn't business as usual.
- flexie 6y agoWe had a total of 6-7 weeks of summer vacation / work from vacation location. In many ways that was due to covid-19, not despite of it. beforehand, both me and my wife would have to be near our offices. It was mostly to places we could reach by car, so not very far away.
- Beggers1960 6y agoQuite remarkable the impact that even a small percentage of the population has on the environment. This is why it's so important to prompt cultural changes and encourage people to think about their impact beforehand, rather than in a reactionary sense.
- RhysU 6y agoA small number of people produce many of the productivity gains that improve broad quality of life. How do you know that they aren't the ones flying? Economics suggests that few would continually pay for useless business trips.
- eplanit 6y agoTl;dr Wealth and Americans are bad. Marxist drivel where the oppressors are wealthy Americans.
- dyeje 6y agoMan, you know we're doomed to face the climate apocalypse when a simple thread about emissions is this divisive.
- easytiger 6y agoAs a percentage of emissions of CO2 what does the airline industry contribute?
- yread 6y agoIncluding radiative forcing and other effects something on the order of 4%. Not life changing but current carbon budget imbalance is only about 4.5% of anthropogenic CO2, so if we cut it out completely we could slow CO2 growth significantly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_aviation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_aviati... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_cycle#/media/File:Anthropogenic_carbon_flows_1850-2018.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_cycle#/media/File:Anthr...
- easytiger 6y agoplenty of things can become vastly lower in CO2 contribution, flying is not yet one of them. It is merely a bogyman for a tribal train of thought
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y agoIt is quite interesting from a completely outside perspective how our species seems to insist on placing short-term individual prosperity above long-term collective survival.
- smabie 6y agoThat's not particularly interesting, that's how evolution works.
- 6y ago
- ape4 6y agoHigh speed trains are a good alternative (for domestic travel)
- sjmulder 6y agoOr international if you're in a small country ;). My wife and I take several multiday trips to places in Europe by train instead of flying to a faraway place once (or twice). Better for the environment and it's not like there's not enough to see and do nearby (ish) for several lifetimes.
- Franciscouzo 6y agoNot having to deal with the security theater is also a big plus. When you take in account all the time it takes getting from your place to the airport and back to the hotel there's usually not much of a difference in time in taking the train anyway.
- RhysU 6y agoAssuming one is traveling up or down a coast. The coast to Chicago is a different matter.
- xnyan 6y agoI fell in love with train travel in eastern europe. Get on a train at night, curl up in your bunk to get gently rocked to sleep by the movement of the car, wake up in the morning in another city refreshed and ready to go. It's the closest thing to time travel that I've ever experienced.
- aphextron 6y ago>High speed trains are a good alternative (for domestic travel) This is the only real answer. There's a hard limitation to how emissions friendly aviation can ever be. The energy density requirements given current technology can only be met with hydrocarbon fuels. High speed trains are infinitely more efficient, and actually would have an outsized effect on emissions given that the type of short haul flights it would replace are the least efficient per mile travelled, since takeoff/climb uses far more fuel than cruise. We'll never be able to replace carbon intensive long haul international flights, but focusing on what can be replaced could go a long way.
- bouncycastle 6y agoPassenger aircraft also carry freight, and there are also various freight airlines, but it's strange that there is no mention of that in the article. In truth, we may be also responsible for aviation emissions even if we are not flying; simply by clicking the "Order" buttom on some faraway e-commerce site, or posting something via airmail...
- Empact 6y agoTax carbon, and you’ll influence all industries broadly and fairly, rather than taking on the venal task of searching out who doesn’t deserve or make good use of their emissions, according to us. https://citizensclimatelobby.org/ https://citizensclimatelobby.org/
- leoedin 6y agoAnd you'll create a business model for all sorts of more efficient technologies. And you'll make green energy pay for itself so quickly everyone will be installing it. This is the obvious solution. Tax carbon heavily and the economy will reward efficiency and non-carbon-generating technologies. Hands off! https://concretecuts.xyz/articles/green-tech-market/ https://concretecuts.xyz/articles/green-tech-market/
- Melting_Harps 6y ago> And you'll create a business model for all sorts of more efficient technologies. And you'll make green energy pay for itself so quickly everyone will be installing it. History doesn't agree with your view, if anything it creates a perverse market wherein people who benefit from the status quo pay people who don't in order to skirt their supposed environmental responsibilities and commitments as they continue as they did before. Just look at the Carbon Credit model and the relationship Tesla had with the big auto manufactures [0]. > As a spokesman for Fiat Chrysler said: “Until demand catches up with regulatory requirements, and there is regulatory relief, we will use credits as appropriate.” I worked for VW during Diesel gate, and I can tell you that this is standard operational procedure for the Industry and what made me quit in utter disgust. It will not change course unless dire, existential consequences are imminent. And it has to be more severe than what Diesel-gate cost VW. You could argue this gave Tesla a lifeline that it otherwise wouldn't have had during its early years after the original Roadster was released and they were working on the Model S, but those are tertiary effects at best and consequential more than anything. In short, no, nothing seems to indicate that is what occurs when you allow the State to create such a system as it will always allow for exemptions if their is profit to be made. Making individual people at these corps responsible for things like Ecocide and have the dire consequences (actual prison time) for the infractions multi national corps currently get out of with political bribes (campaign contributions and fundraising) and lobbying would be a much better start. Some VW execs got thrown in jail and VAG lost ~$12 billion from diesel gate, and yet the brand gained Market share in certain emerging markets that offset those losses. Incidentally, many other manufactures (Ford, Subaru, Mazda, Yamaha, Suzuki, Mitsubishi, Nissan-Renault, Harley Davidson) were all caught cheating emissions as well and weren't nearly as punished in the US. In fact Nissan was able to purchase Mitsubishi Motors US outright in the midst of the VW fall out with no scandal. 0: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jan/14/why-greenhouse-gas-credits-dont-help-the-environme/ https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jan/14/why-greenho...
- LoSboccacc 6y ago...and other common, unsurprising results from the power law distribution
- gwbas1c 6y agoMeta: Not sure if the photo of the KLM planes was retouched. The way the colors are in it, I initially thought it was one of those photos that's regressed to black and white with just a few elements in color. Looks really cool, IMO.
- binarymax 6y agoI’m probably in the top 2%, averaging 2 US-EU flights and 6 domestic US flights per year. I hated every minute of it, and in some ways I feel like the pandemic saved me from the gluttony of in person meetings. The pandemic offered many of us an opportunity to use the technology we have and avoid unnecessary travel. Is zoom/g-meet a replacement for in person meetings? No. But is it good enough and worth the savings on time and damage to the environment? Hell yes.
- andruby 6y agoI'm sorry, but I think you are in the 1% of world population. From the article, 11% of world population took at least 1 flight, so when it talks about 1% of the population, they are talking about the 10% most frequent flyers. With 6 continental and 2 inter-continental flights a year, I think you're probably in that top 10% most frequent flyers.
- braindongle 6y agoAviation accounts for 1.9% of global greenhouse gas emissions [0]. If we're going to take a sober look at where to focus our efforts, this: "Global aviation’s contribution to the climate crisis was growing fast before the Covid-19 pandemic, with emissions jumping by 32% from 2013-18" Should be: "Global aviation’s contribution to the climate crisis was growing fast before the Covid-19 pandemic. Aviation's contribution to global CO2 emissions rose from 1.3% to 1.9% from 2013-18" But the latter doesn't attract clicks so much. Transportation overall accounts for 28% of greenhouse gas emissions [1]. That's the story that matters. There's certainly a point here about wealthy nations and wealthy people being responsible for a lion's share of the problem, but really, everyone knows that. This article, and indeed the linked paper [2] gloss over the relative size of the aviation problem. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-from-aviation https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-from-aviation [1] https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis... [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378020307779 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095937802...
- adrianN 6y agoIf you restrict yourself to the part of the world that can actually afford to fly, aviation looks quite a bit worse. Taking a trip from Europe to California is a good way to basically double my carbon footprint for the year. Aviation is also fairly unique in that we don't know how to make it climate neutral. Even burning synfuel made from renewables won't be enough, because adding emissions higher in the atmosphere has a stronger warming effect. And we just don't know how to make all-electric long distance planes yet.
- marcosdumay 6y ago> Even burning synfuel made from renewables won't be enough, because adding emissions higher in the atmosphere has a stronger warming effect. It has a temporary strong effect, that falls back into the normal one in a couple of decades. What means that synfuel based aviation would have a constant impact on the global temperature, like painting your ceiling black. We can live quite well with that.
- hungryforcodes 6y agoNot the Guardian’s most enlightened piece.