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By official stats, aviation is something like 3% of global emissions. Global emissions seem wildly underestimated while aviation emissions are pretty hard to ob
by nawgz 4y ago
By official stats, aviation is something like 3% of global emissions. Global emissions seem wildly underestimated while aviation emissions are pretty hard to obfuscate.
I also couldn't believe when I found out a Learjet 7 seater might get 4MPG while an average US-sized SUV pulls about 12mpg. I thought it would be an order-of-magnitude or two different, not a factor of 3. Trucks are even closer. Americans drive trucks that never go off road or haul or tow.
And I think industry is far worse than individuals about emissions.
Overall, would I say planes are good for the world? No, not really. But I don't think they're anywhere near the first or most valuable place to focus efforts on
- zemvpferreira 4y agoYou raise good points, but let's also consider that: -planes travel a lot of miles very quickly. MPG is a fine number, but we should also look at something like total emissions per year of average use. -planes emit around 3% of the global carbon total but serve only around 15% of the global population, unlike most industries. I'm not going to stop flying anytime soon, but let's not kid ourselves about the impact our collective lifestyle has on the rest of the world. Also worth mentioning that measures like carbon taxes, while having many problems, neatly solve what to optimize for when fighting carbon emission. Scale is automatically baked in.