If you listen to U.K. climate activist George Monbiot, we’re going to fly ourselves to death. And while the numbers suggest that air travel is responsible for just 2% of global CO2, it’s the 2% that’s easiest to criticize, particularly if you are a globe-trotting do-gooder like Bono or Al Gore.
But Bono and Gore are just a couple of the tens of thousands of people in the air. The rise of super-cheap flights around Europe, Asia and South America means more planes, more takeoffs and landings (when most fuel is burned) and rising emissions.
Big companies like Cisco and HP are trying to get out ahead of the story by announcing cuts in travel for their executives, meaning more virtual meetings, but that seems an unlikely pledge considering that big deals are closed in person. Major airlines, too, are reinvesting into new generations of aircraft which, by dint of being new, are more fuel-efficient. Fuel efficiency among the biggest U.S. airlines is up 23% since 2000, says the Air Transport Association of America.
But the most interesting cuts are being made by the tiny, executive airlines, where the travelers have the most means to make a difference. Silverjet, which flies to New York, London and Dubai, built offsets into its tickets. NetJets Europe expects to be carbon neutral by 2012 through a similar scheme. Some of the big airlines are making purchasing a “carbon offset,” basically a payment to a third-party to plant trees or otherwise balance your portion of that trip’s polluting effect, an option on-board. Or you could just go directly to TerraPass and sign up.
