When you’re trading in your Ford Super Duty F350 for a hybrid hatchback, keep this in mind:
Aviation accounted for 11 per cent of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions from the transportation sector in 2010 in the United States, according to the International Council on Clean Transportation.
Celebrities who drive the right cars and then fly on private planes are the worst kind of wankers.
Don’t you think?
Aviation is a dying technology and even more rapidly dying business. Consider:
Obsolete air traffic control systems with Congressional plans to privatize this service instead of actually buying good equipment and hiring quality people.
The Transportation Security Administration security theater and the very real threats that it is supposed to be protecting us from while making air travel one giant hassle.
The cattle cars in the sky approach to design of commercial aircraft, which drives those who can afford it to seek elite alternatives.
The deregulated business model that provides the worst of public-private partnership worlds.
The so-far absence of research and practical solutions into reducing the carbon-loading from aviation (military and commercial). It takes a lot of energy to balance against the earth’s gravity and go fast at the same time. Conservation likely means the end of flight or the spewing of a different pollutant into the atmosphere.
Meanwhile, high-speed rail languishes for lack of investment. The upfront transformational cost (a huge portion of which is better rails and railbeds is too high for short-term decision-makers.
I don’t have any answers but I don’t know that shaming is the best solution. Maybe it could work in some areas, but it will likely just lead into more polarization.
After all, transportation is 27% of greenhouse emissions, which means that all aviation is less than 3% of all emissions. I suspect industrial meat and dairy production is substantially more (Agriculture as a whole is 9%. I suspect most of that is related to livestock, but I don’t know). Plus, industrial meat production is an environmental disaster in other ways as well (destruction of natural habitats, pollution, excess water usage).
It could well be argued that the majority of people in America live a lifestyle that is simply unsustainable on a planetary level.
Flying is so miserable I’ll give them a pass. Besides, driving hybrids + private plane is still less carbon intensive than driving Hummer + private plane so in fact, no I don’t think that.