Interesting points as ever, I think there’s two aspects that challenge this:
-the data looks to be from 2020, an incredibly atypical year for flights. In 2017 flights were 7% of uk emissions which is a much larger contribution. Flights are also very easy to reduce compared with the challenge of things like insulating homes, or bu…
Interesting points as ever, I think there’s two aspects that challenge this:
-the data looks to be from 2020, an incredibly atypical year for flights. In 2017 flights were 7% of uk emissions which is a much larger contribution. Flights are also very easy to reduce compared with the challenge of things like insulating homes, or building new power plants.
- they are very often a discretionary and luxury good. In 2018, 10% of UK flyers took over half of trips, 1% of flyers took about 20% of flights. On the other hand 48% of people didn’t fly. Maintaining the same level of flights means cutting emissions for everyone to protect the lifestyles of a relatively more affluent minority
Hey! Thanks for reading - I think these are both reasonable points to make. I suspect flights are disproportionately higher in the UK vs the entire world (which the pie chart is for), as we've outsourced most of our industrial production to other countries at this point.
On flights being very easy to reduce vs insulation and powerplants, I guess but I'm also sceptical for the reason of physics stated in the piece. Insulation and powerplants definitely require political will and money to happen - but my argument is that activists should focus on ratcheting up the pressure to do more of that, than reduce flying (which has other positive externalities).
And on the disproportionate affluence, I agree - I think I can totally buy into the idea of taxing frequent flyers more. I think my beef is mostly with the more absolutist anti-aviation position, which just doesn't seem tenable to me.
Hi James,
Interesting points as ever, I think there’s two aspects that challenge this:
-the data looks to be from 2020, an incredibly atypical year for flights. In 2017 flights were 7% of uk emissions which is a much larger contribution. Flights are also very easy to reduce compared with the challenge of things like insulating homes, or building new power plants.
- they are very often a discretionary and luxury good. In 2018, 10% of UK flyers took over half of trips, 1% of flyers took about 20% of flights. On the other hand 48% of people didn’t fly. Maintaining the same level of flights means cutting emissions for everyone to protect the lifestyles of a relatively more affluent minority
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/sep/25/1-of-english-residents-take-one-fifth-of-overseas-flights-survey-shows
Hey! Thanks for reading - I think these are both reasonable points to make. I suspect flights are disproportionately higher in the UK vs the entire world (which the pie chart is for), as we've outsourced most of our industrial production to other countries at this point.
On flights being very easy to reduce vs insulation and powerplants, I guess but I'm also sceptical for the reason of physics stated in the piece. Insulation and powerplants definitely require political will and money to happen - but my argument is that activists should focus on ratcheting up the pressure to do more of that, than reduce flying (which has other positive externalities).
And on the disproportionate affluence, I agree - I think I can totally buy into the idea of taxing frequent flyers more. I think my beef is mostly with the more absolutist anti-aviation position, which just doesn't seem tenable to me.