The difficulty with this I think is that flight is (relatively speaking) a luxury good, so it’s a very disproportionate chunk of emissions in terms of “emissions produced -> people benefitting” AND as the world’s middle class continues to grow, that sliver is only going to get bigger. I tend to agree that demonising things isn’t hugely h…
The difficulty with this I think is that flight is (relatively speaking) a luxury good, so it’s a very disproportionate chunk of emissions in terms of “emissions produced -> people benefitting” AND as the world’s middle class continues to grow, that sliver is only going to get bigger. I tend to agree that demonising things isn’t hugely helpful, but I think it’s definitely wrong to think that demand management isn’t a big part of the solution - in the same way that telling everyone who eats meat that they’re terrible and saying that everyone has to be vegan is a losing argument, but saying we could all do with reducing our meat intake (and that actually we can do this by quite a lot without massively noticing) is a no brainer. And unfortunately, while it’s true that short haul flights make no sense, they’re also a much smaller part of the problem than long haul flights emissions wise.
The comparison with insulation and home heating is apposite because it’s a perfect example of a dynamic present in loads of decarbonisation - we need to change the energy vector (from gas to electricity, boilers to heat pumps) but we also just need to use less energy (efficiency, insulation). They’re both important. At some point we will need to actually decarbonise aviation (I’m not as pessimistic as you on the possibility but agree it’s decades away), but we also need to do less of it.
P.S green hydrogen also looks quite good for steel btw (but, same dynamic - we could and should also industrially recycle waaaay more steel)
The difficulty with this I think is that flight is (relatively speaking) a luxury good, so it’s a very disproportionate chunk of emissions in terms of “emissions produced -> people benefitting” AND as the world’s middle class continues to grow, that sliver is only going to get bigger. I tend to agree that demonising things isn’t hugely helpful, but I think it’s definitely wrong to think that demand management isn’t a big part of the solution - in the same way that telling everyone who eats meat that they’re terrible and saying that everyone has to be vegan is a losing argument, but saying we could all do with reducing our meat intake (and that actually we can do this by quite a lot without massively noticing) is a no brainer. And unfortunately, while it’s true that short haul flights make no sense, they’re also a much smaller part of the problem than long haul flights emissions wise.
The comparison with insulation and home heating is apposite because it’s a perfect example of a dynamic present in loads of decarbonisation - we need to change the energy vector (from gas to electricity, boilers to heat pumps) but we also just need to use less energy (efficiency, insulation). They’re both important. At some point we will need to actually decarbonise aviation (I’m not as pessimistic as you on the possibility but agree it’s decades away), but we also need to do less of it.
P.S green hydrogen also looks quite good for steel btw (but, same dynamic - we could and should also industrially recycle waaaay more steel)