On a Wing and a Prayer

Aviation industry is into greening, to an extent

Posted at 10:25 AM on 16 Jul 2008

The aviation industry talked up greenness Wednesday at the world's biggest air show in Farnborough, England. At a sustainability summit, Giovanni Bisignani of the International Air Transport Association called climate change an "emergency situation" and said airlines are the best suited to address it: "No other industry is as responsible, united, and ambitious." Indeed, the industry is gung-ho about designing more fuel-efficient aircraft; the Airbus A380 and Boeing 787, both coming down the pike, are being touted as the most fuel-efficient airplanes yet. But Big Air remains unenthusiastic about a European Union plan to include airlines in its emissions-trading scheme, and officials continue to stress that the air industry really ain't that bad. "We are under fire from many fronts, certainly from environmentalists, certainly from the uneducated general public that finds us an attractive target at which to shoot," says Boeing CEO Scott Carson. "But the flying public still wants to fly."

sources: Reuters, Associated Press, Reuters, The Globe and Mail

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Comments: (2 comments)

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Further steps

While efforts to improve fuel efficiency pose are important in boosting the sinking airline industry, no one approach will provide a silver bullet to the energy/fuel crisis. US companies should be looking at alternative fuels, too, as Air New Zealand has already done, in its research into jatropha fuel.

Even though it took an economic crisis for carriers to start thinking "green," it's definitely a step in the right direction.

Air New Zealand story: http://www.biobasednews.com/node/16710

by acschwim at 5:20 PM on 16 Jul 2008

Protesting the airline industry

At some point the American activists are going to get the cajones that British activists have had for a while and start occupying airline runways in an attempt to shut down the air travel industry. George Monbiot has been a point person for this (ironically enough, considering how often he jets around the world himself...). If we are advocating for the end of the ICE, then the logical conclusion is an end to air travel, and a kind of neo-tribalism that would logically ensue. Which would suit us Americans just fine, as we're not too interested in people who live differently than we do anyway, except maybe when it comes to killing them...And if we no longer have any liquid fuels, we won't have anything to fuel our military anyway.

Or maybe we American activists can opt for a compromising half measure (boring as it sounds) and get laws passed to limit the amount of business travel companies are allowed to utilize, forcing them to use webinar software and such instead, leaving the airlines free to fly students from Podunk Iowa to Borneo to see what the biofuels industry is doing to the forest there...

by turanga leela at 11:45 AM on 17 Jul 2008

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