Flying in the face of global warming - to fly or not to fly?

Next week I’m flying to Ethiopia on holiday. My plane will emit carbon dioxide and other harmful gasses that will contribute to global warming. The Bishop of London would call people like me who fly evil. One leading environmentalist writing for The Guardian says that people advocating more responsible tourism are culpable of green washing and that most of the aeroplanes flying today should be grounded.

The knives are out for air travel, but should people really stop flying altogether and are people really going to listen asks Justin Francis co-founder of www.responsibletravel.com .

Getting it all in proportion
Reading the papers you would think that air travel is the single biggest cause of global warming. In fact air travel accounts for less than 5% of carbon dioxide emissions.

We must look to every sector to reduce emissions but if you really want to target the biggest culprits then look to our power stations (our largest coal fired power station wastes two thirds of the energy that it generates) and our homes, which account for nearer 25% of emissions. We’ve shown before how a few simple changes made in your home can save double the carbon emissions of a return flight to Egypt here.

In seeking to reduce our emissions we need to examine our entire lifestyles, not just our flying habits. The trouble is that it’s sexier to write about planes than lagging your loft. To get results fast every person and every industry needs to focus on the big wins, and we all need accurate information about where these opportunities lie rather than just more sexy copy about planes.

However do not think that this is permission to keep on flying as we have done. The simple fact is that aviation is the fastest growing cause of global warming. The amount of carbon dioxide emitted by air travel doubled between 1990 and 2004. That is totally incompatible with the need to reduce carbon emissions by 60% by 2050 (or nearer 70% by 2035 according to the latest research from the Tyndall Centre).

I believe we’ve been the first travel agent in the world to say that we must fly significantly less. In fact that makes responsibletravel.com even more radical than Friends of the Earth who are less equivocal about the need to fly less at all. However, before I go on I believe that there are critical points that some environmentalists miss.

The first is that it is not enough for everyone in Europe and America (the big tourist originating countries) to reduce our carbon emissions. People in Asia and Africa – who are more dependent on tourists - must do the same if we are to halt global warming.

What happens if we all stop flying?
The United Nations World Tourism Organisation states that one in 10 jobs around the world is in tourism, and adds that tourism is growing fastest in developing countries. In 10 of the worlds poorest 50 countries tourism is a significant and growing. Many of these countries lack any real alternative to tourism as their only real assets are their cultures and natural environments.

So if we were to ground most of the aeroplanes as suggested by George Monbiot in The Guardian last week then we’d create massive global unemployment, and the worst impacts would be felt in developing countries in Asia and Africa.

I’d argue that increased unemployment globally and worsening poverty in many developing countries is not conducive to creating new lower carbon technologies and lifestyles. It’s only consumers with the benefit of an education who will understand the need for change. People in poverty cannot afford to take decisions for the longer term. Businesses in recession cannot afford to invest in research and development and the cost of switching to new lower carbon technologies.

Tourism supports conservation of forests which absorb carbon dioxide
There is another often ignored issue. When I visit Ethiopia I’ll be visiting local communities in the Bale Mountains National Park. The German Development Bank has funded a tourism project there to create a new local economy based on tourism and designed to replace illegal logging of the forests. The idea is that tourists like me pay communities to come and see the forests and mountains. No forests, no tourists - and there lies the incentive for local people to halt deforestation.

Trees of course absorb carbon dioxide. James Lovelock, creator of the Gaia theory, believes that if we had not deforested the planet then in fact we could emit the level of carbon that we are now with out causing global warming. For Ethiopia, read dozens of countries with forests in National Parks that are directly supported by tourism revenues. If we all stop flying, many Parks will lose their incomes, deforestation will increase and global warming will accelerate faster.

To put it crudely analysing the impacts of flying without examining the impacts of the holiday in the destination is only looking at half of the pie. We must join up our thinking and look at the positives and negatives of the tourism industry as a whole, and not just flying.

Offsetting your carbon emissions
www.responsibletravel.com has been telling people that their flights are contributing to global warming and offering carbon offsets with our partner Climate Care since 2001. The idea is that you pay extra to support lower carbon dioxide initiatives (such as low energy light bulbs or more efficient wood burning stoves in tourism destinations) to compensate for the amount of carbon dioxide that your flight emits.

Although carbon offsetting must not create permission for us to keep on flying to anywhere near the level that we do now, and the calculations required are still being improved, it does serve to neutralise the emissions of flights. If it was made compulsory across the airline industry rather than being an option for tourists it would provide a short term alleviation to the problem (at least until we can’t find enough low cost carbon reduction schemes to support).

Will future technology save us?
George Monbiot again argues that there will not be a new fuel or technology to replace airline fuel – kerosene. Sir Richard Branson scientific advisors obviously disagree as he is prepared to invest over £1bn in researching how bio fuels might provide a low carbon alternative to kerosene. While it’s unwise to allow flying to continue to grow, I think it’s equally unwise to assume that no new solution will be found – literally billions of dollars are there to encourage scientists and businesses to do just that.

Are people like us advocating more responsible travel green washing?
We give people who have already decided to fly the choice of a more responsible holiday. We stress the benefits of responsible tourism to local people without hiding the consequences of flying and global warming. We believe that people should fly significantly less, but that it would be detrimental if we were to stop flying altogether. . You make up your mind if that’s green washing.

What needs to happen and will people listen?
Well we all need to fly less, a lot less. One way to do this is to cut out the dramatic increase in short breaks on cheap flights. The only way that this will happen is if the price of flights rises considerably. We need to tell the politicians that we will only vote for parties that are prepared to make the tough choices required to make this happen.

We’ll all need to holiday closer to home, and travel by train more. Over the next 3 years responsibletravel.com will very significantly increase the number of lovely eco places to stay to enable you to do just this. When we do fly we need to ensure our holiday benefits local communities and reduces other environmental impacts, and we need to offset the emissions.

We do not need to stop flying altogether - that will contribute to sending us back to the dark ages with massive unemployment, business recession, increased poverty and no way forwards. Creating change is very urgent and while many of us might feel slightly uncomfortable about it capitalism is the only system that we’ll have for the foreseeable future. In the short time that we have the solutions lie in using the system that we have to improve technology, set tough targets for business and change consumer behaviour.

And finally
The problem with many advocates of sustainable development is that they fatally ignore people’s beliefs and emotions when trying to persuade us to change. Telling us that we are evil; that those who fly are worse than paedophiles; or that we must all stop flying now really isn’t going to stop families flying off on holiday next summer.

In fact the carbon dioxide that we already have put into the atmosphere is going to cause us immense global problems. There is no way back from that now and we’ll need all the tolerance that we can find to work together across the planet to manage the impacts as best we can. Maybe the cultural understanding that 60 years of global travel has created can help.

Please email me Justin@responsibletravel.com with your thoughts – I’d love to hear from you.