Click on the headline (link) for the full text.
Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
Is it OK to fly?
Leo Hickman, The Guardian
How could planes be less damaging? We’re still flying even though we know it’s bad.
—————
… Given that even the industry itself is predicting that global passenger numbers could triple by 2050, incremental increases in fuel efficiency such as those offered by the latest generation of planes – Boeing boasts that its new 787 “Dreamliner” is the “environmentally preferred” option for any would-be purchaser – seem about as useful a solution as stuffing a finger in a breached dyke.
I am desperate for some good news about aviation and its environmental impact. Please someone say that they got the figures wrong. I have always loved the freedom and access flying brings – who doesn’t? – but in recent years have descended into a near-permanent depression about how to square this urge with the role of at least trying to be a responsible citizen of the planet. Travel is one of life’s pleasures, but is my future – and, more importantly, that of my two young daughters – really going to be one of abstinence from flying, or at best flying by quota, as many environmentalists are now calling for?
I recently travelled to a conference hall adjacent to Geneva airport to attend the second Aviation and Environment Summit in search of, if not answers, then at least a better indication of just how damaging flying really is to the environment. (The irony was not lost that hundreds of people had flown from around the world to attend.) Given public concern about aviation’s impact on climate change, the industry met to thrash out, first, how to counter this charge and, second, how to decrease its trinity of environmental damage – noise, ground-level airport pollution, but most significantly CO2 emissions. That it seems to want to do things in that order was one of the most telling things I took away from my two days with an industry that was described by one delegate as “public enemy number one”.
…An aviation fuel expert at Shell dispelled any real hope that a paradigm shift is within reach whereby planes will no longer be powered by highly polluting kerosene but instead by a much cleaner alternative. Liquid hydrogen is pure fantasy, he said, for at least another 50 years. And forget any hope that biofuels, as is the hope with cars, could come to the rescue. Ethanol, he said, is a poor performer as an aviation fuel.
…The bottom line, he said, is that kerosene will be the preferred fuel for the next 30 years. And hearing Boeing assert that new planes being bought today will have a service life of up to 60 years, it appears that we are now “locked-in” to this technology – and its resultant emissions – for the long-term. (Not exactly good news for Tony Blair who recently said he favoured waiting for a technological solution to reduce aviation’s impact.)
Couple that depressing news with the fast-developing taste for flying around the world, particularly in India and China, and it becomes clear that aviation-related emissions are guaranteed to soar in the next few decades. Tweaks here and there in efficiency savings are going to be rendered virtually insignificant by increased demand. In Europe, demand is growing 5% a year on average, whereas in China it stands this year at 14% and India at 15%, albeit from a smaller base. But India, fast attempting to play catch-up with the West, is currently spending $12bn on airport building. Its airlines have 330 new aircraft on order, largely driven by its booming new low-cost sector – its current civil fleet numbers just 200. And by 2020 India’s minister for aviation is predicting that up to 2,000 planes could be operating. China, meanwhile, says it plans to buy 100 new planes every year over the next five years to increase its current fleet of 863 aircraft. Since 2000, passenger numbers have doubled in China. To put all this growth in perspective, there are about 12,000 civil aircraft presently flying in the world.
It seems, therefore, that we, as a nation that avidly consumes cheap flights, do indeed face a choice. Do we continue to take our minibreaks, visit our second homes, holiday on the other side of the world and partake in all the other forms of what the industry describes as “non-essential” travel? Or do we start to ration this habit, even if others elsewhere in the world quite understandably will be quick to take our place on the plane
(X May 2006)
Turned Off by Global Warming
Katherine Ellison, NY Times
…Clearly, it’s time for some radical ideas about solving global warming. But where’s the radical realism when we need it?
… What we need is something more imaginative and daring. But where’s the discussion of anything like that? The “Take Action” page on the Web site for Mr. Gore’s movie offers no such vision — the boldest action it suggests is to back the McCain-Lieberman bill. And when I recently asked David Yarnold, Environmental Defense’s executive vice president, why his group wasn’t offering solutions more dramatic than Congress has thought up, he replied, “Why would you want to lobby for something that can’t get done?”
Last June, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California became one of the few elected politicians with the courage to talk about climate change in the language it requires by promoting a plan to reduce his state’s greenhouse-gas emissions to 80 percent below 1990 levels by the year 2050. But Mr. Schwarzenegger has since warned of the need to move slowly so as not to “scare the business community.”
While the California governor backpedals, a team of scientists, economists and business executives have put forward a potentially revolutionary plan. Outlined by Ross Gelbspan, a former Boston Globe reporter and editor, in his book “Boiling Point,” the so-called Clean Energy Transition would start by turning over an estimated $25 billion in annual federal government payments now supporting the fossil-fuel industry to a new fund for renewable energy investments. It would also create a $300 billion clean-energy fund for developing countries through a tax on international currency transactions, while calling on industry to get in line with a progressive fossil-fuel efficiency standard, forcing greenhouse-gas emitters to immediately work on conservation.
If megaproposals like the Clean Energy Transition, which would get the ball rolling on a global level, still strike us as romantic and implausible, it’s only because our politicians, including the well-intentioned Mr. Gore, and smart, well-financed groups like Environmental Defense have denied us the leadership we need to achieve global warming solutions on par with the problem. Lacking such leadership, we’re left with little more than our increasing anxiety and that scary, speeding train.
Katherine Ellison is the author of “The Mommy Brain: How Motherhood Makes Us Smarter.”
(20 May 2006)
China Faces Rising Temperatures, Shrinking Crops
Reuters via Planet Ark
BEIJING – China’s average temperature may rise by 2.8 degrees Celsius by 2030 and its crop production could tumble by 10 percent as global warming throws the climate into disarray, a senior Chinese climate official said on Thursday.
The leading China Meteorological Administration official told a government meeting in Beijing that global warming is likely to lift China’s average temperature — compared to annual averages for 1961-1990 — by 1.3 to 2.1 degrees Celsius by 2020, and by 1.5 to 2.8 degrees by 2030, the Xinhua News Agency reported.
And these rises threaten to overturn patterns of rainfall and slash crop output, said the official, whom Xinhua did not name.
(19 May 2006)
Climate Chaos: Upcoming BBC series on climate change features David Attenborough
BBC
The BBC presents a series of programmes about climate change and its effects. Check the What’s on website for details of regional variations.
Are We Changing Planet Earth?
Wednesday 24 May, 9pm, BBC One
David Attenborough draws on his life-long insights into our planet and presents his personal take on climate change. Part two follows next week.
Songs of Praise
Sunday 28 May, TBC, BBC One
Sally Magnusson visits an environmental project in Oxford that has made a real difference to the local community, and meets with historian and environmentalist, Martin Palmer.
Test the Nation – Know Your Planet
Sunday 28 May, 8pm, BBC One
Are you aware of climate and environmental issues? We put the country to the test in the popular quiz show.
Can We Save Planet Earth?
Thursday 1 June, 9pm, BBC One
Part two of David Attenborough’s investigation.
Five Disasters Waiting to Happen
Tuesday 6 June, 9pm, BBC Two
We examine five global locations and scenarios: London, Shanghai, Mumbai, Paris and Tuvalu. All have been identified by experts as vulnerable to the effects of climate change.
The Money Programme
Friday 2 June, 7pm, BBC Two
The Money Programme spends a week with a family in Teesdale – the area with the UK’s highest CO2 emissions per capita.
Panorama
Date and time TBC, BBC One
The Bush administration has resisted calls to engage in Kyoto, and has been accused of a systematic campaign of disinformation and harassment against the scientific community – gagging scientists, re-writing major reports, and allowing the oil and coal industries to drive policy. Panorama investigates these claims.
(21 May 2006)
Canada moves closer to anti-Kyoto group
Allan Woods, CanWest News Service via The Vancouver Sun
Ottawa warms to agreement giving freer hand to greenhouse-gas producing industries
————
GATINEAU, Que. — Prime Minister Stephen Harper moved Canada one step closer to joining an environmental accord with six nations at odds with the Kyoto protocol in a meeting Friday with his Australian counterpart, John Howard.
The two conservative leaders met at Meech Lake, across the Ottawa River from the nation’s capital, on the second day of Howard’s three-day tour, and later told reporters that Canada has expressed interest in participating in the Asia-Pacific Partnership, which also includes the United States, China and India, in addition to Australia, Japan and South Korea.
“I know that the Australians and others are looking at really focusing on dealing with this through the application of technology and technological development,” Harper said. “This is very much the path our government’s looking at.”
…The group seeks to “marry” emission reductions with economic progress and development,” Howard explained.
“No advanced country is going to sacrifice a significant amount of economic development and jobs mindlessly or carelessly and what we have to do is to find ways of reducing greenhouse gas emissions that do not cost us an economic price,” he said.
CanWest reported earlier this month that the Conservative government’s environmental plan, expected to be rolled out this fall, will focus on the transportation and electricity sectors.
Harper said Friday that he is bullish about nuclear energy, predicting that it will be “part of the mix as we deal with energy and environmental challenges in the next century.”
(20 May 2006
Related: Report: Canada Wants to Scrap Kyoto (Green Car Congress)
