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Aircraft numbers may double by 2026
Dan Milmo, Guardian
Airbus entered the debate over airport expansion yesterday by warning that more runways are needed to accommodate a doubling of the global aircraft fleet by 2026.
The European planemaker predicted that 28,534 passenger and freight aircraft would be flying in less than two decades’ time – more than double the current total of 13,284.
Britain will be the third largest customer for new aircraft, Airbus said, with 1,100 jets to be added to aviation infrastructure that is already under severe strain. Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted, Britain’s largest airports, operate at near capacity and the government is consulting over proposals to build a third runway at Heathrow by 2020.
(8 February 2008)
Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
Clark Williams-Derry, Sightline
We’ve gotten a few questions already about how we came up with our charts on the climate-warming impacts of travel choices. The charts compare the global warming impacts of cars, SUVs, vanpools, planes, buses, and trains. And since I couldn’t found a single, unified data source for all of that — at least, not one that I couldn’t poke some holes in — I compiled our figure from scratch,Climate Emissions by Travel Type 475 using a bunch of different sources.
So in case you’re the sort of person who gets excited about numbers and footnotes, there’s plenty — plenty, I say — of data wonkery to follow…
(8 February 2008)
Standard Life ethical funds to drop airlines
Mark Milner, Guardian
The fund manager Standard Life Investment said yesterday that its ethical funds would no longer invest in airline stocks.
The move was in response to a survey of investors in its ethical funds, which it said showed 30% wanted a complete exclusion of airline stocks.
Julie McDowell, head of socially responsible investing at Standard Life Investments, said: “The views of investors in our ethical fund range are of paramount importance to us. We are unique in carrying out an annual survey to understand investor wishes and concerns and we seek, wherever possible, to reflect those concerns in the criteria applicable to our ethical funds.”
The company asked investors whether they wanted to invest in airlines seeking to reduce their impact on the environment or drop airline stocks altogether. Although only 30% opted for the latter, McDowell said: “We aim to reflect as many investor concerns as possible in the criteria for our ethical funds. We recognise that ethical investors have a range of concerns and that the importance of any particular issue will vary from investor to investor.
(6 February 2008)
