MentalPolyphonics
You ain't gotta be in jail to be doin' time.
Can we reduce carbon emissions without sacrificing our standard of living? Apparently George Monbiot’s book Heat (which I haven’t read), details how technology can be used to green every activity in our civilization except one: airplanes. This is because keeping something heavier-than-air aloft cannot be made low-energy without violating the laws of physics.
For this reason, Monbiot never flies (except to scold Canada). But it seems that there is little chance the people of the developed world will willingly give up flying:
When I challenge my friends about their planned weekend in Rome or their holiday in Florida, they respond with a strange, distant smile and avert their eyes. They just want to enjoy themselves. Who am I to spoil their fun? The moral dissonance is deafening.
So short of massively reducing our emissions in every other area to pay for our flight addiction, we must force people to stop flying. This can be achieved with carbon pricing. We will return to a period when “air travel is too expensive to waste on your wife”, as in Mad Men. No more short, sunny vacations. No more zipping between Canadian cities (+$325 for Vancouver to Toronto).
Cheap air travel is one of the biggest advances in human history: one of our modern conveniences most like magic. Our generation could be the last to enjoy this power. But when I look at how much people love flight, I am skeptical that we will support the policies necessary to reduce carbon emissions. Although as Monbiot notes in Heat:
An 87% cut in emissions requires not only that growth stops, but that most of the aeroplanes flying today be grounded…These privations affect only a tiny proportion of the world’s people. The reason they seem so harsh is that this tiny proportion almost certainly includes you.
Jack
Replace planes with through-the-mantle maglevs and we’ll talk. Ain’t no fucking way I’m never going to Europe again.
But I would take a train to Japan, then across Russia to get there
Or one of Branson’s suborbitals (though that’s prolly energy-intense too).
Why aren’t planes run electrically from solar-powered batteries neutral?
Jared
You can go, but you should have to pay dearly for the carbon you’re shoving down everyone else’s throat.
Batteries are too heavy and hydrogen is too big (3x the size of kerosene). It’s conceivable we could have sustainable flight, but it’d take much more exotic technology than getting the rest of our house in order.
MentalPolyphonics » Tourism is a Cancer
on April 22, 2010 at 9:03 pm
[...] it be bad if we couldn’t cheaply and freely fly all over the world? Well, it would dampen tourism for one thing. Would that be good or [...]
MentalPolyphonics » Climate-Friendly Intercontinental Vacations
on April 26, 2010 at 10:46 am
[...] Airplane travel is incredibly damaging to the climate and should be costed accordingly, but it’d be nice if middle-class people could still travel. What are the options? [...]
MentalPolyphonics » Burning Man is Burning the Planet
on August 30, 2010 at 11:22 am
[...] drive to Burning Man, they’d take a plane on another holiday. That is true as long as carbon emissions are not priced. Once people can’t afford to go on any holiday that’s unreasonably far away, [...]