Air New Zealand has abandoned a 2030 goal to cut its carbon emissions, blaming difficulties securing more efficient planes and sustainable jet fuel.
The move makes it the first major carrier to back away from such a climate target.
The airline added it is working on a new short-term target and it remains committed to an industry-wide goal of achieving net zero emissions by 2050.
The aviation industry is estimated to produce around 2% of global carbon dioxide emissions, which airlines have been trying to reduce with measures including replacing older aircraft and using fuel from renewable sources.
“We’re not gonna reach it in time. Guess we’ll just die.”
Damn NZ what happened, you used to be cool.
They too suffered from increased anger from the right wing, so when Jacinda resigned, they elected a right-wing government.
There’s no path for a commercial air carrier to do this, nor is there any point as we’re all well and truly fucked.
No matter how fucked you are you can always get that much more fucked
2044: We cannot meet the 2050 climate target. There won’t be enough jet fuel. We can’t do much for the climate at this point anyway. So who wants to fly with us? We have air conditioned cabins. Live the cool life. Escape the heat!
The first of many, I presume. Any decision with a long term goal of >10y is pretty much null and void since it can be altered at any time.
Yep. Any promised future targets are just marketing hype.
Then: “Eco-friendly is really trending now, we’ll base our image around that”
Now: “It’s more profitable to drop the eco targets, so were dropping them”
It needs long term planning to make any change. So the key difference is between populist rhetoric and action, even if that action doesn’t bare fruit immediately.
Right, and what I’m saying is there’s basically zero incentive for corporations to ever take action, because SAYING you will be doing it has all the image, PR and revenue benefits, but without needing to even ACTUALLY do it. And then later you just quietly forget about it, like this.
The only way companies will ever take action is if governments legally mandate them to (and even then maybe not!)
The only way we make air traffic sustainable is by only travelling by plane when absolutely necessary and by not ordering stuff to be delivered ASAP so it can be shipped by boat instead.
Four people in a Chevy Suburban with a V8 pollute less to travel the same distance than if they do it via the air. Air traffic pollution is very, very bad, especially since it’s released at altitude, and yet air traffic keeps increasing, especially for leisure.
And before someone comments about the ultra rich and their private planes, their emissions is basically nothing compared to the rest of air traffic.
Air traffic altogether is only 2% of global emissions. We could focus efforts to reduce emissions elsewhere without the negative effects on logistics and people traveling. Even if you completely eliminated all air traffic tomorrow it would be insignificant compared to other sources. Not that I think it’s a bad idea to reduce emissions from air traffic, but it’s going to highly impact people’s lives for barely a dent in emissions.
2.5% of emissions but 4% of global warming impact due to where the emissions happen. That’s 1/25th of the global warming.
I stand by my point; even if you eliminated all air traffic tomorrow it would barely make an impact. Efforts are best focused elsewhere that would have more of an impact on climate and less of a negative impact on people’s lives.
With this logic there’s no sector that would have an impact significant enough that we should worry about it.
I disagree. Electricity generation and industrial processes are emitting many times more greenhouse gases than air travel. If you eliminated all emissions from electricity generation tomorrow it would make a massive difference, far exceeding the 2% of air traffic. Looking at an EPA source electricity generation is 25%, industry is 23%, and transportation less air transport is 26%.
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions
For these goals to be reachable, I think it comes down new tech. I don’t think people are going to stop flying. For many it’s simply not an option, especially if you have family far away.
It’s a choice people are making, moving from one side of the US to the other to go to school or for work is a choice, it’s not normal in our current situation that we accept that and just think it’s ok that these people travel across a continent multiple times a year. Same for people traveling halfway across the world for vacations, in the current state of things that’s unacceptable. Humans have never had that much mobility in their history as they’ve had in the last 100 years, it doesn’t mean it’s a good thing for the world and it doesn’t mean it’s sustainable and should stay this way.
We need to stop relying on tech to come and save us, we have the power to do something right now.
NZ is a hard ask for this. They are an Archipelago and far from the rest of the world, of course their airlines can’t live up to this. Maybe a small landlocked country with access to trains like Switzerland in Europe could do it, I would not have expected that of NZ.
BBC News Media Bias Fact Check Credibility: [High] (Click to view Full Report)
BBC News is rated with High Creditability by Media Bias Fact Check.
Bias: Left-Center
Factual Reporting: High
Country: United Kingdom
Full Report: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/bbc/Check the bias and credibility of this article on Ground.News
Thanks to Media Bias Fact Check for their access to the API.
Please consider supporting them by donating.Footer
Media Bias Fact Check is a fact-checking website that rates the bias and credibility of news sources. They are known for their comprehensive and detailed reports.
Beep boop. This action was performed automatically. If you dont like me then please block me.💔
If you have any questions or comments about me, you can make a post to LW Support lemmy community.BBC Left center 🤨, maybe to the US it is, but to the rest of the world it definitely doesn’t seem to be biased leftwards
