Air Travel is not inherently dirty any more than sailing ships are. It is the fuel aircraft currently use that is the problem. And now is our best chance to change that problem. By Harold Goodwin
Manchester, UK. February 2021. Transport is fundamental to tourism and to day excursions. The industry started with a day excursion for 570 people organised by Thomas Cook in 1841 from Leicester to Loughborough. Tourism began with the steam railway, the charabanc and the aeroplane which brought long-distance mass travel after World War II. The age of steam has passed; cars are rapidly becoming hybrid and electric, but aviation fuel has not changed.
Since the 1960s tourism has become increasingly synonymous with aviation, people with paid holidays and with money to spend, have travelled further and further in pursuit of the exotic and personal fulfilment. Many SIDS (Small Island Developing States) have built their economies on tourism. There are ten where more than half of those employed work in tourism. The Covid-19 pandemic has stopped many in the source markets taking a holiday. In many destinations, local people have lost their incomes and been impoverished. Covid-19 has revealed both the inequality inherent in tourism and the dangers of dependency upon it.
Prof. Harold Goodwin has been working in Responsible Tourism for decades. Courtesy H Goodwin.
For many holidaymakers and many destinations, and the people who live there, aviation is essential. But aviation is our sector’s Achilles’ heel. Climate change will result in further resentment about flying; most people don’t fly. We need to make aviation better or accept that its failure to address its carbon emissions will damage our industry; it will hurt us badly.
Flygskam, flight shaming, is cause for concern. But flying is not bad. The problem is the fuel and the aviation sector’s procrastination. Vested interests in the oil companies, the airlines and the aircraft manufacturers resist change. They assert the TINA principle ("There Is No Alternative" - a slogan often used by British prime minister Margaret Thatcher. The phrase was used by her to assert that there was no other viable way of addressing an issue, so debate would be closed.) Offsetting the effects of CO2 production is cheap and assuages guilt on the part of the airline companies, and best of all, it legitimates business as usual.
The global airline governing body, IATA, offers a two-day course on offsetting carbon credits that airlines can offer to passengers. There, trainees are told how to “implement a successful voluntary passenger offset program and learn about the key technical aspects of embedding offset functionality directly into the online booking process.” The course claims to offer “credible and impactful” carbon offset solutions, but requires no previous knowledge or qualifications to attend.
CORSIA’s impact has actually been downgraded recently. Courtesy ICAO.
Offsetting is no solution. It is too good to be true. It is time for the tourism sector to challenge aviation to do better, to clean up its engines. As other industries decarbonise, governments will be under pressure to ensure that the polluters pay. Levies on flights and tax on aviation fuel will damage our industry. We rely on aviation, and we should push them to change, to modernise and to adapt.
The Fuelling Flight project is a group which includes both aviation NGOs and major airlines including Air France easyJet, IAG and KLM. The group has pointed to "the risk of massive capital investments in things that increase emissions compared to fossil fuels and/or that become stranded assets". It has also called for "future proof sustainability requirements" higher than the ones the European Commission's Renewable Energy Directive has released, including "clear exclusions of unsustainable feedstocks and pathways such as biofuels from dedicated cropland and Palm Fatty Acid Distillates.”
The good news is that carbonless flight is possible; indeed the World Travel Market (WTM) hosted a symposium of engineers and scientists recently. McKinsey ran a seminar of zero-carbon flying the following week. There is an alternative clean fuel, change is possible; TINA is dead.
Meanwhile the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) has changed the rules for its Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA), a market-based solution which airlines are offering as a first step towards becoming net zero by 2050. In June ICAO actually weakened the international aviation contribution to emissions reduction. In the words of The Economist “a carbon-intensive industry has defanged an already mostly toothless scheme”. More procrastination.
The tourism industry should demand that the aviation sector adopts and develops zero-carbon fuels before there is a forced reduction in flying. Flying is not the problem; dirty fuel is. The aviation sector endangers the whole travel industry if it fails to change.
First published on the TravelTomorrow news site - https://traveltomorrow.com/aviation-is-the-achilles-heel-of-the-tourism-sector/
Dr Harold Goodwin is a Professor Emeritus and Responsible Tourism Director at the Institute of Place Management at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. He is also MD of the Responsible Tourism Partnership and adviser to the World Travel Market.