And the world's aviators began scrambling to find ways to cut back on their greenhouse emissions. What choice did they have? The environmentalists were pointing a finger at them, explaining that 11 percent of non-military transportation emissions come from aviation.
Eleven percent! And you thought it was all cars and trucks causing the problem. Compare that 11 percent to the carbon footprint of vehicles, which account for 16 percent of the world's CO2 emissions. Who would have thought airplanes were so close to cars and trucks in how much damage they do to the atmosphere.
Now, this is not an easy fix. It's not like you can plop an electric engine in a plane and say, "That should do it." (The aviators and climate change scientests are working on such a proposition, but not making enough headway.)
For the moment, the best way to reduce air flight emissions is to reduce air flight itself: Take a few airplanes out of the sky. (No, don't shoot 'em down; that ain't what I mean.)
Tax frequent flyers -- would that help?
Tax the airlines for any flights that are continually less than 50 percent full. Or, are most flights almost always fULL?
Discourage businesses from flying their officers when Internet meetings would be quite suffice?
Oh, and this is one that would stir up a hornet's nest: Ground sports teams. Tell them, "Nope, you are going to have to take a train, maybe even a bus." You would have to make it mandatory, because if one team did it and none of the rest did, guess which team the athletes would say they don't want to play for?
Encourage tourists and vacationers to stay home, or at least close enough to home that it doesn't take an air flight. Can't you just get by going to lagoon instead of traveling all the way to France? Aah, I don't know that we should frame it quite that way.
Now, if all these measures don't make a big enough difference, then we can start shooting planes down. (OK, OK, I guess we still better not do that.)
(Index -- Climate change info)
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