The world’s getting warmer and mankind’s rampant usage of fossile fuels is causing it. We’ll have to change our behaviour and soon if we’re to avoid a climate catasrophe that could change the Earth forever.
But what about the impact of climate change on travel?
Passenger planes are growing in number and people more than ever are using them to holiday and travel abroad. The problem is that the emissions from jets are injected directly into the upper atmosphere where they do the most damage. Nitrous emmissions are particularly harmful.
After the Stern report pointing out the financial consequences of global warming, it seems likely that there will be pressure on the airline industry, perhaps in the form of a carbon tax.
The low cost airlines are particulalry feeling the weight of the media’s scrutiny arguing that they were being “demonised” according to an Easyjet spokesperson.
An alliance of low budget carriers and Iata have argued that aviation industry only accounts for something like 2% of the total carbon emmissions in the EU, and that much of this is due to fuel being wasted as planes too often have to queue to land and have called for more runways rather than more taxes on flights.
Clearly there will be lobbying by the airlines who are only recently seeing optimism for the first time since 9/11 – but it will be the voters who will have the last say.
The question is are we all in favour of tackling global warming when it means we will have to pay (a lot) more for a holiday abroad.
[...] We’ve already blogged about how the impact of global warming is affecting the budget airline industry, but now the £64 billion ski tourism industry is in danger as the climate warms. According to a report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) the europe’s ski industry will disappear within 45 years due to the affect of climate change. An astonishing 75% of europe’s glaciers will disappear with half a century leading to increased flooding and risk of avalanches. As the report was released, Germany was facing unseasonally warm weather, which closed some ski resorts due to a lack of snow. At the same time, 40,000 seasonal workers in France were unable to work because of the unusually high winter temperatures. Parts of Italy were at 16C; very mild temperatures for the time of year. [...]