Think again about your international flight

We're all excited to go to Brazil to learn about work that's being done to support ecological sustainability and species conservation. But in order to do so, we must fly almost 10,000 km to get there! The US EPA's estimates that 0.185 kg CO2 are emitted per person per mile on a long trip (over 700 mi). For each leg of this trip from San Francisco to Cuiaba, each of us will contribute roughly two metric tons of CO2 equivalents. The average American's emissions are about 19 metric tons of CO2-e per year. So the round trip flight, 4 metric tons of CO2-e, makes up roughly 20% of your yearly emissions. If you are taking any other flights this year, that percentage can quickly increase to 50% or more of your emissions. That's huge!

But why do we care? With a mind-blowing number of flights crisscrossing every ocean every day, this one trip won't singlehandedly tip the scales towards absolute climate destruction. But the airline business as a whole is responsible for an increasingly significant portion of global warming. Currently air travel emissions account for 5% of warming. That number is expected to rise as airline travel increases faster than gains in airplane fuel efficiency.

Commercial airplanes are serious environmental offenders in the realm of transportation. Source: http://www.aviationtoday.com/Assets/Image/United_737_Max9High.jpg

The European Union has proposed legislation for a carbon tax for all flights coming into or out of its member countries. Passengers would add roughly USD $5 to the cost of a transatlantic flight to go towards offsetting their emissions. The United States bitterly opposed this measure, stating that it would cost US airlines $3.1 billion between 2012-2020. But with the cost mainly passed on to passengers, this claim strikes supporters of the flight carbon tax as invalid. For now, the EU is only imposing the tax on flights within Europe. Only time will tell if the program will be expanded to transatlantic flights.

Thinking about the huge environmental impact of my flying floors me with guilt. Every time I fly, I think up some way to justify my carbon emissions. Sometimes I assure myself that I don't fly back and forth between school and home, so I'm saving there and using those would-be air miles for trips like this one to Brazil. Other times I use the fact that I'm going on a trip to support environmental and social causes. The lasting impact I will have by making whatever trip I'm on will surely outweigh the environmental degradation caused by my flight, I tell myself. But at the end of the day, the facts are out there that flying is one of the worst forms of transportation for our warming atmosphere, and it is not slated to improve any time soon. Awareness is the first step, but in reality it will radical corporate decisions and innovation to improve the environmental performance of the airline business.

Sources:

http://www.epa.gov/climateleadership/documents/resources/commute_travel_product.pdf

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/27/sunday-review/the-biggest-carbon-sin-air-travel.html?_r=0