AIR TRAVEL only accounts for an estimated 5% of global carbon emissions. But that share is expected to grow as air travel becomes cheaper and more accessible. In order to combat climate change, the European Union has tried to introduce a mandatory emissions-trading scheme that would force airlines to buy carbon offsets. As we have written about before, politicians in emerging nations and America balked at the EU proposal. American lawmakers moved quickly to forbid American airlines from complying with the EU scheme. In November the EU announced it would postpone implementation of the plan until at least September 2013.
The idea is that the United Nations’ International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) will come up with a global framework for trading airline emissions offsets. The ICAO has been pursuing just such a scheme for over a decade, so the decision to put everything in its hands is not exactly confidence-boosting.
air travel is their most serious environmental sin. One round-trip flight from New York to Europe or to San Francisco creates about 2 or 3 tons of carbon dioxide per person. The average American generates about 19 tons of carbon dioxide a year; the average European, 10.
So if you take five long flights a year, they may well account for three-quarters of the emissions you create. “For many people in New York City, who don’t drive much and live in apartments, this is probably going to be by far the largest part of their carbon footprint,” says Anja Kollmuss, a Zurich-based environmental consultant.
Proving that action against climate change is politically possible is an important first step towards preventing further temperature increases. Airline emissions should be an easy case. Flying is not a necessity in the same way that heating your home is, and offset-driven increases in the cost of flights will fall more heavily on the rich and middle class than a full-blown carbon tax would. If we can’t get a global deal on airline emissions, how likely is a global deal on carbon emissions in general?
– source economist.com