We’ve always struggled with the opprobrium aimed at flying when considering climate change. Currently the sector is some 2% of emissions which makes it an entirely marginal issue. Even when claims about the future are made - that it will be 20% of emissions say - that’s because total emissions will fall, not because aviation ones will rise all that much. Further, whatever limitations there should be, or will be, upon emissions we want those that can happen to be devoted to the highest value use possible. That being the very definition of being richer, that scarce resources are devoted to their highest valued use.
Combine this with the cornerstone of any liberal polity, that it is the individual that determines value - not some bansturbator in an office nor even majoritarian imposition - then if people wish to fly then why shouldn’t they? Staying within those necessary limits, of course.
However, even the debate itself seems to be missing technological advance. It’s possible to imagine all sorts of outcomes here. Plastering the planet with a network of trains say. Taking a week - instead of that month by rail - to get somewhere by airship. Limiting long distance travel only to the antinomian elite such as those visiting Glasgow this week.
Or, what we think is far more likely to happen. Synthetic aviation fuel:
Rolls-Royce, working with Boeing and World Energy, has carried out a successful test flight of its 747 Flying Testbed aircraft using 100% Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) on a Trent 1000 engine.
SAF might not meet everyone’s definition of sustainable, true. But insisting that it isn’t also means that all biofuels are not, that burning American woodchips in Drax isn’t and so on.
It’s also possible to see a pathway to something that is sustainable by any definition. Really cheap solar power (Abu Dhabi is apparently managing 1.5 US cents per kWh in new auctions) the electrolysis of water and once you’ve got H2 then hydrocarbons are easy enough. Yes, this might well still be more expensive than current fuels but this is rather the point we’re interested in. Observation of people tells us that they really, really, value being able to leave on a jetplane.
We do not, by the way, offer this as investment advice or anything like that. That route to truly sustainable flying is one of those that is obviously technologically possible and the jury is entirely out on whether it is economically so.
Which does, finally, bring us to our point here. Imagine that it does work out that way. Synthetic jetfuel turns out to be entirely useful and appropriate. We then get to use the standard infrastructure of currently extant airports, ‘planes and so on to continue to travel much as we did before ‘rona. No, just imagine, as a thought experiment.
There are those out there who would decry this, aren’t there? The conclusion we must reach about those people being that their opposition to population mobility is an opposition to population mobility, climate change is just an excuse.