The pandemic briefly slowed global air travel, but it’s taking off again. Commercial flights were increasing steadily before COVID-19 hit — by about five per cent a year from 2000 to 2019 — and the International Air Transport Association projects a 500 per cent increase in passenger numbers by 2050!
That may be good for the sector, but it’s bad for the climate. The industry downplays its impact, claiming air travel contributes about two per cent of global emissions, but studies show that if “radiative forcing” is accounted for, it’s closer to 3.5 per cent. That’s significant: If aviation were a country, it would be the world’s fifth-largest emitter.
A relatively small number of people cause flight emissions. Frequent-flying “super emitters,” representing just one per cent of global population, caused half of aviation’s carbon emissions in 2018. Most people, about 90 per cent worldwide, don’t get on a plane in any given year.
Emissions from departing flights at Canada’s three biggest airports — Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver — are greater than the climate pollution from Syncrude, Canada’s largest-emitting oilsands operation.
When launching Canada’s 2030 Emissions Reduction Plan last month, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said “we need to take steps across the economy” to meet Canada’s target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 40 to 45 per cent by 2030 from 2005 levels.
But the aviation sector has so far been exempted from requirements to reduce its total emissions. Canadian airlines’ emissions increased by 75 per cent between 2005 and 2018, Transport Canada reports. Globally, the industry has only met one of its own 50 climate targets over the past 20 years.
Canada is planning to release an action plan to reduce aviation sector greenhouse gas pollution this year — a once-in-a-decade opportunity to finally turn the corner on rising air travel emissions. Let’s hope it’s better than the 2012 action plan —…