Taking Responsibility for Aviation

In May the Global Humanitarian Forum estimated that climate change accounts for over 300,000 deaths each year, the equivalent of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami every year. Climate change impacts most on the world’s poor in the developed and the developing world. A report commissioned by University College London and the Lancet has concluded that climate change is the biggest global health threat of the 21st century and that the poor will be the first affected.

The tourism industry in the UK and around the world provides life enhancing and life changing experiences to billions of people each year and brings economic development to countries and regions often with no other viable means of engaging in the world economy. The tourism industry has begun to take responsibility and is making real efforts to improve its sustainability. The airline industry is still in denial.

The airline industry secured its exclusion from the Kyoto Protocol in 1997. Last week Willie Walsh and IATA, on behalf of the global airline industry, announced that they now favour a ‘global sectoral approach.’ They proposed some vague targets and then asked for more time, until November 2010 to come up with a framework and a delivery mechanism. If this were accepted aviation would again secure an exemption. The sector’s approach has been denial followed by procrastination. The airline industry has failed to exercise responsibility. Through the Copenhagen process and the International Civil Aviation Organisation the British government could, and should, take responsibility.

A few individual airlines have exercised responsibility, reducing their fuel consumption and consequently their carbon emissions, a trend reinforced and accelerated by the spike in the costs of jet fuel last year, no longer a cause of change. While some airlines have taken responsibility, the industry has preferred to isolate itself from any pressure to improve its performance by placing the responsibility on the consumer to purchase carbon off sets, an approach recently criticised by Friends of the Earth as a “dangerous distraction”. Emissions trading is similar to off-setting, it would allow business as usual for the airlines unless a cap significantly below current emission levels was imposed. That is unlikely. It will not generate the funds required for adaptation.

The challenge is to find and deploy a mechanism which can be introduced globally, which provides a level playing field and which is cheap and efficient to operate, which places effective pressure on the airlines to reduce their carbon emissions by flying more fuel efficient planes, improving their operating procedures and load factors; and which meets the full costs of the floods, famine and disease caused by their carbon pollution and ensures, through hypothecation, that those affected are helped to adapt. This proposal would hypothecate tax raised from those able to afford to fly, whether in the developed or developing world, for business or for leisure, to assist those bearing the brunt of climate change. The polluter, the airline, pays. Those who take responsibility and achieve greater efficiencies, reducing their carbon pollution, would pay less; such a tax would push the airlines to move out of denial, and to reduce their emissions. No passenger tax can achieve that.

It is the relatively wealthy in the developed and developing worlds that fly; their flying imposes costs on others. Those costs should be met in full by those who fly and the proceeds should be hypothecated to establish a Global Adaptation Fund to benefit those areas of the world most seriously impacted by climate change.

A global tax on aviation based on fuel purchases and the DEFRA shadow price of carbon at £27 per ton could raise £16bn for adaptation and this would transfer wealth from the relative wealthy to the poor affected by climate change. This would cost an average of between £7 and £8 extra per passenger per flight and if airlines were taxed on the basis of fuel consumed at the end of a quarterly accounting period they would be incentivised to increase their fuel efficiency per revenue passenger mile.

Consumers have rightly been wary of carbon offsetting. However, when offered the opportunity to choose a carbon efficient airline a commercial carbon friendly flight calculator which enables them to identify the greenest and cheapest 57% of them chose that option, paying an average premium of 19% over the cheapest flights.

Consumers have demonstrated that they are willing to take responsibility. The British Government could provide international leadership, announce a new strategy to raise significant funds for adaptation and work through the International Civil Aviation Organisation to have a proposal on the table for Copenhagen.

Professor Harold Goodwin
International Centre for Responsible Tourism
Leeds Metropolitan University

Telphone campaign TODAY – support this Avaaz initiative.

Dear friends,

The global wake-up is here – make a phone-call now to the government number in this email, find an event near you if there’s time, or just share images and experiences of this amazing day with others on our hub page:

Scroll down to find your government’s phone number, or check out the Global Wake-Up Call live online

The global climate wake-up call is here! Now all of us can get involved from home — by making a phone-call to our own governments, or following this extraordinary day of action as it unfolds around the world — plus, there’s still time to join a local event near you!

The press is reporting that global climate talks are in a shambles and the UN summit on Tuesday is the only hope to revive them. This Monday, we’re flooding media and government office phone lines worldwide with a wake up call for leaders to act — with phone calls being made from over 2000 rallies, marches, meetings and “flashmobs” in public places across the planet, and by hundreds of thousands of us from home.

We’ve sourced government phone numbers for your country, with suggestions about what to say. You find all the information you need about the great Global Wake-Up Call events and phone-calls on the hub page at the link below, including photos, video and a liveblog for us to share our experiences of the day — make a phone-call from home or work and tell us how it went at this link, or find an event near you to attend:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/sept21_hub/

Here are the numbers to call in your country (Please start calling after 12.18pm Monday local time):

Prime Minister Gordon Brown
(+44) 020 8144 7459 / 0300 060 4000

Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Ed Miliband
(+44) (0)207 979 7777 / 0300 060 4000

Secretary of State for Foreign & Commonwealth Affairs David Miliband
(+44) (0)20 7008 1500

First Secretary of State, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation & Skills Peter Mandelson
(+44) (0)20 7215 5000 or (0)20 7215 6740 (Minicom)

If you don’t see any phone numbers here, or want to find different contact information, click on the link above.

Make at least one call, and if you don’t get through, it’s probably because we’re jamming the phone-lines and it’s working — so just keep trying throughout the day, or switch to another number!

We suggest you say you’re calling as part of an international action called the Global Wake-Up call, asking leaders to commit to go to the Copenhagen climate meeting in December and agree on a global climate deal that is FAIR, AMBITIOUS and BINDING (“FAB”), and ask them to register your call and convey the message to the decision-maker.

Once you’ve made your call, visit the Wake-Up Hub at this link and post a short update on how it went in the live-blog on the [right] of the page — you can also check out other people’s experiences there, and see photos and video from the wake-up call events as they are posted:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/sept21_hub/

If you’d like to join a wake-up call event or flashmob in a public place near you, there may still be time — click the link above and then click on the global map to find events wherever we are.

In recent weeks, we’ve stunned national governments, heads of state and political parties with sudden barrages of thousands of calls. These phonecalls tie up staff and shut down phone lines — but they are never missed, and time after time, we’re finding, they work. 14,000 calls reversed the Brazilian President’s position on a new climate protection law, 3,000 calls persuaded the German Chancellor’s party to engage with climate groups, just a few hundred calls got the attention of top advisors to French President Sarkozy.

We have just 78 days left until the final UN meeting in Copenhagen, where we’ll succeed or fail to get an historic global treaty to place binding global limits on carbon pollution, stop a climate catastrophe and unleash a new clean and green economy. Our leaders are nowhere near success, they’re not even planning on going to Copenhagen.

Let’s send them a wake up call they won’t forget. Use your phone now, and let’s share our worldwide experiences of this day on the hub page:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/sept21_hub/

With hope and determination,

Brett, Paul, Iain, Graziela, Ricken, Alice, Ben, Paula, Pascal, Luis, Benji, and the rest of the Avaaz team