“Air traffic’s climate killer no. 1”: This statement is not true. © Josef Hoflehner contents page 1 — waiver does not save the world-page 2 — fly used to be a “divine attribute” on page 3 — The fuel of the future doesn’t have to be kerosene On a page
the other day in a Restaurant: I am sitting together with well-Known, working for an environmental organization. We are talking about sustainable consumption. And I’ll tell innocently of my impressions of the temples of Consumption in Tokyo, where I am short. In the case of some of my conversation partners, the forehead wrinkled. “You’re going to Tokyo?” You could actually make. Air travel in such a climate be harmful. And inter-continental flights only. Then a mea culpa follows, in turn, gritting his teeth is reported to be in the previous twelve months, even flown. In a conference call. In the holiday. Repentance makes the table wide.
of Course, this repentance has to be a reason. Each Tonne of CO₂ that a man introduces into the atmosphere, makes three square meters of ice in the Arctic melting, attributed to the climate scientists, Dirk Notz, and Julienne Stroeve, 2016, in science magazine. I’ll have a look at the carbon calculator of the German Federal environment Agency. My recent holiday flight to Greece: 1,16 tons of CO₂ for the Outward and return flights. And my Tokyo Trip: 5,53 tons of CO₂ – 16,5 square meters of Arctic ice melted because of me. The obvious conclusion is: flying is madness. But I think this conclusion is wrong. I would even say that the debate is on the wrong track, if you unload the responsibility for climate change with the individual. Above all, it fails to recognize that the fly is one of the most amazing cultural techniques of the 20th century. Century, in the globalized 21. Century should not be prohibited to finish.
I’m going to take a look at the carbon calculator. There I learn that, on average, every German citizen per year will launch 11.6 tonnes of CO₂. It included other greenhouse gases, such as methane, nitrogen oxides or ozone is included. With both of my air travel, my emission is ruined balance: energy saving lamps, green energy, bike riding, mainly regional products – all the savings are suddenly gone, consumed by a Block of air travel, more than half of makes my personal annual emissions expelled in a few hours above the clouds.
What would happen if all of eliminate this carbon Block from their balance sheets radically and no longer would fly? The sober answer is: as good as nothing. The global air traffic in 2014 was two per cent of the total greenhouse gas emissions in the world, such as Steven Davis of the University of California in Irvine last year with a 32-member team of researchers has analyzed. Two Per Cent. For comparison: The global cement production was in the same year, four percent of the emissions, the more construction industry is ten percent. Have you heard a call to end the housing? Of course not. No one would ask for something. Houses must be built, and the living room is already tight enough as it is.
This Text comes from the TIME magazine 3/19 KNOW. The current issue you can buy on newsstands or here.
And yet: “air transport’s climate killer no. 1”, 2002, Klaus Bruns Meier – then Chairman of the FEDERAL in North Rhine-Westphalia – in an interview with the süddeutsche Zeitung, for sure. Often repeated, is this pithy statement, since many environment-moving contemporaries become a certainty. But you are not correct in the back and the front. It fails to recognize, first, that climate change is a Problem of modern civilization. He is not historically the result of the misconduct of individuals, but of a now global economy, the need to increase from its own internal logic their production from year to year. This growth is based since the 19th century. Century to the combustion of fossil fuels in all sectors of the economy. If any, could, therefore, the title “climate killer no. 1” of the fossil power generation charges: To this purpose were initiated in the year 2014 worldwide, 38 percent of all greenhouse gases. Electricity from coal electricity from Oil electricity from natural gas. We only consider Germany Alone, the production of electricity from brown coal climate-intensive energy sources, was 2016 for emissions of 153 million tonnes of CO₂ responsible. The air travel of the German in the same year to 28.8 million tons of CO₂, and abroad flights. Here, too, it must be said: It is not enough, if everyone would switch to green electricity. Have done this a number of Federal citizens for a long time. Nevertheless, it is still produced in coal-based electricity. The CO₂ to a drastic reduction in emissions will not be possible if only the individual demand of each consumer is changing. If climate change is a consequence of the economic system, it needs political decisions to change this System. And we need to push all the.
That such decisions can have a lasting impact, the exit strategy from Coal, the British policy 2013 has launched. On each Tonne of CO₂, for the British electricity producer in the European trading system for carbon dioxide emissions allowances had to buy, I turned to the British government a special charge of approximately 20 euros. The result is that The share of Coal-generated power has decreased from 2014 to 2016 from 30 to nine percent in Germany, only from 43 to 40 percent. The UK was able to save in this period, 47 percent of its CO₂ emissions from electricity generation – Germany only four.
