Flying and greenhouse gas

Is flying really evil? from Guardian Unlimited: Travelog

There is a bit of a push going on, especially in Europe, to make flying much more expensive as a way to reduce greenhouse gases.

(I wonder if modern day Zeppelins would be more fuel efficient. There is a theory, although Wikipedia tells me it is highly controversial, that a large part of the Hindenburg's flammability was to do with the construction materials, not so much the hydrogen. I suspect that helium might be too expensive and rare to seriously use on a large scale. Also, surely modern materials could increase airship's carrying capacity mightily. Just a thought...)

Anyway, the writer of the above article notes this:

Reading the papers you would think that air travel is the single biggest cause of global warming. In fact, air travel accounts for less than 5% of carbon dioxide emissions. We must look to every sector to reduce emissions, but if we really want to target the biggest culprits then we need to look at homes, which account for nearer 25% of emissions, and power stations, the UK's largest coal-fired version of which wastes two-thirds of the energy it generates.

We've shown before how a few simple changes made in your home can save double the carbon emissions of a return flight to Egypt. In seeking to reduce our emissions we need to examine our entire lifestyles, not just our flying habits. The trouble is that it's sexier to write about planes than lagging your loft.

Indeed.

The second comment to the article is also interesting:

The aviation industry has always, and continues to work extremely hard to be good 'climate citizens'. Aircraft designs produce HALF the CO2 emissions that they did forty years ago. Current research and new aircraft aim to produce 50% less CO2 per aircraft by 2020. That is a massively ambitious target, and billions of UK, EU and US funding is being spent to reach this goal. Not only that but an 80% reduction in NOx and 50% reduction in noise are other targets.

This represents a doubling of the rate of improvement in environmental performance, i.e. achieving what previously took 40 years in 20 years (targets are relative to 2000).

I may still be able to take a holiday in 15 years time, then.