Britain is boiling – and the government wants to dramatically expand UK aviation
It’s here. The climate crisis has landed in the UK. We’re in a dangerous heatwave that’s forcing schools to close, hospital appointments to be cancelled, trains to reduce service, and flights to stop as the runway melts. Extreme weather is not only a threat to our infrastructure, but a threat to our lives. There’s only one answer: urgent action to tackle the climate crisis.
And yet, on a day that has broken a temperature record set just three years ago, the government has done the opposite. While the tarmac sizzles beneath our feet, the skies above us are still full of planes spewing out greenhouse gases. What will it take for the government to get serious about cutting emissions from flights?
Today’s newly published “jet zero” strategy is meant to address the spiralling emissions of the UK’s aviation industry. Yet it allows airport expansions and a huge increase in passenger numbers (by an additional three-quarters compared to pre-pandemic levels), while hoping that technologies will emerge by 2050 to clean up the resulting emissions which heat up our planet. But the reality is that there isn’t any technology available now, or on the horizon, which would allow mass commercial aviation to continue at current levels without producing dangerously high emissions.
The strategy sets out a dazzling array of low-carbon technologies, which the government hopes will allow the aviation industry to expand for the next three decades while keeping within our climate targets. All of them are either extremely expensive, close to physically impossible, demand a ridiculous share of the planet’s limited resources, or wouldn’t actually reduce emissions. It’s incredibly diffcult to fly without using fossil fuels for anything more than a very
Read more on theguardian.com
