aviation
3 million coconuts
Submitted by antarchi on December 22, 2008 - 21:55In February 2008, airline Virgin Atlantic conducted a test flight using a biofuel made from coconut and babassu oil... During Virgin’s test flight from London to Amsterdam, the Boeing 747 consumed 22 tonnes of fuel, of which only 5 per cent was neat biofuel. Producing even that much required the equivalent of 150,000 coconuts... Had this single flight been run entirely on biofuel, it would have consumed 3 million coconuts
flying to save the world
Submitted by antarchi on December 6, 2009 - 23:54Dear Irene Khan
I am delighted to see that Amnesty is at last making explicit the link between human rights and climate change. Perhaps you have done so before, and I have failed to notice. In any case, I have felt for a long time that human rights organisations - and Amnesty in particular - have been remiss in failing to identify climate change as a human rights issue.
In view of your latest appeal to political leaders in the run-up to Copenhagen, and your recognition that "the effects of climate change will be felt most by people experiencing human rights abuses because they are poor or vulnerable" - I wonder if you could reassure me on two specific points relating to your organisation?
The first concerns the number of air flights undertaken by employees of Amnesty International. I am sure you are aware that air travel is by far the most carbon-intensive form of travel, and that the carbon footprint of one international flight per year is approximately equal to an individual's total carbon quota for the whole year, if carbon allowances were to be distributed equally about the globe. The carbon footprint of your employees is almost certainly several magnitudes higher than it should be if the crisis of climate change is to be averted - and if the poor and vulnerable are not to suffer more than they are at the moment. I would like to know whether Amnesty has any plans to address this issue.
Secondly, I have had numerous conversations with employees from numerous human rights organisations - many of them from Amnesty International - in which I have raised the issue of air travel and the carbon footprints of those who claim to be working for the poor and vulnerable. Almost universally, human rights workers do not see climate change - and their own behaviour, particularly in relation to air travel - as a human rights issue. Sadly, this is true for your own employees as well. Indeed, the normal reaction from Amnesty staff to the suggestion that they should at least reconsider their use of air travel has been to laugh it off, or dismiss it out of hand.
Are you happy that this is the message being delivered by your own staff in relation to the links between human rights and climate change - and do you have any plans to address perceptions within your own organisation which are entirely at odds with the urgency of the issue?
I would be very grateful for your response to these two points.
With thanks
[antarchi]
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flying and CO2
Submitted by antarchi on April 14, 2009 - 00:09In just ten years, between 1990 and 2000, carbon dioxide emissions from UK aviation have doubled. During the same period, the combined emissions of carbon dioxide from all other UK activities fell by around 9%. A review of various forecasts of UK air travel growth indicates that aviation emissions are set to more than double again between 2000 and 2030 and could increase to between 4 and 10 times their 1990 level by 2050.
Aviation is excluded from international inventories of greenhouse gases for the Kyoto Protocol.
muggins
Submitted by antarchi on April 12, 2009 - 10:36... is short of time and money, but spends a day and a half investigating train routes and prices to Budapest; books and rebooks, reinvestigates, unbooks, then spends half a day pleading with telephone operators and another half shouting at them to make the same booking again; spends £360 instead of £210, and 2 days and a night instead of the 6 hours it would have taken to go by plane. She thinks she is saving the planet. But the plane was taking off anyway.
So - should the mugs and mugginses, who continue to believe it may not be too late to save the planet, fly while the aeroplanes continue to do so, and thereby save their personal resources - time and money - to fight the bigger battles?
Here is how I see it. Speaking as a mug.
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dying to travel
Submitted by antarchi on November 6, 2007 - 00:21Sir Rod Eddington, [former chief executive of British Airways] was asked to advise the government on the links between transport and the UK's economic growth. He found that even when the costs of climate change... are taken into account, the total costs of expanding the UK's airports and road networks are lower than the amount of money to be made. Though he never spelled it out in these terms... Eddington discovered that it makes economic sense for people to die in order that we can travel more.
Those who will feel most of the costs of climate change do not live in the United Kingdom... Eddington has decided that it makes economic sense for other people to die in order that we can travel more freely.
carbon miles
Submitted by antarchi on November 9, 2008 - 00:01In 1995, 6 billion people on the planet emitted 6 bn tons of carbon (C) to the atmosphere (as CO2*) by burning fossil fuel - i.e. one ton per person on average. The oceans can only absorb about 2 bn tons C annually, and trees absorb less than one ton. So to stabilise the concentration of CO2 now, we need to cut emissions by about 60%, to 0.4 ton C per person per year. In comparison:
- a return flight London-Rome-London would emit 0.22 tons C (as CO2) per passenger, i.e. 1 person's total sustainable carbon emissions budget for all purposes (including heating, cooking, lighting, local transport, etc.) for 7 months.
- London - Baghdad - London would emit 0.52 tons C, i.e. your total carbon emissions budget for 14 months
- London - Auckland - London would emit 2.16 tons C i.e. 1 person's total carbon emissions budget for 5 1/2 years
And remember: that's just the CO2: the total warming effect of CO2 + H2O + NOx is about 3 times greater.
