How Aviation Emissions Could Be Halved Without Cutting Journeys (theguardian.com)
- Reference: 0180535561
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/01/07/1728220/how-aviation-emissions-could-be-halved-without-cutting-journeys
- Source link: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jan/07/aviation-emissions-halved-flights-efficiently-study
> These efficiency measures could be far more effective in tackling the fast-growing carbon footprint of flying than pledges to use "sustainable" fuels or controversial carbon offsets, the researchers said. They believe their study, which analysed more than 27m commercial flights out of approximately 35m in 2023, is the first to assess the variation in operational efficiency of flights across the globe.
The study, led by Prof Stefan Gossling at Sweden's Linnaeus University, examined flights between 26,000 city pairs carrying 3.5 billion passengers across 6.8 trillion kilometers. First and business class passengers are responsible for more than three times the emissions of economy travelers, and up to 13 times more in the most spacious premium cabins.
The average seat occupancy across all flights in 2023 was almost 80%. US airports accounted for a quarter of all aviation emissions and ran 14% more polluting than the global average. Atlanta and New York ranked among the least efficient airports overall, nearly 50% worse than top performers like Abu Dhabi and Madrid.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jan/07/aviation-emissions-halved-flights-efficiently-study
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
> All flights to and from Europe should be cancelled for the safety of european citizenry...
Why just Europe? The whole world would be safer if Americans stayed in America and everyone else avoided the place.
> Alternatively, europeans can fuck off and stop trying to erode the quality of life of others on whatever dubious pretext crosses their minds.
We all live in one big ecosphere, and you taking a big dump on your patch may well negatively affect folks in other countries. But by all means keep trying to spread your American exceptionalism around the world. By all accounts that's going really well just now. /sarc
You are not understanding the problem (Score:3, Insightful)
> ....by getting rid of premium seats, ensuring flights are near full
So, you think that airlines are going to get rid of "premium" seats, which generate more profit. Are you really that stupid and clueless?
Re: (Score:1)
The Nazis tried that. It didn't work out well for the passengers. Too many died on the train ride, and forget about the destination. The showers were terrible, the rooms and meals were free, but otherwise the place felt like a death camp. And before you go all woke on me, my father and fiance are Jewish.
They say it out loud (Score:3)
"Instead, he said, it could run fewer, fuller flights with higher ticket prices. He said many flights were only taken because they were so cheap: “We know that a lot of air transport demand is induced. If you increase the cost, people would just choose a different type of holiday.”
The goal is to make it so only the wealthy can enjoy the world and we are all kept in our little corner.
Re: They say it out loud (Score:1)
It seems like letting the peasants enjoy the world is causing them to destroy the world.
Re: (Score:2)
> It seems like letting the peasants enjoy the world is causing them to destroy the world.
The people who live in popular tourist destinations would agree with that.
Re: (Score:1)
See also, congestion charges. Reduce traffic by making it too expensive for the poors to drive where the traffic is!
The solution to flight emissions isn't to make flying an exclusive privilege for the rich again, it's to pressure businesses to pay workers more of the fruits of their own labor so they can afford carbon capture to offset the emissions produced during their flight. Workers should be making at least 40% more money right now for starters.
Beware of inflation Re:They say it out loud (Score:1)
Increasing wages increases the cost to employers, which is passed on to the customers of said employers.
If the price of everything that is produced went up 40%, we'd be back where we started, except those whose assets were in cash or in assets that didn't go up in value at least 40% would be poorer (in terms of what their cash could buy).
Re: (Score:1)
Increasing wages only increases costs to employers if it increases their total expenditure. If they reallocate the money from elsewhere, like shareholder dividends and upper management pay, expenditure and be held steady.
Re: (Score:2)
s/expenditure and be/expenditure can be/g
Re: (Score:2)
Very unlikely any combination of such things would lead to 40% of worker salaries being available.
You're the problem with the Bernie Bros of the world.
You can't fucking do math. I wish your math worked- believe me, I do.
Re: (Score:1)
It's all there and my numbers are actually very conservative, this study found that there should be enough to double present-day incomes: [1]https://time.com/5888024/50-tr... [time.com]
[1] https://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-inequality-america/
Re: (Score:2)
No- stop.
Those are numbers for a very different thing.
What you want to do, is increase the non-executive salary by 40%.
If you want to bitch about the class inequality between different income sources, I'll gladly get in line with you, even though a healthy percentage of mine at this age come from investments. But that's not what you're trying to do.
You're trying to increase a line item by 40%, pretending that the waste in 8% of that line item can do it.
That's not how math works.
Re: (Score:2)
> You're trying to increase a line item by 40%, pretending that the waste in 8% of that line item can do it.
> That's not how math works.
No that's not what I'm trying to do, I did mention shareholder dividends earlier. Much of the corporate profit has been routed through different income sources including investment-related ones, but this shouldn't be allowed to obscure the upward redistribution of pay that needs to be reversed no matter how complicated in might appear.
Re: (Score:2)
> No that's not what I'm trying to do
Then it is what you are unintentionally doing.
> I did mention shareholder dividends earlier.
Shareholder dividends are not the source of the 1%'s fantastic income.
Neither are salaries.
> Much of the corporate profit has been routed through different income sources including investment-related ones, but this shouldn't be allowed to obscure the upward redistribution of pay that needs to be reversed no matter how complicated in might appear.
The population income disparity is not matched at any large corporation on the planet.
You cannot fix that disparity at the corporate level.
The link you gave is about income disparity (and "chunk of the economic growth disparity").
That is not the same as salary disparity. It, in fact, has exactly nothing to do with it.
The top 0.1% get rich not off of any corporate le
Re: (Score:2)
> The top 0.1% get rich not off of any corporate ledger's math, but by being directly invested in the expansion of the economy, and getting a commensurate chunk of it.
> You cannot fix that disparity by destroying businesses.
Sounds like a job for a wealth tax!
Re: (Score:2)
And just for the record- I full-heartedly agree that we have a major fucking problem with the spoils of our economy ending up in way too few hands. But that's not the fault of corporate salaries. It's simply because they have their entire wealth in non-liquid growing assets, and that growth is their income.
You can't somehow magically look at that asset value growth, and then abra fucking cadabra it into workers' salaries.
I don't know if the solution is a wealth tax, or something else. But it's very clea
Re: (Score:2)
Good points. This has been a productive discussion.
Re: (Score:2)
Yep. This is part of "You will own nothing and be happy."
Re: (Score:1)
> The goal is to make it so only the wealthy can enjoy the world and we are all kept in our little corner.
Fuck, I wish.
No matter how many times the flight attendant informs you to use the fucking lavatory in your own damn cabin, you still come form a line at mine. I know cattle aren't known to be exceptionally bright, but give me a fucking break.
For the auto industry, it's even worse (Score:5, Insightful)
Here in the USA, many people are obsessed with SUVs and trucks, yet they never go offroad, they don't use these vehicles for work, they just want BIG vehicles for a really stupid reason, all the other stupid people around them that insist on having a large vehicle. Sure, there is a good use for having ONE larger vehicle in a family for when you need it, but the actual NEED for these huge vehicles is pretty low.
Re: (Score:2)
> I really don't understand why Americans drive and fly everywhere.
The USA is a big place. Our stuff is pretty spread out. How else would you propose we get from point A to point B?
Re:For the auto industry, it's even worse (Score:4, Funny)
> they just want BIG vehicles for a really stupid reason
The reason is simple: it's fun. You should look up that word ("fun") in the dictionary sometime.
Re: (Score:2)
I know what fun is, and the inconvenience and ill handling of a huge ungainly vehicle isn't it.
Americans mostly want huge vehicles because they're afraid - of the consequences of a wreck. They want to be some distance from, and ideally "upstairs from" where the wreck happens, which is what drives the ridiculous safety arms race we've been trapped in since the '90s.
Re: (Score:2)
It's also safer in an accident. The more mass your vehicle has, the more the impact is absorbed as you run down the tiny little shoebox that pulled out in front of you.
Re: For the auto industry, it's even worse (Score:2)
Physics not your strong point is it. Its crumple zone size and structural strength that matter. Stick the driver of some bloated pickup at the front like in a bus and hes as good as dead in a collision with anything larger than a motorbike and the extra mass will help him on his way.
Re: (Score:2)
100% of the [1]peer reviewed science [nih.gov]* on the subject says you're a fucking idiot. Are you claiming (and do you actually believe) that larger vehicles do not, or cannot, have crumple zones and structural strength equal to or better than smaller vehicles? Is there something about a larger vehicle that makes it inherent that the driver will somehow be at the front, where in a smaller vehicle they would not, despite there being a lot more room behind "in the front" in a larger vehicle? There's nothing about a larg
[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3217563/
Re: (Score:2)
Quite fucking wrong, chief.
The force the bus driver feels is directly proportional to how much transferring that force into the object he's accelerating slows him down.
Now, in the case of talking about a human? Ya, it doesn't matter much to them whether they're hit by a bus or hit by a Mazda Miata.
They're going to accelerate at almost nearly the same rate, and the momentum they're going to be able to impart on the vehicle that hit them is nearly nil.
More massive vehicles are simply safer- as long as
Re: (Score:2)
Uhm, you know how buses don't have seat belts? Even school busses, as far as sitting students? And poles for on public passengers to hold on to? They're not there because they're not needed. Growing up, I was on a city bus when it was in an accident. Nobody on the bus felt a thing and nobody even knew we'd been in one. We were just wondering why the bus driver suddenly got out of the bus. Somebody got up, looked out of the front and saw that the bus driver had hit a car. We felt nothing because weight trans
Re: For the auto industry, it's even worse (Score:2)
If you really cared about being in an accident then you would not drive black and other dark coloured cars. A white car is ~25% less likely to be involved in an accident between dusk and dawn than a dark coloured car.
Re:For the auto industry, it's even worse (Score:4, Insightful)
>> they just want BIG vehicles for a really stupid reason
> The reason is simple: it's fun.
And that's a stupid reason.
For some people, burning down forests is fun. That doesn't mean we're okay with it.
If you want to drive a large vehicle for fun, then pay for it with a carbon tax.
Re: (Score:2)
The need is low, but this all goes back to the revised standard for MPG requirements based on vehicle footprint in 2011/2012 CAFE standards. Larger vehicles (Long/Wide) get more leeway on MPG. The current version was implemented back in 2012 under the Obama administration and was later revised by Biden. The current standards the industry has been using do not incentivize small vehicles as the MPG requirements are too high to generally achieve with budget focused internal combustion engines.
Trump's administr
Re: (Score:2)
See at first I would have agreed with you, but we are well past the stage where people want them. Now you must have them because to not have one is to be an aunt trying to navigate a sea of giants.
They can't see you, they don't care about your safety, you can't properly see around them, and their lights are exactly eye level.
I don't want a SUV, I still have one.
Re: (Score:2)
> Here in the USA, many people are obsessed with SUVs and trucks, yet they never go offroad, they don't use these vehicles for work, they just want BIG vehicles for a really stupid reason, all the other stupid people around them that insist on having a large vehicle. Sure, there is a good use for having ONE larger vehicle in a family for when you need it, but the actual NEED for these huge vehicles is pretty low.
Lots of us have trucks, and all of us haul things in it: wood, purchased goods, trash, lawn stuff, you name it. Many of us also tow things with our trucks. The larger SUV's are overwhelmingly owned by families that haul kids around (and all that entails), or older folks with grandkids. Smaller SUV's are car-platform based, and are actually owned more by younger females, who find them more useful than sedans.
"Need" on transportation is like "voting your best interests". That's for us to decide, thanks. Not o
Re: (Score:2)
> Here in the USA, many people are obsessed with SUVs and trucks, yet they never go offroad, they don't use these vehicles for work, they just want BIG vehicles for a really stupid reason, all the other stupid people around them that insist on having a large vehicle.
Well, let me help you understand the 'stupid'...
As others in the thread noted, the fuel economy standards introduced back in 2012 meant that cars *had* to increase their fuel efficiency. Now, this had some positive effects - I'm a fan of the fact that my 2021 Elantra gets 42MPG on a bad day, and over 50 on a good one.
The first problem is that it made certain classes of car impossible - namely, the station wagon. I used to own a 1999 Volvo V70. The thing sat up to 7 people and got 29MPG mixed with 200,000 mi
Re: (Score:2)
This doesn't make any sense to me.
My vehicle (2 door convertible) doesn't get anywhere near the mileage of that V70... and yet, I purchased it.
Are you implying that fuel inefficient cars can't be sold in the US?
premium seats (Score:3, Informative)
Hard to convince airlines to eliminate premium seats. They're too profitable.
Re: (Score:2)
They can eliminate them, but then they would surely raise the price of coach seats to compensate. No, thank you! I'm perfectly OK with deep-pocketed fliers subsidizing us hoi polloi.
Re: (Score:2)
Plus I pay about 3X more for 1st class and apparently that causes 3x more pollution. So I'm paying my share.
Manufacturing has emissions too (Score:1)
Left out of the article is the emissions cost of manufacturing a new aircraft. Yes, per mile, the older ones are less efficient. But making new airplanes is far from emissions-free. And the article acknowledges there's a serious backlog in orders; companies who want planes are having to wait for them. So unless there are serious proposals for how to expand the airline manufacturing industry, the article is not going to lead to any change in emissions.
HI! No. (Score:2, Troll)
If you want to sell people on your "save the world through misery" bull***t, it has not worked, and it will not work. It has been rejected by normal people every time it has been proposed, if not at the point of proposal, at the point where people realized the damage that those policies were going to do.
Even the EU is rolling back the ban on ICE powered cars in 2035. Why? First people can't afford them, and the infrastructure to charge them is lagging far behind. Second, China is passing even Tesla in e
Re: (Score:1)
> No one will deliberately choose to be miserable.
You're right in that there's a choice to be made here. You're wrong in the assumption that the choice is between misery and not-misery.
We can choose to be more miserable in the short term, or we can reject that and foist a much greater level of misery on our future selves, kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids. TANSTAAFL.
Re: (Score:2)
Among the things I did like in the EU were the bamboo forks. They seemed wasteful to a degree, but they are biodegradable and they were a lot more rigid than some of the plastic silverware given to you in a to-go box or fast food restaurant that you end up having to throw away anyway because they're so flimsy they're useless.
Re: (Score:1)
> If you want to sell people on your "save the world through misery" bull***t, it has not worked, and it will not work. It has been rejected by normal people every time it has been proposed
Hello ownership class supervillain! FYI, normal people only fly "cattle class" and thus would be unaffected by this. As long as our societies are democratic, we will do our best to keep you from destroying our planet for your personal pleasure including whatever jollies you get from waterboarding volcanoes with gasoline.
Re: (Score:2)
lol- fuck off, Comrade.
Get off of slashdot and go get yourself a fucking job.
I gotta see the math on this. (Score:2)
First, I haven't read the article.
Second, my first response is, "It's more complicated than putting more people on a plane."
-- More people = more weight = more fuel = more cost for all passengers
-- Currently, coach and business class tickets pay for their extra amenities and subsidize coach/economy classes. Like toll lanes subsidizing local transit by bleeding the people willing to pay for extra convenience, they're a net benefit.
Lastly, making airline travel less GHG-intense per passenger is a good goal, b
Unicorns (Score:2)
Or we could just start riding unicorns, it has about the same chance of happening.
An inconvenient truth (Score:2)
So, we the masses are justifiably miffed when we learn that the rich snobs in first class are responsible for higher fuel consumption per square foot. However, we are also miffed when we are crammed into ever smaller economy cabin seats, even though those smaller and more tightly packed seats are fantastic for cutting fuel consumption and emissions.
Even more important is not the ratio of fuel consumption or emissions per seat. The only thing that matters is the total absolute fuel consumption and emission
Re: An inconvenient truth (Score:1)
Damn straight!! Premium Economy for everyone!!
Re: (Score:2)
While also failing to grasp the basic economics that made it so they could afford to fly on the plane to begin with, and still lining up in front of the fucking first class lavatory.
Actual best ways to reduce carbon footprint (Score:2)
1) Tax the hell out of private luxury planes.
1a. They pollute far more than the airlines.
1b. They are incredibly expensive - both in carbon and cash. Usually not worth it even for multi-millionaires. Airplanes need upkeep even when not in use, and if the plane is not full, it basically costs the same as if it were full.
1c. The people that own it can afford them - or sell them.
2) Put in speed limits for the large aircraft. Right now airline flights fly fast to reduce total travel time. But the wait to get
Re: (Score:2)
> ut in speed limits for the large aircraft. Right now airline flights fly fast to reduce total travel time. But the wait to get onto the flight is so long, not even counting the wait to get your luggage and/or rent a car means the actual percentage gain in time is not meaningful
Depends on the airport, time of day, route, etc - for much shorter routes , for much longer flights that seems absurdly impossible though.
Why would you include waiting at the airport though in the travel time (boarding and baggage retrieval, which also assumes someone has to be checking on bags too (another potential assumption error))? I mean, if the measure is getting between two points, why not just compare the travel between two points (which can include taxiing to the runway, to the gate, at the airp
Wrong issue: Private Jets (Score:2)
We have a consistent problem of telling individuals to do better, when that's mostly just a distraction from the majority if the problem. We tell people to turn down thermostats instead of improving energy efficiency codes. Now we're saying blame business class seating when private jets are the biggest inefficiency in the airline industry.
Yes, we can and should look at the small things, but we should really focus our energies on the major culprits.
Re: (Score:2)
> We tell people to turn down thermostats instead of improving energy efficiency codes. ... we should really focus our energies on the major culprits.
Exactly this. Every winter I see news articles about people complaining about their high energy bills and demanding assistance, as if it's a complete surprise that it gets cold in the winter. These people probably never do anything to improve the efficiency of their house, yet they have no trouble spending money on fancy electronics, the latest iPhone, nice cars, name brand everything, etc.
One of the best things I ever did was add extra insulation to my attic. Lots of it. It paid for itself in just a co
Re: (Score:2)
Yup. And in many places there are government programs that will subsidize home energy inspections and recommended insulation improvements.
But if you try to improve the building codes to increase energy efficiency for new construction, builders will be up in arms, and it's a tough battle. And that's where you make a huge difference, fixing hundreds or thousands of new buildings at once. And they could also require homes to pass energy inspections to be sold (here we already have septic and smoke detector
Genius. (Score:1)
Lets make air travel worse in every way! That'll save some gas!
Take it a step further (Score:2)
Get rid of the seats and make it standing room only. I've experienced the rush hour subway in Japan... same thing. You'll really be able to improve passenger efficiency. Tight enough and people could sleep standing up.
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed. We can employ people to pack them into the plane before the door shuts. We'll save so much CO2!
Re: (Score:2)
I know you jest, but that won't fly because the amount of passengers will be above the exit limit.
then I won't be flying anymore (Score:2)
No premium seats for cross-country or international flights? Then I won't be flying anymore. No thanks to the MISERY of being stuck sitting upright in a seat, often late at night, unable to recline or sleep, for 5+ hours at a time. And no thanks to the MISERABLE gate waiting area, which also has no place to recline. Economy flying is an AWFUL experience. NO THANKS.
Hello, Private (Score:5, Insightful)
If you get rid of all the premium seats, 100% of those people aren't going to be jammed into crappy economy seats. They'll look for other, likely more inefficient, ways to travel and they will all land on private aviation. The trend is going that way already.
Plus consider the economics, most airlines make a significant amount of their money from premium passengers. No way they'll go for this either.
Also, and highly relevant from an ancient @GSElevator Twitter joke:
Junior: Have you seen that new all-business-class airline thatâ(TM)s launching? It looks pretty great.
MD: Why would I want to fly that?
Junior: Well, everyone on the plane is in Business Class, so it's a better experience.
MD: Exactly. If everyone is in Business Class, then I'm in Coach. Where do I sit to show I'm better than you?
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly. Pipe dream delusions. I can fix this one thing without affecting anything else.
Re: (Score:2)
It is the sort of plan that the sort of person who has no skin in the game and won't be personally affected by any of the undesirable side effects that they failed to consider. As the OP pointed out there's little chance it will be implemented for the reasons illustrated among others. Private air travel will become more popular over time anyway. Before anyone thinks that some politicians might push for this, they'll never give up the luxury that they enjoy at the taxpayers expense and them trying to carve o
Re: Hello, Private (Score:3)
Private charters cost an order of magnitude more than first class seats. I suppose not if you rent a 172, but that's much slower.
You can also get first class upgrades for free just for having elite status, if space is available.
Re: (Score:1)
private aircraft is in nooo way comparable to a first class or any other "premium" seat, are you dumb?
Re: (Score:2)
No, if you're talking "Learjet" it is much better. Even a turboprop King Air, and not putting up with the various abuses of dignity administered by TSA as well as "the rulz" for TSA that they themselves violate anyway (personal experience, so yes, it happens, and was moderately expensive) will be a probably unsuspected driver for people to abandon scheduled airlines altogether in search of some comfort and tranquility undisrupted by "the authorities."
I'm not in the same stratosphere of those that fly 1st
Re: (Score:2)
Midwest Express tried this formula and until 9/11, and did quite well with it. The entire aircraft was 2 leather seats on each side of the isle and tons of leg room. It was more or less the classic airline experience, not the "let's pack them in as tightly as we can" experience. Midwest express had a hard time making a comeback because of 9/11 and the overall decline in air travel. As far as my general experiences, when I head to Europe, I'll always go Business or First traveling there. The flights are alwa
Re: (Score:2)
Flying private starts at about 2x the cost of a first-class seat. I suspect most of the people who could fly private are already doing so, and if there were no business class a lot of those people would fly coach.
The profitability issue is a bigger problem: premium seats have the least people per square meter but generate the most dollars per square meter because they're disproportionately expensive. At a lot of airlines, coach tickets are effectively subsidized by rich idiots:
[1]https://kerinmarketing.com/201 [kerinmarketing.com]
[1] https://kerinmarketing.com/2017/08/18/economics-of-airline-class-seating/
Re: (Score:1)
Until recently, US-based Southwest Airlines was all-the-same-class aka coach. I think they now have a "premium" seat which is basically a regular seat with a bit more legroom.
Re: Hello, Private (Score:3)
Don't forget spite. If they get rid of first class for carbon reasons I will personally find a way to add 10x more carbon than whatever their estimated percapita carbon savings is, even if it takes burning a barrel of oil in some fireproof place. These people can cram all this performative bullshit up their asses. You want to reduce carbon, make it so that if I buy furniture it wasn't grown in Canada shipped to China processed into furniture pieces shipped to somewhere to be clicked together and qualify
Re: (Score:2)
Spite is one of the stupidest human behaviours.
Re: (Score:2)
Generally agree, but there are some valid reasons for flying business that are not just about having "better" seats. Ever try to work on a laptop on a budget economy seat? Even with a small laptop its almost impossible. On a round trip from CA to Europe or Asia, that's ~20 hours of lost work time, and for professionals who cost the company $500/hour that adds up. Since the high profit business seats allow airlines to charge less for economy seats, there is some advantage all around.
In general though w