It probably comes as no surprise that hopping on a plane to your favorite destination is no longer a conscience-free endeavor...that is, if you care about your role in global warming. For every plane that remains aloft in the sky, a noxious combination of carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide is released, the latter of which is believed to be twice as detrimental as the former in terms of exacerbating climate change. To put it all into perspective, a remarkable online tool called flightaware enables you to see how many airplanes are in the air in the continental US at any given moment, and within the last 24 hours of writing this post, there were 94,894,115 total flights in their database and 32,294 arrivals. What that means in environmental terms is that while the volume of carbon emissions released by planes in the United States alone is astounding, the global aviation industry admits to releasing just 3% CO2, a number which merely seems to just scratch the surface of what's really going on.
Airplane emissions are even more of a contributing factor to climate change than most realize because the compounds are released at a very high altitude -- the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change believes that the actual warming effect is about 1.9 times more intense than just the release of carbon dioxide alone. MIT's sustainability division says that, "airline travel contributes an average of 0.39 lbs of CO2 into the atmosphere per passenger-mile for long-haul trips (over 800 miles) and 0.57 lbs of CO2 for short-haul flights." According to USA Today, a typical New York to Denver flight generates between "840 to 1,660 pounds of carbon dioxide per passenger" which is equivalent to what an SUV generates in a month. It might come as a surprise then that in an effort to meet Australian quarantine regulations, Delta Air Lines has been running what they call ghost flights (entirely empty planes) from the US to Heathrow Airport -- according to Terrapass, that flight path releases approximately 2,691 pounds of CO2 into our atmosphere.
You might think that this is just a random example of very poor judgement and yet they aren't the only airline to make a practice out of sending entirely empty flights on their merry way. Britain's second-biggest airline -- Bmi British Midland -- has followed suit in order to keep valuable slots at key airports such as Heathrow. British Airways has also done it with their flights between Britain, Canada and U.S. More than being a blatant waste of money, it seems like a flat-out environmental disgrace. A representative from the eco-group "Campaign For Better Transport" believes that this type of behavior is emblematic of the disregard that major airlines have toward their role in global warming. Money seems to be the major motivating factor over eco-responsibility, and yet one has to wonder how bad they really are compared to other industries. What are your thoughts? Are ghost flights completely unacceptable or just the price of doing business? Can you think of any ways that modern aviation could revamp the industry in order to give it a legitimately greener presence?
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