jet travel and global warming
Sep. 21st, 2006 12:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sophiaserpentiaSo Richard Branson says he's going to dedicate $3,000,000,000 over the next 10 years to combat global warming.
Branson is the owner of Virgin. Virgin runs an airline. Jet planes account for 3% of greenhouse gas emissions, but contribute disproportionately to global warming because these gasses are emitted right there in the upper atmosphere, where they do the most harm. They also aggravate the greenhouse effect because contrails linger as clouds.
Does anyone else see a problem here? Branson could do more to combat global warming by grounding his fleet of jets immediately and financing alternate modes of transportation.
Some science fiction authors, such as David Brin, foresee the return of zepplin travel. Whatever the case, this issue is going to come to a head in the next decade, and people are going to have to swallow some big changes.
This won't be an easy pill for Americans, whose collective sense of entitlement knows no bounds. I anticipate loud protests from Americans when they are asked to give up rapid air travel for the sake of millions of people who are at risk of losing their homes.
The Earth Policy Institute in Washington, DC, calls the evacuees from Hurricane Katrina one of the first waves of "climate refugees." Residents of various islands and communities in the pacific are already having to move to get away from rising sea levels. While "climate refugees" now number "only" in the hundreds of thousands, we could see this figure rise 1000 times larger within our lifetimes.
Branson is the owner of Virgin. Virgin runs an airline. Jet planes account for 3% of greenhouse gas emissions, but contribute disproportionately to global warming because these gasses are emitted right there in the upper atmosphere, where they do the most harm. They also aggravate the greenhouse effect because contrails linger as clouds.
Does anyone else see a problem here? Branson could do more to combat global warming by grounding his fleet of jets immediately and financing alternate modes of transportation.
Some science fiction authors, such as David Brin, foresee the return of zepplin travel. Whatever the case, this issue is going to come to a head in the next decade, and people are going to have to swallow some big changes.
This won't be an easy pill for Americans, whose collective sense of entitlement knows no bounds. I anticipate loud protests from Americans when they are asked to give up rapid air travel for the sake of millions of people who are at risk of losing their homes.
The Earth Policy Institute in Washington, DC, calls the evacuees from Hurricane Katrina one of the first waves of "climate refugees." Residents of various islands and communities in the pacific are already having to move to get away from rising sea levels. While "climate refugees" now number "only" in the hundreds of thousands, we could see this figure rise 1000 times larger within our lifetimes.
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Date: 2006-09-21 05:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-21 10:51 pm (UTC)