The Other Story About the Airline Debacle

Last year, I was on the road about 30% of the time. I grew to loathe airline travel, the cramped accommodations on planes, security theater, boredom, hurry up and wait, the nutritional dead zones called airports, the physical effects from disrupted sleep, eating and exercise habits, and that was before airlines started grounding their fleets to check the planes and make sure they aren't going to fall out of the sky. My sympathies are with the travelers inconvenienced by American Airlines. I may be one with you soon - I'm scheduled to fly towards the end of this month. However, one bright spot is that the present disruptions - grounded fleets and bankrupt airlines - might crystalize in peoples' minds just how broken air travel really is. Maybe they'll even start to think about how unsustainable air travel really is.

There's no way to sugar coat that last one. The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution published an analysis of the impacts of air travel back in the dim past of 2002. That report raises concerns about air travel providing a disproportionate contribution to global climate change compared with other human activities and modes of transportation, in particular rail and marine. Global climate change is increasingly being viewed as a national security issue (here's the latest rumination from that corner), suggesting that matters such as air travel cannot solely be left up to CEOs; of course as events have shown in Iraq, it also may not be a good idea to leave such matters up to the national security technocrats, either.

With a new call for reducing carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere to 350 ppm (James Hansen's paper on the topic can be found here), it might be time to begin viewing air travel as something that becomes rare in our future. There are alternatives that can offset flying less, such as videoconferencing and high speed rail, but pressure needs to be applied, particularly to get high speed rail going in the US. Of course, this means airline executives will have to find something else to do, and probably see a decrease in their bloated standard of living in the process. Don't expect them to go down quietly, though.