Where It All Began

Aviation and Ethical Travel (Series Article 1 of 5)

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Let’s get this on the table straight away. Aviation as an industry is a massive polluter. The top seven most polluting countries in the world (in terms of tons of C02 produced per year) are China, USA, EU, India, Russia, Japan and then, surprisingly, Germany. Aviation, if it were a country, would come in just after Germany, and just before South Korea, Iran and Saudi Arabia. 

Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans

Jacques-Yves Cousteau

Considering that fewer than 20% of the planet’s population have ever flown in a plane, and only 5% have flown in a plane in the last 12 months, and considering that aviation as an industry is set to double in size in the next 15 years, it has the potential to actually pollute almost as much as Russia and India combined – that means that aviation would produce as many emissions as the whole of the EU. 

Why is flying so bad?

Of course, we all know that flying is in itself is not the problem. The problem is how the flight is powered and where that power comes from: the vast majority of aircraft now use jet engines which burn kerosene in vast quantities. This kerosene only ever partially combusts, just like petrol or diesel in a car engine, and from this, greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and many others are created.Worse, at high altitude, the greenhouse effect these gases create is quadrupled.