Is there a future for aviation?
 

As title says and I'm serious. I really feel like aviation is the source of all evil for many people. It is just an amazing trend to hate flying and it spreads more and more. Regardless of real numbers we are the bad guys now. There was a real idea to ban domestic flights in Germany. It ended up with an increase in taxes. There is increasing social pressure to discourage people from flying. And when I saw Greta's UN speech I was about to vomit. Damit, she speaks like Hitler.
I admit I do not expect to stay in aviation until my retirement but I would like to have at least five years of flying.
How do you feel about it? I do not mean economical ups and downs. That just happens and I feel for fellows from Thomas Cook. I mean real legal steps against flying.

Greta is the voice of our future. if we are to have one. Flying is part of that future. Where you and those like you fit into it will depend on your attitude. Perhaps not the one you have now.

For now there is just a lot of talk. But people are flying more than ever before. Including in Europe. Flights are full and tickets are expensive.

Having said that: Very short flights will be the first to go. A trip that can be done by train in two to three hours or so makes no sense at all by plane. That's not just many domestic flights in European countries but also many short cross-border hops.

In the longer run flying will have to become more climate friendly. In the meantime it will become more expensive. That's not a bad thing. Just check https://www.flightradar24.com/48.64,7.7/5 for a quick look at just how many airplanes there are in the sky in Western Europe at this moment. It's crazy.

I am actually looking forward to less crowded airports and to flying perhaps becoming something a little bit special again.

Hmmm, so we are trying to seriously discuss future of aviation because autistic teenager says flying is evil?

Are we facing new medieval dark ages of Children's Curusades?

This is idiocy, that whole idea of killing whole industry. Short haul flights? Short term Barcelonians will be happy until they realize the impact on their economy. Same for Amsterdam, Dubrovnik and other places.
But hey, this is EU, ideology is more important here than sanity for decades.

Again - can we have better proff that listening to that teenage girl who can see CO2 (true story, she claims she can see CO2 chocking her).

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Alaska and Canada's Northern Territories cannot support a modern society without aviation. Just an example. There are times when the sea ferries are shut down because of weather and ice, but aircraft can get through to connect Newfoundland to the mainland. Just a couple of examples.
To connect Australia, New Zealand, et al, to the rest of the world, are you advocating sea travel?

When Botoxed celebs want to travel from Los Angeles to New York on a moment's notice, are they going to drive in an environmentally correct e-car? It will take 4 days.

Aviation is a good career choice for at least the next 33-38 years.

There is plenty of oil in the ground, and aviation has a voracious appetite for it, as does the world.

The world's billionaires will demand that the oil keeps flowing regardless of the protestations of the "Greenies".

No, we're having a discussion about the future of aviation because there are serious questions about the ways in which it might be made more sustainable -- or not. And you can be quite certain that scientists, politicians, regulators, industry leaders, etc. are taking those questions seriously. Failing to do so, at this point, would probably seriously endanger the future of aviation in a very big way.

As for that teenager (who is on the Asperger's end of the autism spectrum -- you might want to look that up), don't be too quick to dismiss her with contempt. Much of the rest of the world, including very serious and very influential people and institutions, have concluded that she is, herself, a serious and influential person. Check her Wikipedia profile.

If it's about CO2, worldwide emissions by commercial flights are 2.5% of overall emissions worldwide and slightly above CO2 emissions of e.g. Germany (918 million tonnes, versus 800 million tonnes).

Influencers
 

It's an interesting - and valid - question. Sustainability has to be the key word - mainly because returning to the Stone Age is not what most people want. This means using less environmentally damaging forms of transport than aircraft where these exist and are practicable. But the genie is out of the bottle; the ability to travel to far flung places at affordable prices, either for business or leisure, or for all the goods that are regularly transported around the world, is not something that will be easily stopped. Nor would most people want it to be stopped because of the impact it would have on daily life.

And although OldnGrounded suggests policy- and decision-makes are thinking about future challenges, the truth of the matter is that most of them are of an age where they really (probably) are not going to experience the ultimate effects resulting from the last 50 or so years of profligacy by a substantial proportion of the global population. So the imperative to address potential problems for the future appears to many to be, well, less of an imperative. For this reason alone, I think it is good to see a generation who will undoubtedly experience the consequences of human-driven climate change - albeit some of those changes will be positive, many will present challenges - driving the debate.

And my last though is that whilst lots of people talk about climate change and reducing single-use plastic waste, to mention just two of the bandwagons of recent years, the reality is that global population growth is the underlying cause of many of today's 'challenges'. I'm not suggesting that if the global population was halved, for example, all the problems would go away, but they would certainly be more manageable and the quality of life that each of us enjoy (assuming that we are privileged enough to be able to sit down at a computer and have this discussion, rather than having to worry about where our next meal or bottle of clean water will come from) would be more sustainable. But that is not a topic that not many people want to talk about......

The dinosaurs once ruled this earth and they are extinct. Humans are heading the same way by their actions. The earth won't be bothered, it takes back what it requires and starts a whole new rebuild, one species dies and another begins and then thrives, the earth is in control of its own destiny and we are just contributing to the acceleration of human destruction. Yes we can take control of the timescale but when the likes of Trump refuse to see their country CO2 output as a problem, then there is very little anyone else can do to counter.

Please be very careful about what you say about Greta, some of the comments about her autism are already close to discrimination and offensive. Try living with it before you feel compelled to have an opinion.

Very true, but, at least in places where they are more or less responsible to the public, they have constituents who are becoming more aware of the issues every day.


Yup, there's no question that population is a major factor. In my lifetime, the population of the US, where I live, has more than doubled. The world population has tripled in that period. And all of those people are using more energy and resources per capita than could have been imagined at, say, the end of WWII.

Those who want to dismiss these concerns as paranoia or schemes by "radicals" are fighting a losing battle against a tide that isn't going to be turned.

Young Ms. Thunberg, having made a featured speech to the UN climate summit today, is in the headlines all over the planet. Not only is scorning her as an "autistic teenager" just plain offensive, it suggests a failure to understand how much of the world sees this kid and the issues she is championing.

We are not in control
 

One thing to remember in all this is we define things in terms of our frame of reference. Which is white, well feed with straight teeth. Most of the world looks very different and they will, like we saw a few years ago with the migration of refuges into Europe, define the agenda.
They don't care about Polar bears and they don't get their panties in a knot over some talking heads. To own a vehicle is their aspiration, pollution be damned. 1.5 degree temperature wise, so what. I want AC!!
To travel on a plane, to most people in the world that is the equivalent traveling to the moon to us a generation ago. They want to have it, it is within reach and they will have it . Do you think their politicians are going to tell them no based on what a 16 year old Swedish gal says? I just don't see Xi paying a lot of attention. Lip service maybe, policy wise no.

Like it or not - the great unwashed of the world will drive the agenda.

20driver