Two issues are dominating the Copenhagen summit – whether all the big nations across the world will sign up to emission cuts on a sufficient scale to make keeping the rise in global temperatures to below 2C a realistic possibility, and whether the rich industrialised countries will contractually commit to provide developing countries with sufficient funding (which the former estimate at £100bn a year by 2020 and the latter at £250bn a year) to enable them to achieve adaptation against the ravages of climate catastrophe for which they are not responsible. But there is a third issue which will not be a deal-breaker at Copenhagen, but which post-Copenhagen may well become the single biggest issue of contention in the continuing international negotiations (which will last throughout the whole of this century). That is the issue of aviation emissions where subterfuge, official collusion, regulatory laxity, and downright cheating are already clearly visible. Disappointingly this even extends to Britain’s new Climate Change Committee which hitherto has shown itself commendably robust. Its latest report on air travel however is full of unlikely assumptions, false models, and preferential excuses which do not do its reputation, or the environment, any service.

The fundamental flaw in the Committee’s report is the assumption that is is sufficient for aviation emissions to be limited by 2050 at no more than 2005 levels (i.e. 37.5 million tonnes). This is admittedly the objective chosen by the Government, not the CCC, but the latter should not be tamely accepting it because it is manifestly inadequate and clearly the result of caving in to airline industry lobbying. First, it arbitrarily takes 2005 as the baseline when for all other industries (and for Copenhagen calculations) it is 1990; 2005 has been carefully chosen by the airlines so that their substantial growth during the previous 15-year period is entirely discounted. Second, the airline industry’s ‘offer’ to keep to the 2005 emissions level by 2050 disingenuously ignores the fact that all other industries will be required to make an 80% reduction in their emissions below 1990 levels by that date, so that when Britain’s 160 million tonnes of carbon emissions a year in 1990 have been squeezed down to 32 millions a year in 2050, the airlines’ offer to keep to 37.5 million tonnes is not only far, far too small a reduction, but actually leaves air travel creating more than the whole rest of the economy – all other transport systems, power generation, all industries, and the entire popuolation put together.
No, the airlines should be subject to exactly the same requirements as everything and everyone else. Indeed, giving them preferential treatment simply lets them off the hook of having to look to a leaner, cleaner way of operating – lighter stronger materials, less polluting take-off and landing procedures, improved engine technologies, better fuel efficiency, etc. Moreover, imposing the same conditions on them will give incentives to better alternatives, inclusing video teleconferencing and high speed rail. By contrast, the CCC (and the Transport Select Committee which slavishly followed them and is now being used as a cudgel to beat the Tories into submission over the third runway at Heathrow) did not do itself any favours when it suggested, building on the 2005-2050 canard, that it would still be OK to build the third runway, add second runways at Stansted and Edinburgh, and allow a further 140 million journeys a year by 2050. Shame on you, Adair Turner, and your CCC for\succumbing to the airlines’ blackmail.

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