Monday 20 January 2020. Available online here.
We write as scientists who are appalled at the support of this government for the high-carbon emissions airline industry, and the grossly misleading statements made by Matt Hancock to justify this bailout.
On 15 January, the health minister communicated his unqualified support for the airline industry on BBC Radio 5 live, and claimed that dealing with the climate emergency does not require any change in our demand for flying. These positions are at odds with the scientific evidence and the need for deep and immediate reductions in the UK’s emissions. Moreover, the minister’s claim that “flying has already decarbonised” is categorically wrong.
While aircraft efficiency is slowly improving, any benefits are being outstripped by ongoing growth in the sector and hence the emissions continue to rise both absolutely and relative to other sectors.
Flying already constitutes 10 per cent of the UK’s carbon emissions and is predicted to rise by 300 per cent by 2050 unless urgent action is taken. The government’s own Committee on Climate Change (CCC) has stated that “[t]here are currently no commercially available zero-carbon planes. This is likely to continue to be the case out to 2050, particularly for long-haul flights, which are responsible for the majority of aviation emissions.”
Matt Hancock clearly has no grasp of the huge technical challenges in decarbonising aviation or, following his comments on “electric planes”, any sense of the timeframe of responding to our commitments under the Paris Agreement. Not only is the prospect of electric planes dominating the long-haul market decades away, but they would require vast amounts of renewable electricity to support current and rising volumes of air travel – renewable electricity, which is urgently required to decarbonise other industrial sectors, such as road transport.
Pointing to a future speculative techno-fix is unfounded and irresponsible, because the science is extremely clear. Globally we must halve our emissions by 2030 to stay within 1.5 degrees of warming, and bring them to zero thereafter. However, the Paris Agreement obligates wealthier nations, such as the UK, to lead on this, requiring reductions in emissions at rates simply incompatible with flying-as-usual, let alone planned airport expansion.
The climate crisis is one of the largest ever threats to humanity. David Attenborough, among others, has warned that the UK must take radical action to meet its climate change targets. In order to do this, we will need to transform our economies completely, away from fossil-fuel energy and land-intensive products, towards low-carbon and efficient ones.
Any government statement that such a transformation can be done without affecting our consumption is without a basis in reality. More and more research demonstrates that reducing energy demand holds the key to rapid emissions reductions. These scenarios do not rely, as do many others (including the CCC’s Net Zero report), on large quantities of carbon removal from the atmosphere after it has been emitted (another speculative, costly and risky techno-fix). Even the CCC’s Net Zero report calls for reductions in transport energy as well as in meat consumption.
Instead of bailing out aviation, the most carbon-intensive form of transport, which is disproportionately used by the wealthiest sections of the population, the UK government should be investing heavily in low-carbon public transit for use by all of its citizens.
Subsidising short-haul flights (as the government has just done to the tune of £106m for the benefit of Flybe) and misleading the public on the necessary scale of action exacerbates the climate emergency rather than acting on it, and demonstrates a tragic failure of leadership – especially since the UK is hosting the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow later this year.
Professor Julia Steinberger, University of Leeds
Dr Stuart Capstick, Cardiff University
Dr Milena Buchs, University of Leeds
Professor Kevin Anderson, University of Manchester
Professor Tim Jackson, University of Surrey
Dr James Dyke, University of Exeter