By PETER McMANNERS
Zed Books, 2012, 182 pages, $26.95 (pb)
Review by Phil Shannon
Review by Phil Shannon
In a future green world, will there be a place for
aviation? In Fly and be Damned, Peter
McManners thinks there will be but that air transport will look quite
different. Today, although total CO2
emissions from aviation are only 3% of total global CO2 emissions,
annual passenger and freight travel by air is growing at twice that rate and
will quickly become unsustainable.
McManners argues for curbing air travel consumption and for developing
green air vehicles.
The biggest obstacle to both is the global 1944 Convention
on International Civil Aviation which ensures that aviation fuel for refuelling
on international flights in hosting countries is tax free. Cheap fuel was intended to boost aviation
growth but it also acts as a disincentive to invest in alternatives to fossil
fuel.
Taxing aviation fuel is the essential first step, McManners
argues, noting the absurdity that it costs three times as much to refuel a car
in London than to refuel a plane at Heathrow.
Making flying more expensive will see less flying, especially in the low
cost airline market which has spiked total passenger boardings to seven million
a day. The unnecessary ability to
air-freight fresh fruit, vegetables and flowers from poor to rich countries
will no longer exist (a £1
million annual import trade in the UK, for example), and rightly so.
A changed tax model will, says McManners, lead to a “surge
of innovation” from the “green business community”. Current improvements in aircraft efficiency
(through aerodynamics, aircraft weight and fuel-efficient engines), better air traffic
control (to reduce landing delays) and development of bio-fuels (which,
however, take forests and agricultural land out of use and whose energy inputs
outweigh energy output savings) are “too little, too late”. Continued aviation growth will boost
aggregate CO2 emissions despite such efficiency improvements.
McManners’ radically redesigned green air fleet will see
conventional fuels for the power needed for take-off and headwinds but there
will be solar cells and hydrogen for cruising fuel, use of above-cloud
thermals, and hybrid aircraft/airships with lighter-than-air buoyancy from an
inert gas like helium (unlike the German passenger airship, the Hindenburg,
which caught fire from its highly flammable hydrogen in 1937 in New York). Such flying will be slower and restricted to
daylight hours.
Domestic short-haul flights will be replaced by fast rail
(using renewable electricity or hybrid locomotives) whilst, for long-haul
travel, modern ships powered by sail and renewable energy would be able to
compete on price.
McManners’ green flying vision is intriguing although it is
based on both an optimistic techno-fix to the problems of climate change and a
significant residual role for fossil fuels.
His ‘enlightened’ business entrepreneurs also face an uphill battle
against the vested interests of the aviation and fossil fuel industries whilst
his forum for instituting a tax on aviation fuel (the G20) is congenitally
futile as that body, consisting of governments (including Australia’s), is
beholden to capitalist profit and growth.
The future of flying, in a green world, remains up in the air.
