Air New Zealand becomes first major carrier to drop climate goal

I just don’t see people taking vacations or seeing relatives across the country as being the problem at this point in time. I think the limited resources we have to pursue environmental changes could be spent significantly better elsewhere.

If you came up with a revolutionary technology that saved an astounding 50% of the air transport emissions, you’ve eliminated 1% of total global emissions.

If you come up with a much more mundane technology that saves only 10% of electricity generation emissions, you’ve eliminated >2% of total global emission, more than twice the impact.

Limited resources would be much more effectively applied starting with the largest polluters.

I don’t think kneecapping air travel, pissing off many normal people, for little environmental benefit, is the way to get people to start seriously caring about emissions. It’s just going to fuel more reactionary bullshit and people completely missing the point, IMO.

As a side note, ships are way more efficient than trucking. Despite the scary numbers they put out, they also haul an insane amount of cargo.

transportation less air transport is 26%

Then the trucking industry will say "But just our sector isn't that bad, why not concentrate on ships?" and then the shipping industry will say "But just our sector isn't as bad as electricity production!" and so on.

What you're doing is exactly the same thing most people are doing to justify not making any effort "I won't make a difference by myself, why should I do anything?"

I disagree. Electricity generation and industrial processes are emitting many times more greenhouse gases than air travel. If you eliminated all emissions from electricity generation tomorrow it would make a massive difference, far exceeding the 2% of air traffic. Looking at an EPA source electricity generation is 25%, industry is 23%, and transportation less air transport is 26%.

https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions

With this logic there's no sector that would have an impact significant enough that we should worry about it.

I stand by my point; even if you eliminated all air traffic tomorrow it would barely make an impact. Efforts are best focused elsewhere that would have more of an impact on climate and less of a negative impact on people’s lives.

2.5% of emissions but 4% of global warming impact due to where the emissions happen. That's 1/25th of the global warming.

Air traffic altogether is only 2% of global emissions. We could focus efforts to reduce emissions elsewhere without the negative effects on logistics and people traveling. Even if you completely eliminated all air traffic tomorrow it would be insignificant compared to other sources. Not that I think it’s a bad idea to reduce emissions from air traffic, but it’s going to highly impact people’s lives for barely a dent in emissions.

Again, the issue is that once you burn fossil fuel, you are not turning it into fossil fuel in any meaningful amount of time.

On the other hand, let's say that a field used for producing plants for biofuel does not capture any carbon at all to simplify. So deforesting an area releases all the carbon a forest held. The difference is that the fossil fuel gives you energy one time, while the field produces it yearly. We need energy yearly. So if you deforest an area for biofuel, you release CO2 from deforestation but all the CO2 released in the future is what was recaptured by the plants. It is one time CO2 release for perpetual energy delivery. If you go with fossil fuels, you will keep burning more and more every year until it is much worse than deforesting an area.

So reforesting can capture CO2 already released, but that only offsets fossil fuels for some period of time. Even if you cover the whole planet in forests, there is a finite amount of fossil fuels you can burn before it is negated. That is why eliminating fossil fuel use, and quickly, is far more important than protecting forests. Once you burn fossil fuel, you can't recapture it into fossil fuel and would have to increase fores area permanently to compensate.

I understand what you're getting at, but I don't see it as being so simple.

Fossil fuels are essentially just ancient soil carbon, so in a way, we're talking about the same thing on different time-scales. My point was/is that the combination of deforestation and burning of the cut biomass actually _reduces_ the amount of carbon that can be stored in the soil on a given area of land, not just releasing it once and then recycling it. To capture the same amount of carbon again would require a greater area under management than the area originally cut. On a finite planet, there is a limit to how much this deforestation for biomass production could be scaled up without net-positive emissions. (I'm tired, so this may not be the most articulate.)

The world's forests capture a substantial amount of the carbon dioxide emitted by humans, and extensive reforestation could capture even more. By reducing the carbon capture potential of forests, that's less carbon dioxide absorbed year after year. Over a very long period of time, "releasing it one time" is what burning fossil fuels does: it releases stored carbon once, and then trees and other plants recycle it. Deforestation reduces the recycling.

Even though mature forests can store more total carbon, it seems that young forests, with more small trees, may actually be able to absorb more methane, so there can definitely be some advantage to managing trees for wood production on a short cycle. Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, so this is one way in which the overall situation is complicated.

Of course, avoiding both deforestation and fossil fuels is even better.

I'm glad that we agree on this point. It doesn't need to be one or the other. The most effective approach to addressing climate change would involve reforestation _and_ eliminating dependence on fossil fuels by developing clean energy technologies.

Ultimately, carbon capture just needs to match carbon emissions (plus a bit extra at first to compensate for current overshoot), and realistically, it will take both reforestation and a reduction in emissions to achieve that. Ending animal agriculture makes the most progress toward both.

the alternative to burning biomass would need to have very high emissions in order to come out ahead.

Not really, that's the point. Soil has a max capacity of carbon it will hold. Just like biomass. So even if the fossil fuels release tiny amount of CO2, they release it continually vs deforestation releasing it one time. The only thing that changes is how long it takes for biomass to break even. But after thousands of years, the one time big release will always turn out better than continual small releases.

Of course, avoiding both deforestation and fossil fuels is even better.

I don't think it's so easy to say that burning biomass is superior (from a carbon sequestration perspective) to preserving old-growth forest even if that means relying on fossil fuels (e.g. natural gas for heating). I don't know the answer, but considering that burning biomass does not allow that carbon to accumulate in the soil over time as it would in a mature forest, the alternative to burning biomass would need to have very high emissions in order to come out ahead.

Of course I am not advocating for burning fossil fuels; I am only advocating for protection of forests. I don't think that biomass would be a viable fuel for air travel in particular due to the energy density needed, but if so, and if non-combustion energy sources could be used everywhere else, then farming some young trees to continually cut to use for biofuel for air travel wouldn't have so much of an impact _if that land would not be forested anyway_. Freeing up land currently used by animal agriculture to use it for this purpose would be an improvement, but "chopping down a forest" would be highly questionable.

Do you have any hard numbers comparing the total lifecycle emissions of fuelwood to those of other fuels (coal, gas, jet fuel, whatever), taking into account soil carbon as well? If the carbon emissions argument for protecting forests doesn't make sense, I will stop using it. Deforestation brings plenty of other problems (biodiversity loss, habitat fragmentation, increased run-off and erosion...) that I/anyone could focus on instead.

It is superior if letting the forest grow means using fossil fuels. That was the point of my comment. It releases CO2, but only once and then is sustainable without additional CO2.

Of course, having the forest and e.g. nuclear power would be even better but that does not work very well for mobile applications, such as vehicles.

Old-growth forest stores more carbon than younger trees, so continually "recycling" fast-growing plants is not superior to letting the forest grow. A combination of syntropic agriculture and forest conservation would probably be more effective.

A very good question.

It is a very common misconception that trees and plants just always absorb CO2. The Carbon (C) in CO2 does not just disappear when plants produce Oxygen (O2). Plants use it as material to grow themselves and their fruits. Once they are fully grown, they don't really absorb any more. So if you burn a tree in a fireplace and grow a new tree in its place, the new tree will eventually re-capture all the CO2 burning the wood released as it grows. This works even better with fast growing plants used for biofuel. The CO2 released by burning biofuel is re-captured when you grow more plants to make more biofuel.

So chopping down a forest to create fields is bad in the short term since it releases and does not recapture the CO2 from the trees, but is sustainable in the long term since you "recycle" the same Carbon.

Let's all remember that while jet aircraft emit much more than other forms of transportation, this is nothing compared to the emissions of animal agriculture.

The only way we make air traffic sustainable is by only travelling by plane when absolutely necessary and by not ordering stuff to be delivered ASAP so it can be shipped by boat instead.

Four people in a Chevy Suburban with a V8 pollute less to travel the same distance than if they do it via the air. Air traffic pollution is very, very bad, especially since it's released at altitude, and yet air traffic keeps increasing, especially for leisure.

And before someone comments about the ultra rich and their private planes, their emissions is basically nothing compared to the rest of air traffic.

How much better is biofuel than fossil CO2-wise, if you need to cut down forests for arable land?