Should we still be flying for art's sake?

9 Comments on Should we still be flying for art's sake?

JJ Charlesworth on Mon, 1st Jun 2009 10:11 am


The obsession with air travel and whether artists (or anyone else) should be accused of hypocrisy – for preaching one thing and doing another – misses the point. All aviation accounts for a small fraction of Greenhouse gas emissions. It will simply make no difference to emissions if a few campaigning artists or self-righteous film stars abandon flying. what it does do, though, to is provide an entirely symbolic gesture for those who want to be seen-to-be-green, and by which they can beat the rest of us up for wanting to fly.
The worst thing about the discussions of whether we should refrain from flying, quite apart from the simple fact that it has no bearing on the vast bulk of carbon emissions, is that we are forced into having dismal and perverse arguments about who is green enough to allow themselves to fly; the only rational response to the irrational accusation of hypocrisy is to retort that I am justified in flying when others are not – this leads to the ridiculous spectacle of forcing artistic judgements into a sort of ranking order of carbon-miles justifiabilty: so if Emma Thompson makes a bad film, she’s not justified in flying to promote it, and if she makes a good film she’s allowed to go first class? Give me a break!
Paradoxically, the artist most entitled to fly, in this dead-end argument, is the artist who is most active in the ‘fight climate change’. what is disgusting about this is the idea that some committee of self-appointed ecological judges should arrogate the right to decide what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ reason for flying. As an art critic, I would not have discovered all the great wonders that the art world has to offer if it had not been for cheap air travel. My world would have been a smaller, narrower place without it. I do not need to be told by Geoff Hoon, Gustav Metzger or Emma Thompson whether my profession or my personal interests entitles me to fly. Especially when all our hundreds of millions of inspiring, horizon-widening air journeys account for perhaps two or three percent of all emissions.

William Shaw on Mon, 1st Jun 2009 12:22 pm


Hello JJ. Thanks for sticking your magnificent oar in here.

But your counsel of despair that reducing air travel “has no bearing on the vast bulk of carbon emissions” is a) not entirely true and b) kind of entirely misses the point. The UK’s figures from air travel are currently 3.5% of total emissions (only marginally higher than the “two or three” you suggest), but this is estimated to rise by 350% by 2030. [Figures from Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research]. As nearly all other transport sectors are estimated to have declining emissions from 2010, air travel sticks out like a sore thumb as something that will undo all the good done elsewhere.

So it’s obviously quite a good idea for all of us to think a little about where we stand on this. Hopefuly this doesn’t require your proposed auto da fe of the hypocrites – not yet at least. As for your vision of a self-appointed committee of ecological judges, well, curiously that’s a little more like what Antony Giddens is suggesting is pretty much politically inevitable in his new book The Politics of Climate Change. If we’re not extremely careful about taking the initiatives ourselves, climate change will lead to authoritarian government.

So it’s worth kicking off the discussion of what art is worth the air travel and what isn’t. Because the luxurious historical moment in which our generation – uniquely – were able to enjoy this spectacuar view from the global summit, jetting hither and thither, which has as you say enriched perspective immesurably, is almost certainly over. At some point choices have to start to be made.

JJ Charlesworth on Mon, 1st Jun 2009 5:24 pm


Hi William,
I’m happy to bounce percentages around, but the point is that whatever figure you go for, aviation still counts for a tiny fraction of emissions; let’s take the last IPCC report, for example (working group III, p104 of the introduction): it puts ‘international transport’ in 2004 at around 0.7 Gt CO2/year. Or about 7%, on that graph, a figure which includes marine and aviation transport. It’s the lowest sector on the graph, way, way below ‘electricity plants’, ‘industry’ and ‘road transport’. The point being that if we stopped ALL air (and sea) travel tomorrow, it would still make hardly any difference to CO2 emissions. Closing down all fossil-fuel electricity generators tomorrow, I can understand, from a rational green perspective, but not aviation. So there’s therefore something else in the argument, which does not stand up to rational scrutiny on the basis of emissions percentages. And by the way, your scary-stats use of the ‘350% rise’ is a classic politician’s sleight-of-hand; a 350% rise on 3.5% means… 12.25% of emissions – shame on you for using such an obvious trick! And your comparison with ‘other forms of transport’ is equally disingenuous; the comparison, if it comes down to choices, should be between types of activity, like electricity generation and industry, not between different forms of transport.
Given that this is the case, I really don’t see why we should have to make choices about how I, or anyone else flies. I would rather we cut carbon emissions through developing and enhancing our energy infrastructure away from carbon fuels, but I suspect that the debate over personal choices in air travel is really a campaign to moralise individual behaviour towards self-denial, restraint and austerity, and nothing to do with a positive vision of how to improve energy or transport infrastructure.

William Shaw on Mon, 1st Jun 2009 9:42 pm


Dear JJ. Thank-you for so much your bouncing percentages. Please indulge me while I bounce some more.

I’m slightly stung by the idea that I’m using mathematical sleight of hand. I’m not worried by the figure of 350%. It’s a nice, solid number. I am a little concerned, however, by the figure of 12.25% you’ve come up with by multiplying 3.5 x 3.5.
I wouldn’t dare suggest you’re employing trickery. Rather I’d say your sum is, ah, incomplete.

The UK government has committed itself through last year’s Climate Change Act to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050. This was based on then-best estimates that we needed to keep atmospheric CO2 emissions below 450 parts per million in order to avoid a temperature rise of over 2 degrees.

If, say, the world was aiming for a 50% reduction in greenhouse emissions by 2030 this would mean that air travel, at the predicted rate of rise, would account for around a quarter of the total – double your figure – by that year. (Actually even that maths is a little dubious… as it expects other sectors to contract more rapidly percentage-wise to accept aviation’s growth).

Of course there are two possible objections to what I’ve just said:

1) That aviation will match the efficiencies of other energy-consuming sectors, so my maths is out too. Unfortunately though while we can generate power for domestic and industrial use by other means, no one has yet figured out how to make a solar powered passenger air liner. Or even a nuclear powered one. We could move over to biofuels for aviation of course, which would solve the world’s obsesity problems too but frankly I’d rather eat than fly, given the choise.

2) That that 50% reduction, or thereabouts, by 2030 is a figure plucked out of thin air and one which we all know the world won’t come anywhere near. Which is probably more true – especially if people continue saying that while they completely agree that cuts have to be made – they don’t really want what they like doing to be cut please.

I am however totally in agreement with you that this needs to be used as an opportunity to improve transport infrastructure, not just as a chance to harumph about other people.

JJ Charlesworth on Tue, 2nd Jun 2009 9:17 am


hi Will,

Well, you see what happens when you get someone else to do your sums for you! In any discussion involving percentage increase, especially percentages of percentages, it’s best to stick to core figures. So without labouring the stats bit, what is the projected percentage the Tindall Centre came up with?

Anyway, not being committed to hunting down either the largest or smallest estimate, I’m happy to go with the IPCC for now. But your argument is a little contorted: at the moment, air travel counts for a small share of GHGs. Were it to remain equal, and other areas of activity to fall, then, yes, one can see that its share would increase, whether or not, in absolute terms, its emisssions were to remain constant or rise. the point in GHG discussions is what the total GHG emission level is; large reductions in larger sectors such as energy generation would far outweigh the small contribution, even with significant increases, of aviation, because it is trivial in comparison to them, and trivial in absolute terms. That’s why I’m not convinced that the campaign against flying is anything other than an easy way to be seen to be ‘morally green’, rather than a rational approach to dealing with carbon emissions.

But everything you point to seems to be more about a certain moralisation of lifestyle than an optimistic and human-centred approach to development and innovation. you jokingly (I think it was meant as a joke) talk about biofuels ’solving the world’s obesity problem’, by which I suppose you mean that biofuels will make the production of food crops more expensive: forcing people to starve themselves thin through food-price hikes is a peculiarly attitude to human wellbeing, not to mention that it assumes that world agriculture is faced with an either/or choice between biofuels and food, which is simply not true. I don’t see much of an obesity problem outside of the developed world, so I’m sure there are some people in the Congo and elsewhere who wouldn’t mind jumping on a plane to come and explain this to you. And the fact that people say that cuts should be made while choosing to continue flying should tell you that there’s something good about mobility, something that people personally choose even over the exaggerated claims made for aviation’s emissions contribution, even if they feel they cannot speak against the prevailing culture of (irrational) disapproval directed at that choice.

But my key point on this is that getting people to change their lifestyle choices does not do anything to transform our energy infrastructure. You say that there’s no solar-powered plane – well, let’s invent one. Isn’t that what the RSA is supposed to support? But rather than ‘removing barriers to social progress’, you seem keen on putting more of them up. Anyway, there’s nothing stopping a hydrogen plane being developed. What’s stopping it is that there is no concerted lobby to overhaul the generation of energy on a huge scale – a massive reorganisation based on nuclear, mega-scale wind, wave and solar, with fusion energy on the horizon. The core issue is that we need a lot more energy so that we can do all the things that makes being human good – not waste all our energy and initiative on ever-more petty ways of doing as little as possible with a clapped-out and outdated energy infrastructure.

William Shaw on Tue, 2nd Jun 2009 12:27 pm


Actually the Tyndall Centre’s figures are much more pessimistic again. Their 2006 report Growth Scenarios for EU and UK aviation suggests that by 2050 the UK’s emissions from aviation will be upwards of 50% of its target.

“If the aviation industry is allowed to grow at rates even lower than those being experienced today, the EU could see aviation accounting for between 39% and 79% of its total carbon budget by 2050, depending on the stabilisation level chosen. For the UK, the respective figures are between 50% and 100%.

http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/publications/working_papers/wp84_summary.shtml

That, I’m sure you will agree, is not “trivial in absolute terms”. They’ve based their figures for aviation growth on the government’s own white paper on air traffic growth and put that against the various figures, including the IPCC’s, that say what we need to achieve to avoid catastrophic climate change, so it’s not plucking numbers out of a hat. The figures given in Working Group III of the Fourth Assessment only go up to 2004, so if those are the ones you’re basing your argument on I think they’re missing the point.

And the point is a simple one. Allowing one sector to grow significantly while you demand cuts from the others will not work. It will undermine the entire enteprise. This isn’t “irrational” disapproval, it’s factual impracticality.

Personally, I don’t have any problems with framing this as a moral argument. What better arguments are there, after all? We are going to have to change our lifestyles: simple energy physics are pretty clear that whatever resources you throw at the problem, a solar powered plane that can carry a payload will never be invented. Fossil fuel is the only substance that’s going to practically and affordably deliver the vast amount of energy it takes to lift 350 people and their luggage into the air.

What’s more – despite the argument being framed so often as a Plane Stupid toffs vs Costa Brava oiks conflict in this country – in global terms air travel is incontravertibly something that rich people do and poor people don’t. And climate change impacts those very zones – like the Congo – the worst.

Finally, I’m curious about your argument that there isn’t an either or choice between biofuels and food crops. What do you base that on?

JJ Charlesworth on Tue, 2nd Jun 2009 3:50 pm


Dear Will,

I’m getting more confused. You seem to have shifted from absolute and relative shares of carbon emissions, to talk of ‘carbon budgets’ which is not where we started out at all. Now that I look at the Tindall report, I cannot find any mention of a ‘350% increase’ anywhere. I’m puzzled. When I look at the table (fig2, p35) I can see that UK aviation emissions, now standing at something like 12 MtC (megatons of carbon), is projected to rise to about 21MtC by 2030. How this is a ‘350%’ rise?

On top of this, you should also note that Megatons are not Gigatons – that’s what the IPCC chart on by-sector emissions uses, and that’s why aviation and shipping is at the bottom of the chart. World electricity plants alone produced 10 GtC in 2004, ie 10,000 MtC: you see why I am not at all bothered by all this talk of aviation emissions. You haven’t not convinced me that they are anything other than a small part of the total (about 5% on the IPCC’s 2004 figures).

On your other points; given that you are now talking morality, I’d say that your morality is one of pessimism, restraint and low expectations. It is quite simply absurd to suggest that ‘fossil fuel is the only substance that’s going to practically and affordably deliver the vast amount of energy it takes to lift 350 people and their luggage into the air.’ You talk as if human ingenuity, science and technology had nothing to do with it. Artificially produced hydrogen, based on expanded nuclear and renewable generation could provide very obvious solutions.Fusion power is not far away. No, your ‘morality’ is one that is more comfortable not looking for solutions than accepting that human beings can develop solutions to the problems that face them. But morality should not mean ’self

As for the rich-poor red herring you throw out; the growth in aviation is to do with more people gaining more access to more air travel; you’ve probably seen Age of Stupid – I take it all the Indian ‘oiks’ who are taking to the skies courtesy of GoAir are not ‘rich’. But they are becoming better off for it, as air flight is no longer the preserve of the upper classes.

With regards to the question that there is no simple trade-off between biofuels and food, I would argue that this is because all agricultural production is determined by how much farmland yields, multiplied by how much farmland is in use, and that those are partly socially and technologically determined. You are surely not suggesting that all farmland that could possibly be used today is being used, nor that it could not yeild any more than it already is? there is after all, much land which is not farmed, and much land which has been decommissioned from farm production. Have a look at Defra’s stats on food production in this country and you’ll find not only that the UK’s food production has been declining, but also that the amount of land being farmed is declining too. Look at ‘LAND’ here:

http://www.defra.gov.uk/esg/work_htm/publications/cs/farmstats_web/2_SURVEY_DATA_SEARCH/HISTORICAL_DATASETS/HISTORICAL_DATASETS/historical_datasets.htm

Unless I’ve missed something, the UK isn’t physically shrinking, so the question of how much land is used for farming, and how intensively it is farmed is a political and technological issue, not merely a simple natural limit. Arguments about either-or are not a rational assessments of how we produce food and biofuels, but rather another form of moralising chastisement – that we have to be prepared to sacrifice something bad (food) for something good (biofuels). I know you’re going to tell me that we need fertiliser for all that food, and that requires energy we’re going to run out of because of oil etc. etc., but this brings us back to the core issue of energy generation. And I still argue that more energy, produced through a new low-carbon infrastructure based on nuclear and renewables, is entirely possible.

William Shaw on Tue, 2nd Jun 2009 9:51 pm


Please don’t be confused J.J.

Absolutley I’ve shifted from absolute to relative. That was the point. We started talking about an absolute increase which you said wasn’t very much because it was starting from such a low base. So I put that into the context of the emissions cuts that we actually need and which the UK government have committed us to achieving by 2050. Which demonstrates that this apparently small figure is dangerously large.

The point is that electricity generation figures can be cut significantly by efficiency in both consumption and generation, and by switching to alternatives. I totally agree with you that we can achieve a new energy infrastructure.

Plane travels efficiencies are much harder won though. The development cycle of new planes is now decades long. Plus hIstorically aircraft development has so far not produced fuel dramatic efficiencies in the way motoring has. There can be a low energy lightbulb; physics dictates that there can’t be a low energy plane. And there really isn’t going to be a magic rabbit out-of-the-hat solution energy solution before 2050, despite your touching positivistic faith in science. Frankly, I’m still waiting for Skype conferences to work properly (and I’m a one-time Wired journalist).The only fuel that matches that dramatic energy release of petrol is nuclear and that’s not happening for aeroplanes.

For this reason the use of biofuels is never a practical solution to aviation fuel, despite Branson’s stunt. Biofuels do have a role in energy production but I’m afraid it really always is a toss up between food and fuel as the government’s chief scientist pointed out last year.

You’re going to have to help me with the DEFRA figures. It’s my turn to be confused. I’m not really sure what they demonstrate. Obviously a lot of land has been taken out of production since WW2, but that’s been lost for good to urbanisation. I’m a bit out of my depth on this, but I would have thought that more recent figures [https://statistics.defra.gov.uk/esg/ace/c2_data.htm] would suggest that a lot of those declines were very quickly reversed as food prices increased over the last year or two. As that hasn’t reduced prices significantly wouldn’t that suggest that there isn’t really so much spare capacity?

JJ Charlesworth on Wed, 3rd Jun 2009 9:36 am


I’m afraid I’m still stuck with the fact that with aviation, we’re talking about megatons of CO2, and with electricity generation we’re talking gigatons. all I’m saying is (uh-oh, here come the percentages) that a ‘50% reduction’ in electricity generation emissions (ie 50% of a gigaton value) is going to make a big difference to 50%cuts or 50% rises in a value which is measured in the megatons. Surely you can see my scepticism with regards to the purpose of focusing cultural attention on the personal habits of air travellers. closing down all energy generation for a week (and that means industrial more than and domestic use) would cut more carbon than a year’s worth of people choosing not to fly, or choosing not to freight anything by air etc. Given that the vast bulk of emissions originates in the energy generation sector, I can see why zealous green protestors want to close down power stations – at least it has some basis in the actual relative merits of which type of carbon-emitting activity greens want to close down first! In comparison, the attacks on aviation are purely moralistic diatribes against what greens see as a culture of wanton ‘excess’, especially among the masses. it simply cannot, for all your best efforts, come down to a rational argument about aviation’s CO2 contributions, which as we’ve thrashed out, are somewhere around the 10% mark of global emissions.

I wouldn’t go for a ‘positivistic faith in science’ myself. I am keen however to point out that science, technology and economic growth are the ways towards producing the technological and engineering framework for a new energy infrastructure. But too often the current discussion is about restraining science and innovation – a negativistic mistrust of science, if you will. And I think you are dodging to avoid the obvious alternatives – hydrogen driven engines aren’t exactly a new idea are they?

What you’re struggling with is the idea that we could make the argument for innovation, rather than restraint. Of course I don’t have the answer for the next, zero-carbon airliner; if I did, I’d be a rich man rich now, and not arguing with you. But we can and should encourage a culture which nutures those developments. Yet it won’t happen if all we do is is say that ‘There Is No Alternative’ to going slower, doing less, staying put, turning the lights out.

At the risk of wandering too far off-topic, a few comments on the food-biofuel trade-off. Clearly, if biofuels are going to cause such trouble to food production then the obvious conclusion to draw is that they are not worth it and that we should look for other sources of energy, rather than simply accept that we should all tighten our belts in the future. Britain’s chief scientist seems to prefer a good scare headline, to making that conclusion. The rush to biofuels is a political issue. It is governments who are pushing the conversion of agricultural land to biofuel crop. given that biofuels are a very low-intensity source of fuel at the best of times (you need a hell of a lot of acreage for not much energy), I suspect that it’s a dead duck. with regards to land and productivity, I’m only noting that agricultural area has tended to decline, not since the war, but since the early nineties – interestingly, as the graph you’ve linked shows, arable and grass land has tended to decline in proportion to the increase in set-aside and fallow. All this indicates is that the government has big influence in how land is used, as set-aside is a policy issue. But I admit that these graphs and stats do not tell us anything about efficiency and yield, which I’d love to know more about.

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