Thread by @EngagingData

0/ I've enjoyed the #climatetwitter discussions about whether climate scientists should be reducing or eliminating airplane flights and I thought I'd add my own thoughts and opinions to frame this question.

1/ I think that on an individual level, the "let's fly"/"no fly"/"reduce fly" decision is an interesting and complex issue. On the one hand, the marginal impact of one additional passenger flight is, of course, negligible, for several reasons.

2/ By deciding to get on a plane that is already planning to fly to its destination, you are going to perhaps use a tiny bit more fuel because the plane weighs a bit more with you and your luggage.

3/ However, your buying a ticket on a not quite full flight (load factors on commercial aircraft are around 80-90%), you aren't causing another plane to fly, just reducing the emissions allocated to the other passengers.

4/ Since you are dividing the planes emissions by more passengers. It's like if your friend wants to drive from LA to SF and you say "Can I come along? I'll pay for 1/2 the gas."

5/ Same total gas usage (and about the same total CO2), but the gas cost (and CO2) per person is 1/2. However, many ethical questions ask us to consider not only individual action, but the question of what if everyone made the same decisions as us.

6/ And of course, thinking about others doing the same as us changes the answers to our hypothetical question. If many more people take additional flights, then of course, the calculus changes.

7/ Airlines see this increase in demand and will add new routes and new planes on existing routes and the total number of aircraft miles will rise. Allocating emissions to each passenger is a simplification for this aggregate incremental behavior.

8/ For every 200-300 new passenger flights, an additional plane flight would occur. Flying is probably the most CO2 intensive activity you can do, especially when considering the metric of CO2/hour.

9/ If you were to allocate emissions to everyone, there'd be a large distribution.

10/ The average US resident emits ~16 tCO2/yr, but most higher income people in the US would have emissions well above that and I suspect that almost all of the difference in emissions between their outlier totals and the average of the US would be airplane related.

11/ Flying is one of the easiest ways to rack up the emissions. Back to the original question: is it okay to fly or should we fly less or not at all. People who know that climate change is a major problem should be willing to try to reduce emissions to lessen their impact.

12/ Some eat less meat, switch to LED bulbs, recycle, drive an EV, power their homes with solar panels, etc. . . to reduce their CO2 impact (along with other co-benefits like reduced air pollution and in many cases, lower costs).

13/ However, by far the biggest impact a person who flies regularly can do, is reduce their flying. It may or may not be the easiest way to reduce emissions. That depends on your definition of easy.

14/ People organize their lives in different ways and have different priorities, some of which requires flying to see family and friends, or traveling for work, or maybe traveling to foreign places is their passion.

15/ But, if climate change is an "existential" threat to the planet, shouldn't we be willing to inconvenience ourselves to reduce emissions?

16/ If CO2 is causing coral reefs to bleach and island nations to flood, shouldn't we feel bad about putting more of it into the atmosphere and reconsidering what is necessary.

17/ *You* don't have to make other people feel bad about their flying, but you can't expect everyone else to worry about your feelings when you fly.

18/ Just like if someone says something to a person who litters in their local park, saying something about the impact of flying may or may not be "effective" in changing behavior but maybe it should be done anyway.

19/ I don't have any answers, beyond continue to push for policies and collective action. On an individual level, obviously people are free to decide how they want to act.

20/ But maybe you shouldn't be getting upset when people call out some climate-unfriendly activities on your part. Just like with other elements of privilege maybe just acknowledge that "yes, I've made some decisions that aren't helping" and leave it at that.

21/ For more context on flying, a round-trip flight from NY to London will emit more per passenger than the annual per capita emission of 81 countries, which represent about 47% of the world's population.

22/ Here's the full interactive version of the calculator. You can see the emissions impact of any flight and how it compares to country annual emissions per capita. Thanks for reading if you made it this far. End.
engaging-data.com/airplane-emiss…

I’d appreciate any thoughts, suggestions, or reactions to this thread as well

Retweet this thread if you think it’s interesting. The more people who see it and think about it, and respond to it, the healthier the debate about ✈️ flying.