Hydrocarbon has endowed the world’s population with many advantages our ancestors could scarcely imagine. In their day, getting to a foreign land involved travel with vehicles driven by sails, pulled by assorted beasts of burden, or failing either, walking. A hundred miles, (160 kilometers), required long energy draining effort.
Oil and its components, gasoline and jet fuel, have drastically altered that paradigm. Nowadays we simply use a vehicle to travel to the nearest airport, and at speeds inconceivable to our antecedents, whiz away through the sky to destinations far and wide. The younger generation has grown up with this motive ability to the point they take world travel for granted; almost a right of citizenship.
Only an ignorant fool, too lazy to do a modicum of research, would deny the assets hydrocarbon has provided modern civilization. But as a greater majority of the world population is gaining access to these benefits a wide collection of astute and observant people are noticing that this energy supply also comes with side effects.
The consequence of affluence, the very derivative of wealth, allows for more and more travelers to ply the world’s airways in search of holiday destinations. The impact this travel has on the environment has been studied by the Integrated Sustainability Analysis research group at the University of Sydney in New South Wales, Australia.
The research group published a paper in the peer reviewed journal, Nature Climate Change, which revels that the carbon foot print of global tourism forms a significant contribution in the generation of greenhouse gases, – GHG’S.
Their study showed that from 2009 to 2013, tourisms global carbon footprint
increased from 3.9 to 4.5 GT CO2. Global tourism now accounts for about 8% of the world’s GHG. Spending on tourism in this same time period jumped 30% from $2.5 trillion to $4.7 trillion.
Affluence and aviation seem to be most prevalent in the United States, with domestic travel accounting for the largest percentage of global emissions. Not far behind India and China are rapidly increasing their contribution to this phenomenon. Air travel for entertainment, by just three of the modern civilizations largest nations, accounts for over five times the emissions of Canada’s total GHG output.
The plague of wood and coal smoke once smothered the United Kingdom as it modernized into an industrial powerhouse. Gasoline and oil removed that very visible sign of commerce and replaced it with an invisible consequence. Previously technology has remediated massive environmental hazards, it will again as case in point, electric aircraft have become a reality and surely, one day will replace the current models in worldwide use.
Until that day arrives, those who employ air travel should pay more. It is unfortunate that the elected leaders of this nation are so willing to use the environment as an excuse to penalize its citizens, residents who are the least responsible. Carbon taxes on the masses somehow seem iniquitous and egregious when affluent nations other than Canada contribute so much more to the problem.
Lorne Oja can be reached at lorne@solartechnical.ca.