The International Air Transport Association-IATA Chief
Executive forgot to criticize the former Rector of Maastricht
University who in a paper entitled "From" destructive
creation" to" creative destruction": Rethinking Science,
Technology and innovation in a global context" wrote the text below:
“Let me therefore make a concrete proposal, in line
with the need to reduce consumption and directly resulting from our activities
as global researchers. I will propose to the European Commission that in the
coming Horizon Europe programme, researchers one would no longer get the travel costs
covered"
What the Aviation Chief Executive does not say is that
the number of transported passengers was around 400 million by 1974 its 4.000
million now and for sure it will be more than 10.000 million soon and since
some say that by 2050 aviation emissions could rise between 3-7 times no doubt it
will in our lifetime that the number one million planes in the
air will be reached. Instead of free miles shouldn´t we have a maximum number of miles per person per year indexed to the carbon footprint of its home country? Or
better yet what about the threshold of 1600 kg of CO2 per person per year
suggested by Jason Hickel of the University of London ? https://pacheco-torgal.blogspot.com/2019/10/is-it-possible-to-achieve-good-life-for.html
I think that the recent declarations of
the IATA Chief Executive are most welcome because they
could have the side effect of boosting the number of visitors to the web
site Shameplane.com where anyone can find out how their personal air flights will
result in a loss of square meters of Artic ice.
Of course, the authors of that ice loss calculator could have been much bolder because since as someone said to Science magazine that "flying is a luxury..." https://pacheco-torgal.blogspot.com/2019/10/flying-is-luxury-and-privilege.html and we came to realize that the luxuries of the few are now being
paid by the sufferings of the many (Thunberg dixit) then i hope they can build
a new calculator that can translate flight miles in terms of the number of
climate refugees or better yet in terms of the number of deaths in poor countries. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02323/full
