For the aviation industry as a whole, and, for that matter, our federal government too, ‘net zero 2050’ is just the latest layer of greenwash. The sector is a serial offender, having misrepresented its global warming impact for decades.
Qantas says it doesn’t buy political favours. But it has illegally sacked its workforce, short changed its customers, and paid no income tax last year.
Now it could be found guilty of greenwashing its efforts to reach net zero emissions by 2050.
But that ain’t the half of it.
Focusing on its failure to reach that target allows an even bigger and more dangerous deception to remain out of sight: that net zero emissions by 2050 is where we need to go to keep warming to the Paris Agreement target.
Qantas’s claims about its net zero actions, even though they are misleading, as exposed recently by Climate Integrity, serve the airline’s higher purpose in diverting attention from the reality that, even if its emissions were actually independently validated as truly tracking to a ‘net zero 2050 target’, hitting that target won’t stop warming below 2ºC.
For Qantas ‘net zero 2050’ has never been a way to effectively and rapidly stop its contribution to global heating. It’s known all along that it can’t do that and stay in business,
‘Net zero 2050’, for Qantas, is about maintaining its social license. It’s about maintaining the illusion that net zero emissions by 2050 is a safe climate destination.
If we can be sold that illusion, then we’ll keep flying and new runways can be built — even though both will enable increasing flight emissions. So long as the industry and government keep us in the dark about the ineffectiveness of the ‘net zero 2050’ plans they spruik, we won’t know that they will more than likely push warming to 3ºC and beyond. So long as we aren’t told about aviation’s climate crash flight path we won’t know how quickly we really need to stop aviation emissions to avoid the crash.
For the aviation industry as a whole, and, for that matter, our federal government too, ‘net zero 2050’ is just the latest layer of greenwash. The sector is a serial offender, having misrepresented its global warming impact for decades.
Back in the day the industry told us its emissions were marginal at best, and not worthy of global attention. Then under political and social pressure it was forced to address its emissions. Which is when they started greenwashing their accountability for aviation’s contribution to global heating.
In 2015 the aviation industry successfully avoided having its biggest generator of emissions, international flights, being regulated under the Paris Agreement, because, they argued, assigning flight emissions to the country of departure would be way too difficult, and anyway, it was better for the sector to self regulate its emissions reductions.
In 2017, it set up CORSIA, the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation to address only emissions in excess of 2019 levels and to make any subsequent cuts to them voluntary, not mandatory — allowing 60% of Qantas flight emissions to continue unabated.
Now, four years after Covid19 forced global cuts, flights and emissions have returned to the pre-Covid norm of 4% growth each year, and caveats to actual emissions reductions abound.
Even the government is in cahoots. Under the Safeguard Mechanism, Qantas is required to cut its domestic emissions in 2022 by 4.9% each year to 2030, or from 4.4mt CO2e to 2.9mt — way short of the 2.3mt required by 2030 under the Climate Change Act’s inadequate 43% cuts to 2005 emissions.
But don’t worry, we’re told in the government’s Aviation White Paper, aviation will ‘look to maximising its contribution to reaching net zero emissions in 2050. Elsewhere, airlines say they’ll ‘work toward’ reducing emissions using so-called ‘Sustainable Aviation Fuels’, that don’t cut actual inflight emissions, and won’t completely replace jet diesel for decades if ever.
They tell us their actions are ‘climate friendly’, ‘carbon neutral’, and ‘climate positive’. Chris Bowen tells us that what the government is ‘trying to do is avoid the worst’ impacts, even though warming is right now nudging the Paris 1.5ºC threshold, and, according to the IEA, emissions in 2050 will be only marginally lower than now.
They tell us not to worry because they’re focussing on trying to get to a ‘low carbon future’, even though the IPCC carbon budget for a net zero 2050 target only ever had a less than 50:50 chance of holding warming to 2ºC.
‘Net zero 2050’ greenwashing is a dangerous fantasy. It’s magical thinking. Is it even psychotic thinking? If we want to be safe we should be looking for the emergency exit.
The dangerous, deceitful and delusional diversions, from the necessity of immediate & deep aviation emissions cuts, must be called out. Their perpetrators — the aviation industry and its federal government regulator — must abandon the sector’s flightpath, land the plane and, aside from emergency flights, stay grounded until flying is emissions free.
Mark Carter
Mark Carter has been researching aviation’s contribution to global warming for the last 6 years and helped set up both Flight Free Australia — http://www.flightfree.net.au — (a group campaigning to raise awareness of flying’s warming impact, with a ‘pledge to not fly’ call to action) and the No 3rd Tulla Runway coalition — http://www.no3rdtullarunway.net.au — campaigning agains the proposed third runway at Melbourne Airport. In 2018 I researched and wrote The elephant in the sky: the hazards of aviation emissions and how we can avoid them (https://flightfree.net.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/The-elephant-in-the-sky_online_s.pdf)
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