We need to find a way to add in the cost of carbon emissions onto airline flight prices.
If just 1% of the world’s population is flying so frequently that they make 50% of the annual emissions from flying, you would suppose that the majority of these people could afford to pay more for the ticket.
Currently aviation emits roughly 1 billion tonnes of carbon annually. Yet this industry receives $100 billion in subsidies. Now of course most of these subsidies, some by charging less for aviation pollution than car, however if governments worldwide agreed that these subsidies would be weighted towards the most efficient aircraft (for instance by starting to charge these taxes on the most polluting aircraft but continuing to avoid them on the most efficient, overtime this would likely accelerate the move to decarbonise aviation).
We don’t to return to a world where travel is rare and an extreme luxury, but governments of the world need to move people as fast as possible to low-carbon travel. If projects like hyperloop succeed, and hyperloop routes are built around the world, most short distance air flight will become a thing of the past. That governments can do their bit to encourage this move in the next few decades.
