Climate Expert Mike Berners-lee Sounds Stark Warning To Travel
Industry is at a "crunch point" in time...
The travel industry must stare the reality of its high carbon footprint in the face and stop pretending it can be offset.
The industry is at a decisive moment in how it deals with emissions and must ask itself whether a trip is really worth it and justifiable in sustainability terms.
Sustainability expert and author Mike Berners-Lee says the industry is at a "crunch point" in time, whatever way it looks at the climate emergency and the current solutions.
Speaking during the European Global Business Travel Association conference in Berlin, he shares that the carbon dioxide emission of an economy class long-haul flight to Hong Kong and back is about 3.5 tonnes, while a first-class return is about 14 tonnes.
"That's more than the average person's annual carbon footprint. We don't yet have the technology for putting long-haul big aeroplanes into the sky without burning through something like 100 tonnes of oxygen," he says. "It turns into about four times its weight in carbon dioxide and because it happens at altitude the effect is more or less something like double again what it would be if you just burned that fuel on the runway."