With the International Civil Aviation Organization convening in Montreal tomorrow to consider a global market-based measure (GMBM) to offset the sector’s rapidly-growing carbon emissions, environmental groups are arguing the plan isn’t aggressive enough to achieve its stated goals.
There’s still time to join FlightPath 1.5’s Twitter Thunderclap September 28 to boost pressure on ICAO for a better plan.
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International aviation committed in 2009 to achieve “carbon-neutral growth” by 2020. “Unfortunately, the text that we have now shows that aviation is well off course to meet this target, and ICAO’s deadline to adopt this measure is rapidly approaching,” said Carbon Market Watch policy officer Kelsey Perlman. WWF Senior Vice President Lou Lenard noted that aviation, with 2% of global emissions, would be the world’s seventh-largest emitter if it were a country, and is on track to consume 27% of the available carbon budget in a 1.5°C scenario for 2050.
“There really is a gaping hole in our ability to achieve these global goals from the Paris agreement, and that gaping hole is big enough to fly an airplane through,” he said. “It really is international aviation.”
The sector’s emissions are forecast to grow 100 to 200% between 2000 and 2050, and climate and energy organizations have been warning since February that ICAO’s plans would fall short. Aviation specialist Annie Petsonk at the U.S. Environmental Defense Fund wrote at the time that organization’s draft policy left “a huge emissions gap…about 7.8 billion tonnes of carbon pollution that international aviation will have to deal with to meet its own climate goals, let alone the kinds of reductions that will be needed” to achieve the targets in the Paris Agreement.
