The World in 2030

The World in 2030 127
necessary to escape the worst effects of climate change. On
the topic of aviation the report was particularly fierce:
The scale of carbon emissions from aviation allied with
very high annual growth in the industry and the limited
opportunity for efficiency improvements should place
aviation at the forefront of the climate change agenda.
Despite this, Government is reluctant to actively curtail
the rise in aviation emissions, when self evidently
the associated emissions profile cannot be reconciled
with the Government’s existing 60 per cent emission
reduction target, and completely undermines any
chance of achieving the more stringent targets that increasingly
scientists connect with the 2°C threshold.
The long-term repercussions of such an approach are
difficult to overstate.
In relation to propulsion, jet engines are a mature
technology, and consequently the efficiency of the
current fleet is not set to change substantially within
the foreseeable future. Exacerbating this absence of a
step-change in fuel efficiency is the long design life
of aircraft, effectively locking society into current
technology for at least the next 30-50 years. 252
And carbon emissions from aircraft do seem to be
particularly harmful to our atmosphere. In ‘Heat’ George
Monbiot explains:
The climate impact of aeroplanes is not confined to
the carbon they produce. They release several differ-