What is the climate impact of aviation?
Stopping the climate crisis is the biggest challenge humanity has ever faced.
If we want to ensure a liveable future for all people on the planet, we have to keep global heating as low as possible and avoid dangerous tipping points. This involves huge and urgent efforts. We must stop burning fossil fuels and change the rules of the system. But currently, we are on a flight towards climate breakdown.
It’s about more than just CO2: The total climate impact of aviation
Despite flying being a privileged activity of a global minority, aviation has already contributed about 3.5% of all human-caused global heating to date. That is because planes generate also contrails, induced cloudiness and NOx derivatives, which raise the total climate impact to 3 times that of the CO2 alone. And air transport emissions have been rising fast: in 2018 they accounted for 5.9% of all human-caused global heating. Cutting air traffic reduces non-CO2 climate impacts immediately.
Sources:
Lee et al. (2020): bit.ly/LeeNonCO2
Stay Grounded (2020): bit.ly/non-CO2facts
