That Was The Week That Was 10-14 October 2022
We have NetZero back-to-front!
The mailbag heaved this week, the week that was, after last week’s discussion about toasting the King Over the Water in the form of the ICAO long-term aspirational goal. The first group of complaints were those that noted that the king the subject of the toast was not James II/VII but his son James III/VIII. Fair cop and apologies. I hope no-one’s PhD in history was ruined by my error.
The second group thought I was ungenerous with my (lack of) praise for the symbolism of the LTAG. Or should that read: my praise for this symbolic outcome? That is the most generous reading you can give: it was, at best, symbolic. This group cite, for example, the reaction of Dan Rutherford, of the ICCT, a highly regarded NGO. Dan was not just welcoming of the agreement, but ‘excited’. Really Dan? Excited? If I had less respect for Dan, I might be tempted to suggest that he get out more, but Dan is a highly regarded labourer in this vineyard, not least by me.
Two things arise from this. First, as I mentioned in my most recent Aviation Intelligence Reporter there is always a risk that NGOs become captives of the organisations they must co-exist with. They become, in the parlance, housetrained. To get access, and no-one withholds access like ICAO, they must be seen to be toeing the line. Radicals avoid this, at the expense of access to documents, attendance at meetings (with the right to speak) and respectability.
They are more likely to opt for guerrilla tactics. A group of pesky millennials recently launched ‘Brandalism’ attacks across Europe hijacking billboards to put up posters attacking the environmental record of airlines. It is fair to say they are not buying the greenwashing. They even take on one of the usual criticisms of this sort of campaign – that it risks being counter-effective. Once passers-by see a poster, made with huge attention to detail to ensure the look and feel of the airline it is attacking, it may trigger a synapse somewhere to remember to book that next holiday. One of the posters specifically addresses that point. It talks of having ‘planes on the brain’. ‘Airline advertising is fuelling the climate emergency’ #BanFossilAds.
That is cunning. Flying is not the problem; flying using fossil fuel is. This is exactly the playbook used by similar groups to campaign against smoking. Their aim was to ban advertising and inform smokers of the choices they were making. They did not personalise the attacks against smokers. Big tobacco resisted; litigation ensued. Litigation allowed discovery of documents. Secret memos accepting that the tobacco companies knew for several decades of the health effects of smoking came to light. Recent admissions from the fossil fuel industry are starting to sound very similar. We have started to see litigation against airlines on environmental grounds. Do not dismiss this as the work of crazies. How long before there is a push to get a graphic warning about the effects of climate change on every boarding pass?
The second issue is the symbolism of this deal. Symbols, my Shorter Oxford Dictionary notes, are material tokens representing abstract concepts. That would be great if NetZero was merely abstract. It is not. NetZero is something we will have to be able to measure, to assess, to make real. We have this back-to-front! We have an abstract token failing to get us to a material outcome.
If you are inside the industry, you are obliged to welcome this ICAO symbol at risk of ostracism, so it is interesting to read what a newcomer to aviation, Sean Goulding Carroll, who writes for EurActiv thinks of this. Sean is relatively new to our parish but recognises a smokescreen when he sees one. He is damning of off-setting, rightly, and notes that there is no magic pill, only hard work. To the extent the ICAO agreement had value, he notes, that it has put the focus back on each country to step up. Sort of a global single European sky for the environment.
Good luck with that one.