Fly Less and Ban Private Jets
This is what meaningful climate action should look like in wealthy Westchester county.
I have been living under the flight path of White Plains airport for decades. But just a few years back, county legislators voted unanimously to add “general aviation”, which is a fancy word for private and corporate jets. The sleepy county airport suddenly got really busy and now on a Sunday evening, private jets of all sizes fly right over my house in 90 second intervals late into the night. The constant noise caused me to do a little research and it was truly unsettling what I discovered.
A report from the Institute for Policy Studies on the private jet lobby infuriated me. Private jets are just another situation in which regular people pay more than wealthy ones do. General aviation is outrageously subsidized by commercial flyers thanks to many loopholes that keep getting bigger. And get this: they don’t have to take their shoes off or deal with any security checks like the rest of us do when we board a flight.
The noise over my house is a grim reminder of the climate impacts of air travel. Many years ago, I followed the journey of No Impact Man as Colin Beavan spent a year living as lightly on the planet as he could. After one year of living this way, he flew from NY to LA. That one plane trip cancelled out all of his carbon savings. Air travel creates enormous emissions in part because they are injected directly into the upper atmosphere, which makes them nearly three times as potent as the same gases produced on the ground. One seat in coach on a commercial flight from NY to LA puts .5 metric tons of CO2 into the sky. If you fly first class, that seat is responsible for 2.24 metric tons of CO2. Private jets create significantly larger emissions than commercial planes because they burn more jet fuel per passenger. Private jets carry an average of 4 passengers. One coast to coast flight on these jets emits double the CO2 that an average American emits in an entire year.
Right now, general aviation makes up more than 85% of flights in and out of this airport. Since the pandemic, luxury air travel is on the rise, the elite MillionAir terminal at White Plains airport will soon be doubling in size. This sort of growth is completely incompatible with a sustainable future, and will easily push earth’s temp beyond the 1.5 degree limit targeted by the Paris Agreement.
This banner drop at White Plains airport is part of a global campaign to bring awareness to how the richest 1% create 50% of aviation emissions through their use of private jets and overflying. This is a massive contribution to climate change and therefore this segment of the population bear a moral responsibility to cut their emissions.
A study, commissioned by Oxfam, says the wealthy need to cut their overall emissions by 97% so the world can stay on track to keep global warming below 1.5˚C, as pledged in the 2015 Paris Agreement. To close the emissions gap, it is necessary for governments to target measures at the richest, highest emitters. Inequality and climate change must be tackled together. Like it or not, the rich folks are going to have to live lighter on the earth. Will our electeds have the backbone take that on? Or do campaign donations get in the way?
Kudos to the Westchester County Board of Legislators which recently passed a declaration of climate emergency. But lets be honest: if the Board is serious about addressing the climate crisis, they need to make plans for phasing out private jet travel in and out of the airport. If super polluters are allowed to continue to grow like a malignant tumor, then their climate emergency declaration is just more bla bla bla.
So far, there are no green groups in Westchester county bold enough to take on a #flyless campaign and no one has called out the general aviation sector for the super polluter that it is. The time for incrementalism is long over, baby steps won’t get you out of a building that is on fire. Perhaps 2022 will be the year when well meaning environmental organizations #tellthetruth about air travel and take radical meaningful action. One can only hope.
