Hannah Ritchie has a typically thoughtful analysis on how we eliminating contrails could make a significant dent in carbon emissions from flying.
When you see a plane in the sky, you might see a small, white cloud-like trail behind it. Those are contrails (short for “condensation trails”).
These have a net-warming effect on the planet. And this effect is worse at night and in winter.
But here’s where things get interesting. Just 3% of the world’s flights generate most of the warming from contrails.
And a short change in flight path (1-2% increase) can mitigate this. This translates to less than $1 per ticket.
From Hannah – What would help a lot is increasing public awareness of the existence of contrails, their climate impacts, and how inexpensive it could be to eliminate them. There is a general understanding that decarbonising aviation is expensive, and this often means the aviation industry gets more of a free ride. But this is based on replacing jet fuel. If people were aware that it could cut a huge chunk of its footprint at a fraction of the cost, they might be more demanding.
Eliminating a few percent of the world’s warming is a big deal when the costs are so small. It seems insane to me that such a cheap solution is sitting there, completely untapped.
That and the reminder that there are often creative and inexpensive solutions out there for so many complex problems.
