As millions of Americans hop on airplanes heading to favorite vacation spots, the industry is gearing for a bigger journey – one that will tackle removing the carbon emissions from those flights over the next 30 years.
To achieve that goal by 2050, a report released by an international transportation group Thursday found research and support are needed quickly. It will make air travel a little more expensive but won’t mean going back to the days of sailing ships and dirigibles.
But it has to happen now, they said.
“We can’t wait until 2040 to start making plans and then be like, ‘Oops, we don’t have the money, this is not achievable,'” said Brandon Graver, a senior researcher at the International Council on Clean Transportation, which produced the study. “We need to ramp up quickly and we need to put in the financial resources to do so.”
Air travel currently produces about 3% of the carbon dioxide that causes climate change. The United States has committed to reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions from its aviation sector by 2050.
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Getting carbon out of aviation is part of a larger fight to remove it from the global economy. This spring, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said humanity is not on track to stay under the goal set by scientists in 2018 of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) average global temperature rise.
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