Understand Physical Realities: A Million Miles
We live in a world of physical decline. This gives the church an opportunity to provide badly-needed leadership. But first it will need to develop a theology that is appropriate for these strange and rather frightening times. The following three aphorisms provide guidance.
Understand Physical Realities
Accept and Adapt
Live within Gaia
The Million Mile Award
I have been flying on business and pleasure for all of my career. Since the 1980s most of that flying has been with Continental/United Airlines.
This week, on a flight from London to Washington D.C., I was presented with the following two certificates by the stewardess. I was also given a small box of candies which I gave to the grandkids who were also on the flight.
The statistic that jumped out at me was that my total flight time is 80.5 days. That’s a long time.
A very rough calculation suggests that my CO2 emissions over all those years have been somewhere around 250,000 kg. That’s about 2,500 times my body weight.
Here is a picture of the candies that they gave me.
48,000 Aircraft
If we are serious about reducing greenhouse gas emissions then will have to stop commercial flights. But we seem to be heading the other way. A Bloomberg article entitled Airbus Expects China, India to Drive Jet Sales Over 20 Years suggests that we going in the other direction. From the article,
Airbus company anticipates the world will have 48,230 aircraft in 2043, compared with 24,240 planes at the start of this year.
It is doubtful that we will actually double the number of airplanes in the sky just 20 years from now ― the resources are not there. But we see that Airbus have not yet given up on a philosophy of infinite growth on a finite planet.
Sustainable Aviation Fuels
The airline industry’s response to concerns such as those just shared is to switch to ‘Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAFs)’. These are biofuels that have roughly the same thermodynamic properties as the aviation fuel that is used now.
We have written a series of posts on this topic, starting with Need for Sustainable Aviation Fuels. The following are our conclusions.
SAFs are not truly sustainable. The assumption behind their use is that the ethanol they use comes from crops which absorb the CO2 that is emitted by the jet airliners. But the growing of crops and then converting those crops to ethanol emits large amounts of CO2 that is not recovered. The proposed subsidies could actually increase greenhouse gas emissions.
Vast quantities of land are needed to grow the crops. That land is needed for growing food.
These programs are part of the ‘Net Zero by 2050’ initiatives. The year 2050 is just one generation away. We are not realistically going to convert the entire industry to SAFs in that short period of time.
Why should the ordinary tax payer be expected to subsidize an industry which is fundamentally non-sustainable and which could decline as quickly as it grew?
Understand Physical Realities
The first of our theological guidelines is ‘Understand Physical Realities’. If the faith community is to provide climate leadership then they need to make it very clear that activities such as commercial aviation for the masses will have to come to an end.
That being the case, it is doubtful that I will ever receive a 2 Million Mile certificate.
