Air New Zealand has abandoned a 2030 goal to cut its carbon emissions, blaming difficulties securing more efficient planes and sustainable jet fuel.
The move makes it the first major carrier to back away from such a climate target.
The airline added it is working on a new short-term target and it remains committed to an industry-wide goal of achieving net zero emissions by 2050.
The aviation industry is estimated to produce around 2% of global carbon dioxide emissions, which airlines have been trying to reduce with measures including replacing older aircraft and using fuel from renewable sources.
That is the thing: Mitigating climate change does not have a boolean result (we mitigated it or not), it is a scale, without a relevant upper limit. So, if you think “fuck this, we can’t stay even within 3 degrees warming, so it doesn’t matter what we do from here” you are wrong. Even if that is the case, at least try to mitigate 4 degrees and so on. Basically there is a difference between “we are fucked”, “we are super-fucked”, “we are mega-fucked” and so on! Getting complacent is not an option here!
Right. Also the speed of transition matters a lot.
Take any devastating effect that climate change might bring. Regions becoming uninhabitable, millions migrating, thousands of houses destroyed, crops failing, species going extinct.
For any of these effects, it helps a great deal if they can be delayed by years or hopefully decades. It gives everything more time to adapt. Like 10 million people migrating in 1 year puts a hell lot more stress on everybody involved (including the receiving countries) compared to 10 million migrating in 10 years.
Or your country might be blessed to deal with wildfires and floods one after the other, instead of both occuring simultaneously.
More time is worth more effort.
There’s still close to 50% chance we’re not fucked. We need to grasp at that straw, especially since that hope is what can keep it from getting worse, much worse. Missing our goal is pretty much a foregone conclusion, but we’re not yet known to be locked into one of the catastrophic tipping points. Let’s avoid those
