RyanAir scraps with the government, but we argue they should be working together to bring down carbon emissions. The government should develop policy and businesses should act on it.
Ian Pearson, UK environment minister, described RyanAir as the “irresponsible face of capitalism” in January, accusing the no-frills airline of ignoring climate change. Michael O’Leary, chief executive of RyanAir, hit back by stating that the airline industry had been unfairly accused of being a key cause of climate change when it released just 1.6% of global gas emissions. He added that the road transport and energy generation industries should be focused on, since they produce 18% and 25% of emissions respectively. He defended RyanAir by calling it “Europe’s greenest airline” and described Pearson as “foolish” and “ill-informed”. O’Leary stated that RyanAir has purchased a fleet of Boeing aircraft, which has reduced noise and carbon emissions by 50% per seat. Following his comments, O’Leary declared the release of 5 million free plane seats to celebrate this achievement. Contact RyanAir www.ryanair.com
Comment
With all this bickering over numbers, Briefing is reminded of the scene in Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth where the former US presidential candidate compares two graphs: the rise in carbon dioxide (CO2) levels with the rise in the average temperature over 650,000 years. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the two lines track virtually identical courses.
Extrapolating CO2 levels to the middle of the century, on the basis that the world’s consumption of fossil fuels continues unabated, forces him to climb onto a lift that winches him into the rafters of the lecture theatre. Gore leaves us to make our own conclusion about the likely rise in temperature.
The world is already above its natural CO2 cycle – this is incontrovertible. While the Earth burns, politicians and business appear to be fiddling; and not just the figures, (although there is undoubtedly some confusion over the veracity of RyanAir’s data, with two versions of the press release arriving in quick succession with differing emission levels).
Squabbling aside, what’s also not in doubt is that both businesses and government are not anywhere near to doing enough to bring Gore’s charts down from the roof. The temperature rise that scientists are forecasting would be enough to put most of the major Western financial centres under water and virtually destroy Shanghai, Calcutta and Beijing. But there’s no easy solution, although the government would do well to improve the policy framework, to enable the market forces that were identified by Sir Nicholas Stern to pull the world’s ecosystem back into shape.
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