Airlines say they’ve found a route to climate-friendly flying
https://www.vox.com/climate/23922939/airline-united-climate-change-sustainable-fuel-emissions-offset-safOpen linkView original on slrpnk.netSyndicated from the fediverse. Read and engage on the original instance.
View original on slrpnk.nethttps://www.vox.com/climate/23922939/airline-united-climate-change-sustainable-fuel-emissions-offset-safOpen linkView original on slrpnk.net
7 replies
The airline industry is not to be trusted. We are stuck with them for now if we want air travel, but that does not mean we must believe their lies.
saved you a long read - it’s “sustainable aviation fuel.”
Yeah, you can produce that, in small quantities. Get rid of the need for fossil fuels for ground transport, and a big chunk of the corn and soy crops that are currently blended into gasoline and diesel respectively can be used as aviation fuel. It's not a bad way to do it.
corn
soy
While there are hungry people, we shouldn't be growing crops just to set fire to them
the US produces a massive surplus of corn (questionable government subsidies), only a tiny portion “sweet corn” (not shown on upper graph) is ever meant for the table
the VAST majority of US corn is relatively inedible “feed corn” meant for agricultural feed lots (blue bars, “Feed and residual use”) and industrial chemical manufacturing – ethanol (orange bars, “Alcohol for fuel use”), and fertilizers, food additives, etc. (gray bars, “Other food, seed, and industrial use”)
EDIT: check out Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma (2006) to get an idea of how dependent US is on industrial corn
Bio fuels are definitely an issue in that regard (and if SAF becomes a thing it can rapidly spin out of control). However, so far the far bigger issue here is the meat industry. Go vegan, save lives, save rainforest.
Meat isn't that much bigger than biofuels at this point. In the US, there's something like equal split of corn consumption and 3:2 meat:bioful on soy.
Mind you, the biofuels don't kick out as much methane, so they've got a more limited climate impact.