As more travellers return to the skies, aviation's environmental impact fuels concern

Our planet is changing. So is our journalism. This story is part of a CBC News initiative entitled Our Changing Planet to show and explain the effects of climate change and what is being done about it.

Pleasure travel and business trips are picking up, according to the International Air Transport Association, and the return to busier skies is fuelling concern among environmentalists about the increase in fossil fuel emissions from a revitalized aviation sector. 

Airline ticket sales are rising towards near-normal levels for the first time since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, a slowdown that some economists say cost airlines around $370 billion US in revenue after air travel dropped almost 60 per cent in the past 18 months. But while welcoming customers back, the industry is simultaneously grappling with how to reduce its environmental impact.

The issue is top-of-mind for both environmentalists and industry decision makers this week at the United Nations COP26 climate change summit in Scotland. 

The Conference of Parties (COP), as it's known, meets every year and is the global decision-making body set up in the early 1990s to implement the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and subsequent climate agreements. The world's leaders and climate change advocates are creating policies at COP26 around a host of environmental priorities, including greenhouse gas emissions from air travel. 

While the conference is addressing the need for systemic industry change, on a more individual level environmentalists are divided on the issue of flying itself at a moment in history where they say a climate change emergency exists.

Many struggled with the decision of whether to fly to COP26, although 25,000 people are still expected to travel to the conference that runs until Nov. 12.

Erica Frank is on the board of Physicians for Social Responsibility, a group focused on combating climate change that has also addressed the necessity for in-person academic conferences.  She thinks there's little excuse for flying at all. 

"Based on the data, and only based on the data, I went from a life of taking an airplane trip every month or so for work and often also for pleasure, to one where I do so usually once a year or so," she said. "It was because the pleasure and the professional gain that I might have gotten from doing that, it just wasn't fair."

Frank still attends conferences every month, but almost exclusively does so virtually — something she says we've all learned is possible during COVID.

"I gave my first keynote in New Zealand from my bedroom [in Canada] eight years ago. It is something that I don't think we have excuses for anymore if we're serious about this being a climate emergency, if we're serious about making real change on a personal level," Frank said.

"There's nothing that's a more efficient target for a high-flying individual than flying less."

She argues that even though emissions from flying constitute only 3 to 4 per cent of global emissions, it's also a relatively small percentage of the global population that flies regularly, so it is a lifestyle change that could make a significant impact on the environment if enough people reduce the amount they fly.

WATCH | Erica Frank explains why she feels so strongly about reducing her own air travel and encouraging others to do the same: