Anti-aviation sentiment, already in full force among European environmentalists, is starting to gather pace in the USA, and politicians are noticing
The US air transport community has stood oddly immune from the anti-aviation mania sweeping parts of Europe over the disputed impact of the industry's growing annual carbon footprint.
But a resurgent environmental movement in America, emboldened by the rise of a largely sympathetic Democratic Party since last November, may seek to dramatically change the status quo, and fast.
Already, new legislation has targeted US industry in general for proposed emissions trading schemes. Aviation still appears slightly off the radar scheme. Even within the environmental movement, there so far has been little outcry over the growth of carbon emissions caused by passenger jets - the cause-celebre of the European movement.
But, behind the scenes, there are fresh signs of an anti-aviation movement gathering force, including reports that an influential US senator is ready to propose legislation that would force the US Federal Aviation Administration to set annual emissions reduction targets for the air transport industry.
Several industrial heavyweights, including General Electric, have concluded that emissions trading schemes are inevitable even in the USA and have joined a campaign to support - and perhaps shape - such policies rather than fight them.
Meanwhile, environmental groups seem to have learned lessons from the experience with the Kyoto Protocol. Under the US Constitution, such treaties must be signed by the executive branch and ratified by a two-thirds majority in Congress. The new movement appears to be bypassing the executive branch by focusing solely on legislative action, where lawmakers own the constitutional power to regulate trade.
"Our trading partners are starting to recognise thatwhen an administration says, 'This is America's position on climate change,' that's not a factually correct statement, and it can't be because the other major branch of government is speaking there," says Annie Petsonk, international counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund, which is lobbying for an emissions trading scheme in the US that would include the aviation industry.
Aviation loses safe-haven
Public furore over aviation emissions has put the air transport industry in a tough spot. Planned improvements in fuel efficiency for aircraft for at least the next decade cannot outpace the forecasted growth in demand for air travel. Net reductions in annual fuel emissions can only be reached by dampening demand through cap-and-trade systems or fuel charges that raise ticket prices.
To be sure, until last November's elections, six years of consolidated control of Congress and the White House by the Republican Party had offered all of US industry, including aviation, a relative safe-haven from such bottom-line environmental demands.
Even now, airlines and airframers can safely rely on senior FAA officials and allies in Congress to squarely defend the industry's environmental record with an oft-quoted mantra: US airlines now transport 12% more passengers than in 2001 using 6% less fuel.
Such steadfast political backing may be taken for granted in US airline executive suites. Alarmed at the industry's perhaps false sense of security, the FAA's former top official has tried to deliver a wake-up call: the popular sentiment fighting aviation's interests in Brussels may soon strike in Washington DC.
"In Europe, there are factions working to curtail aviation growth regardless of the benefits we offer to the economy and quality of life," Marion Blakey, whose five-year term as FAA Administrator expires on 13 September, told an audience of airline executives in Phoenix last May.
"This shift in the European view toward aviation happened virtually overnight," Blakey added. "We should not be so foolish as to presume that it can't happen here."
Blakey gave her speech about seven months after US voters gave Democrats a majority of both houses of Congress. The outcome was largely credited to a backlash against the Bush Administration's strategy in Iraq, but it had the secondary effect of elevating environmentalist politicians into positions of leadership.
Clearly sensing a dramatic shift in power, aircraft engine maker General Electric last January joined with dozens of other top US companies to form a new group called US Climate Action Partnership. The organisation formed to "call on the federal government to quickly enact strong national legislation to require significant reductions of greenhouse gas emissions," according to the group's web site.
A spin-off group of the world's five largest aerospace companies - Airbus, Boeing, GE, Pratt & Whitney and Rolls-Royce - seeks to develop a common policy statement on a goal to cut greenhouse gas emissions, said Chet Fuller, GE-Aviation's chief marketing officer, said.
Signs that aviation is already a target for legislation aimed at greenhouse gas emissions, such as carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxides, have started to appear.
The most vivid example is a report on 20 August in the weekly newsletter Carbon Control News. Citing an anonymous source in the Democratic party, the newsletter reported that Senator Frank Lautenberg is thinking about inserting an amendment to the FAA reauthorisation bill during a debate on the Senate floor sometime in September.
Lautenberg's amendment, says the newsletter, would require the FAA to "develop ways to measure [greenhouses gases] from aircraft, assess those emissions and identify 'best practices' to reduce emissions. The FAA would then have to develop annual GHG reduction targets that would affect all commercial airline operations," the article says.
Additional support
The report adds that Lautenberg first offered the proposal in May but withdrew it until he laid the groundwork to pick up additional support. Lautenberg's office did not return phone calls seeking comment. Lautenberg carries influence in the environmental movement as chairman of the Senate's environment and public works committee.
The Senate is the scene of even wider proposals to curb greenhouse gas emissions by US industries. Two separate bills have been proposed seeking to establish economy-wide carbon emissions trading schemes. Both bills have bipartisan sponsors, reflecting a broader interest in Congress to do something about the global warming issue.
As the momentum to establish emissions trading plans for power and automobile industries has increased, aviation is likely to be enveloped in the process.
"As Congress moves forward considering national legislation on climate change," says Petsonk, "one of the things that's occurring is the industries that are squarely in the face of Congress - the electric power and the car industry - are looking around to see who else may be targets. They're saying, 'Don't just look at us. What about these other guys?'"
More immediately distressing to the FAA is perhaps another action by the legislative branch that questions the environmental bona fides of its prized modernisation programme - the Next Generation Air Traffic System (NextGen).
Representative Ed Markey, chairman of the House of Representatives select committee on energy independence and global warming, has written Blakey a letter that directly challenges NextGen's worthiness as an environmental initiative. He asks the FAA to answer several questions, including how NextGen is designed to "address emissions" both at airports and in-flight. At press time, the FAA was still drafting an official response to Markey's letter. It will not likely be its last correspondence on the issue.
Says Petsonk: "The uptick in interest about doing something in modernising the nation's air traffic control system puts the airlines and the manufacturers to the test."
Source: Flight International
