Market-based measure needed to combat climate change, group says

   Citing a recently released study on airline emissions, the European organization Environment & Transport has called for the International Civil Aviation Organization to act on a market-based approach to airline emissions this year.
   The study, published by Manchester Metropolitan University, finds the European Union’s emissions trading scheme, when applied to the aviation industry, will have a measurable affect on reducing global aviation emissions by 2050.
   Reducing airline emissions is currently on ICAO’s agenda and will be addressed at assembly in September. The organization’s high-level group responsible for climate change is scheduled to meet this month.
   “This study demonstrates that claims from industry, ICAO and governments like the United States that current measures being discussed will be sufficient to tame aviation emissions are patently false,” T&E’s Bill Hemmings said in a statement. “The research shows definitively that pricing carbon via a global market-based measure is the only way to arrest aviation’s climate impact — already at 5 percent of the global total, with traffic growing at 4-5 percent a year.”
   On Feb. 26, the European Parliament’s Environmental Committee backed a bill to officially put a stop to the ETS, a decision that had been introduced last year due to pressure from all corners of the aviation industry and a number of governments. At the time, parliament members said the delay isn’t open-ended. They’ve proposed waiting up to a year, and if progress hasn’t been made by ICAO in that time frame, the ETS will be reenacted as it applied to aviation. – Jon Ross