We know how bad flying is for the climate but we can’t just stop. Addicted we grapple with the dilemma of our love of flying and what we can do about it. Sky Gods follows climate journalist Bernice Notenboom around the globe looking for answers and solutions. At each destination we hear from key protagonists: airlines, airports, biofuel developers, carbon agents, air traffic controllers, social psychologists, government policymakers, and us the passengers. This is a story of actions, collaboration, solutions, and pioneering in the race to decide the biggest travel story of our time. Sky Gods tells the story of choice and change of how to fly into the future.
URGENCY TO ACT
Sky Gods addresses the excessive growth of the aviation industry in the last 10 years and what it would take to make flying more sustainable. When we started in 2018, the pressing issues in aviation were overflying, overgrowth and too much pollution. Only 5% of the world’s population flies yet, it’s responsible for 4% of the world’s carbon pollution. As the industry keeps growing so will its considerable carbon footprint: just one overseas trip is equivalent to all of an individual person’s emissions for an entire year. When COVID 19 hit, grounding 90% of global air traffic we felt what it meant not to be able to fly.
Now one year later, It’s impossible to predict which scenario plays out once travel resumes; from bailout deals to bankruptcy to initiatives of clean aviation. Air travel will be back — it has to be back, it is the most global of global industries employing millions and underpinning the livelihood of millions more. But the way we travel and why we travel has a chance to undergo a dramatic transformation. If the sector cannot find ways to rebuild itself sustainably after COVID 19, it will face painful disruption again in the future, as its part in the climate emergency has to be addressed.