AUSTRALIANS love to fly.
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We are a huge country. We have friends or family overseas. We're a major trading country with business contacts across the globe.
International education is one of our largest revenue earners.
Planes are invaluable in bushfires, medical and other emergencies. We feel entitled to explore the world cheaply.
But this love affair comes at a cost.
Globally, the aviation sector contributes approximately 3.5 per cent towards global warming.
Ninety per cent of this comes from the richest half of the world's population.
The Australian aviation sector contributed 22 million tonnes of CO2 emissions in 2016, representing 17pc of transport industry emissions and two per cent of Australia's total emissions.
And while the government taxes motorists' fuel, it generously subsidises aviation fuel and aviation infrastructure tax breaks for aviation fuel cost around $1.2 billion in 2022-23.
Growth in fossil fuel use is also expected in aviation. Since COVID, Australia's airline traffic is increasing by around four per cent annually despite the cost-of-living challenges and some abysmal behaviour by the major carriers.
What can we do to reduce aviation emissions?
Find a technical solution? Unfortunately, there isn't much immediate prospect of de-carbonising aviation.
There are some experiments using small aircraft powered by liquid hydrogen and the Federal Government (not the airline companies) has provided $30 million for research on "sustainable" aircraft fuels. Early days!
Replace international or interstate business trips with online meetings? During COVID, this saved money, time and allowed wider participation and better life-work balance.
Avoid planes for short trips? Provide cheaper, faster, more reliable land-based travel options and fewer people will fly.
Bathurst leads the way here. The Bathurst Rail Action Group, with support from Paul Toole and then-Transport Minister Gladys Berejiklian, introduced the Bathurst Bullet, which has effectively replaced daily return flights to Sydney.
A 2022 UK study suggests that train travel produces 86pc fewer per capita emissions per kilometre than equivalent short-haul flights.
Change our tourism plans? Perhaps we can take those "massage and pina colada" pool holidays closer to home and, for those long-haul, "catch up with family overseas/immerse ourselves in local history and culture" holidays, we can take fewer trips, but stay longer and use local, land-based transport when we get there.
Maybe we will have less choice as climate change makes air travel less reliable.
For example, most Australian major airports are on low-lying coastal land exposed to rising sea levels and changing storm patterns, as the recent Cairns experience shows.
