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In 2022, the air­line in­dus­try ac­count­ed for 2 per cent of the world’s car­bon emis­sions. But, for an in­dus­try with a stat­ed goal to achieve net ze­ro CO2 emis­sions by 2050, 2 per cent is two too much.

Re­cent geopo­lit­i­cal events have trig­gered con­cerns with­in the In­ter­na­tion­al Air Trans­port As­so­ci­a­tion (IA­TA) that the in­dus­try may strug­gle to hit its tar­gets, though not for a lack of try­ing. Over the last sev­er­al weeks, in­ter­na­tion­al air­lines have qui­et­ly been rout­ing flights away from Venezue­lan air­space, af­ter the US Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Ad­min­is­tra­tion (FAA) is­sued a safe­ty warn­ing for pi­lots op­er­at­ing in the re­gion. Caribbean Air­lines’ Port of Spain-Cu­ra­cao ser­vice and Co­pa Air­lines’ Pana­ma-Port of Spain ser­vice have both seen trav­el times in­crease by ap­prox­i­mate­ly 30 min­utes. These more cir­cuitous paths en­sure safe­ty but come at an en­vi­ron­men­tal cost.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia last week at IA­TA’s Glob­al Me­dia Day in Gene­va, Switzer­land, Marie Owens Thom­sen, se­nior vice pres­i­dent of sus­tain­abil­i­ty & chief econ­o­mist, ex­plained the en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact.