Air New Zealand has pulled the plug on its climate targets saying the resources needed to meet them are unaffordable and unavailable. In a statement the airline said it was removing its 2030 carbon intensity reduction target and will withdraw from the Science Based Targets initiative. It said the new aircraft and alternative jet fuels were hard to get and are expensive…
Sustainable transport researcher Dr Paul Callister said Air New Zealand’s climate target was unrealistic and was never going to be achieved.
And the settled scientists could have told everyone that on Day #1 since they know how to “do the math,” but the truth was not self-serving. And now it’s off to another climate science settling conference in First Class
The USA elections of 2000 made it clear that GCC was coming at our economies and ecologies like a brakeless train on a long downhill leading to wiggling curves.
A lot of blah blah will be revealed to have been pure blah blah. I expect after a decade of increasing catastrophes, after a lot of deluded geezers have died, we will shift over to space based parasols, shooting stuff into the atmosphere and dumping other stuff into the oceans with fingers crossed.
Air New Zealand scrapped its 2030 carbon emissions reduction targets on Tuesday, citing lags in producing new planes, a lack of alternative fuel and “challenging” regulatory and policy settings.
But, also… Air New Zealand said it was still committed to a target of net zero carbon emissions by 2050, in line with the Paris Agreement.
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So, they are scrapping the difficult-to-achieve 2030 goal (29% CO2 reduction), but keeping the impossible-to-achieve 2050 goal of a 100% reduction. Presumably, the people in charge don’t plan on remaining with the company by 2050, but some or most of them might still be there in 6 years, so the shorter term goal needs to be tossed in the trash can. But let’s keep the longer term goal that is far more difficult to reach.
Setting goals is easy. Anyone can announce a goal to do anything. The hard part is in setting up a workable plan, and then executing that plan to achieve the final goal.
Of course. That is Shiny management in action: do what is best for me and my wallet, short turn. When the consequences show up, years from now, they will be someone else’s problem.
Pondering on Boeing’s choice for a CEO. The guy is already 64, already retired from Collins. Boeing gave him a waiver from the company’s retirement age policy, but, realistically, the guy will be gone in 3 or 4 years. It is impossible for him to reverse twenty years of Welchist rot at BA. That leads me to the conclusion that the Board chose him to be a figurehead. Someone to restore some degree of credibility to BA, while, in reality, the Welchist rot continues, because that is what is most beneficial to the other honchos.
He’s the former CEO of Rockwell-Collins, the avonics and flight controls maker.
Of course, nothing will change until you excise all the Jack Welch-trained MBAs currently embedded in the company, starting with Calhoun who is inexplicably remaining on the Board of Directors after stepping down as CEO.
If they had hired someone in his 50s, someone who would be around for 15 years or so, he might be able to change the culture of the company. At 64, Ortberg will not have the time in position to rebuild the corporate culture. That is why I tag him as a figurehead.
Calhoun was on the Board before he was made CEO. McNerney was replaced, at his retirement, by Dennis Muilenburg. Muilenberg took the fall when the first two 73s augered in. So the Board picked one of their own, Welchist trained Calhoun.
Meanwhile, McNerney, who made Boeing the laffingstock it is today, sits at home counting all the loot he made off the company.
Here’s a graph showing cost estimates for renewable jet fuel. Even the cheapest – from used cooking oil – is about 2.5x more expensive than regular jet fuel.
One thing these “costs of fuel” studies never seem to do, probably because it is nearly impossible to do, is factor in the hidden costs of the original fossil fuel. Nobody who uses and burns jet fuel, for example, has to pay the cost of the environmental impact. Likewise, our Navy has a very large and expensive role in keeping the Gulf stable and shipping lanes safe, which is a requirement for stable and cheap petroleum prices, and yet that expense is never factored in to the cost of using petroleum. (Not sure how you would do it, but it cannot be ignored).
Probably true, but not really relevant to decision making at Air New Zealand, for example. If there isn’t enough SAF (sustainable aviation fuel) and what there is costs multiples of conventional fuel, then the airline can’t switch and can’t meet its net zero goals.
It’s called an externality and the way to pay for it is called taxation.
The real function of liberal democracy is to get elected but taxing people reduced your chances of getting elected. It’s a version of the Tragedy of the Commons.
If you are serious about climate change arguments that fossil fuels are cheaper are completely irrelevant. Once again we can have green energy any time we are willing to pay for it. It will not be cheap (or free).
Maybe in a perfect world, but we don’t have one of those. In the real world, if let’s say a huge energy consuming rich country rapidly stopped using fossil fuels (supply remains same or increases, while demand drops dramatically) and switched to various renewables (supply remains the same or increases, while demand increases dramatically). Then the price of those fossil fuels will drop, and the price of those renewables would increase. This could (and would) spur many of the other less rich countries to choose to use fewer renewables (now too expensive) in favor of fossil fuels (now less expensive) because they also want to move from being less rich to more rich. The end result is one country with ~5%, or a few countries with ~15%, of world population going almost all renewable, while ~85% of world population going less renewable. And it is also likely that the 15% countries are growing very slowly while at least some portion of the 85% countries are growing faster.
