Greta Thunberg is stuck in the United States.
The 16-year-old climate activist sailed across the Atlantic on a carbon-free yacht this summer for the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York City. Now that December’s UN Climate Change Conference has been relocated from Chile to Spain, she needs a lift back to Europe, but refuses to hop on a plane.
Aviation accounts for 2.4 percent of global emissions—a figure that can seem insignificant until it’s put into context. In more personal terms, a roundtrip flight from London to New York emits 2,173 pounds of carbon—more than the average citizen of 56 countries generates in a year. In Thunberg’s native Sweden, there’s a word for the sickening feeling these statistics evoke: flygskam, or “flight shame.”
Fewer are familiar with the agency that orchestrates all that international air travel. But the UN’s International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), which concluded its fortieth assembly in October, is a name worth knowing: in many ways, the low sticker price and high environmental costs of international flight today can be traced back to ICAO’s first meeting 75 years ago. And the future of travel could be determined by what they do next.
Read more at: New Republic
