Aviation Past, Present and Future

Tackling climate change requires an understanding of all sources of greenhouse gases as well as wider climate warming and cooling emissions. The majority of the sources within industrialised nations are energy consuming sectors such as transport, households and industry. To most effectively and rapidly reduce emissions, it is likely that some of those sectors will be able, and therefore required, to reduce their emissions more than others, depending on available mitigation options. However, without a thorough understanding of each sector’s climate impact in the past, at present and in the future, it is not possible to develop successful mitigation policies. Furthermore, given the very short timescales over which action must be taken to tackle climate change (see Chapter 3), mitigation options considered commensurate with avoiding ‘dangerous climate change’ are increasingly limited. This chapter will present the historical growth of the aviation industry, the current state of the industry and future aviation forecasts, including a discussion of an alternative method of future visioning. Finally, it will provide an overview of this industry’s current contribution to climate change and discuss some of the confusion associated with future emission projections and scenarios.