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Kevin Anderson

@kevinclimate.bsky.social

12K followers 510 following 390 posts

Professor of Energy & Climate Change at Universities of Manchester & Uppsala. Translating climate science, through carbon budgets, into policy goals & mitigation options. Co-founder https://climateuncensored.com

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Kevin Anderson is a British climate scientist. Anderson has a decade of industrial experience, principally as an engineer in the petrochemical industry. He regularly provides advice on issues of climate change across different tiers of governance, from local and regional through to national and the European Commission. .. more

Environmental science 30%

Economics 25%

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Kevin Anderson @kevinclimate.bsky.social · 9h

See: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... - also points to a wealth of other literatures that demonstrate the frequent flyer issue.

You mentioned Stanstead - checkout: www.caa.co.uk/media/fyum5p... -note mean household income in 2018 was -£34k. Also Stansted & Luton are not typical of UK airports.

How socially just are taxes on air travel and ‘frequent flyer levies’?

Policies to reduce air travel demand, including in the tourism sector, are urgently required as air travel’s climate impact keeps growing while low-carbon aviation remains a distant perspective. Po...

www.tandfonline.com

Kevin Anderson @kevinclimate.bsky.social · 10h

So is climate change. The choice of our leaders & us wealthy hi-emitters to ignore the evidence & continue to live & promote our hi-CO2 & hi-consumption norms has left society in this almost impossible position. We now need profound & fair changes that us wealthy hi-emitters are unwilling to accept.

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Kevin Anderson @kevinclimate.bsky.social · 10h

This still doesn’t really answer the question: are below-average-income EU citizens truly the ones driving frequent flyer numbers? Or is frequent flying largely concentrated among a relatively affluent minority? The data suggests the latter - and significantly so.

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Kevin Anderson @kevinclimate.bsky.social · 10h

I wasn’t primarily talking about millionaires, but rather the wealthy socio-economic groups within which significant numbers have normalised frequent flying, often alongside other forms of high consumption - from energy to materials & labour. Piketty et al also addressed wider socio-economic groups.

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Kevin Anderson @kevinclimate.bsky.social · 10h

As you note, you regularly take budget flights. Do you know if those you see are frequent flyers, or are the “3 million” mostly flying occasionally & it adds up to a lot of flights overall? There are alternatives to flying in the EU, certainly not so easy, but neither is living with climate impacts.

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Kevin Anderson @kevinclimate.bsky.social · 12h

Do you have any evidence for that being the case in the UK? Ok, I’m sure they’ll be a few, maybe even a few hundreds, but millions of below average income citizens being frequent flyers? Also ‘family life’ is exactly one of the reasons we need to rapidly curtail aviation - as fairly as possible.

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Kevin Anderson @kevinclimate.bsky.social · 12h

Be interesting to hear Prof David Lee’s (MMU) view on this. I got the impression it was much more challenging than simply changing altitude? Typically lowered altitude means denser air & hence more fuel & CO2. So swaps short-lived v.high warming contrails & cirrus for lower warming v.long lived CO2?

Reposted by Kevin Anderson

Mike K @k-mike.bsky.social · 18h

It'd be interesting to read a paper that supports your frequent flyer assertion

Anecdotally, as an xFrequent flyer for work and hols (80's/90's) I took a minimal number of flights to see family

15% take 70% of all UK flights
≈80% of the world's population has never flown

shorturl.at/74fTp

Trends in air travel inequality in the UK: From the few to the many?

Aviation is responsible for at least 3.5% of global warming, and demand is predicted to rise rapidly over the next few decades. To reverse this trend,…

www.sciencedirect.com

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Reposted by Brett Christophers

Kevin Anderson @kevinclimate.bsky.social · 22h

Attached is a suggestion I made several years ago. It would need to be part of a broader package, including eliminating first & business class, & ensuring even the first flight incurs the same tax & carbon costs as other fuels do. Aviation remains heavily dependent on its highly privileged status

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Kevin Anderson @kevinclimate.bsky.social · 22h

If we're serious about aligning aviation with even a weak interpretation of Paris, frequent flyer levies must rise geometrically, as your data suggests. Modest increases won't cut it, we need steep, immediate reductions in flight numbers & that means prices frequent flyers simply can’t afford.

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Reposted by Tuomas Mattila, Kevin Anderson

Mike K @k-mike.bsky.social · 2d

Flying is the fastest fun way to burn the planet
A #FrequentFlyerLevy is an easy fix

1st flight= normal price
2nd= 2×
3rd= 4×
4th= 8×
5th= 16x
6th= 32x
7th= 64x
..and so on

An incentive not to fly would round this off
A simple fair fix for privileged emissions
Credit: @kevinclimate.bsky.social

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Reposted by Kevin Anderson

Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 3d

7/ A crucial paper by Isak Stoddard, @kevinclimate.bsky.social, @stuartjritchie.bsky.social @wimcarton.bsky.social et al. stress that a key reason for past climate inaction is a lack of sufficient societal action on carbon reduction is the 'scarcity of plausible imaginaries'.

Three Decades of Climate Mitigation: Why Haven't We Bent the Global Emissions Curve?

Despite three decades of political efforts and a wealth of research on the causes and catastrophic impacts of climate change, global carbon dioxide emissions have continued to rise and are 60% higher ...

www.annualreviews.org

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Reposted by Kevin Anderson

Aarne Granlund @aarnegranlund.bsky.social · 3d

I think it's both: carmakers produce SUVs, and middle- to upper-class people buy them; elites have car collections. High-level politicians fly frequently, but they also believe that airport enlargement and incoming overtourism 'grow the economy' - it's both systemic and personal.

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Kevin Anderson @kevinclimate.bsky.social · 5d

Isn’t how much this hi-income decile group use the transport system (ie. they choose to travel a lot & choose to do so via faster means) as important as the system itself? In so many areas, differences in demand between groups is as important as the supply system itself.

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Reposted by Kevin Anderson

TG42Birder🇵🇸 @tg42birder.bsky.social · 5d

Thanks. I read OP. I agree entirely. I stopped in April 2007. I was teaching climate in schools & realised acting in accordance with my words was paramount.

However, a few prominent climate scientists are hostile to the view & block on sight.

@kevinclimate.bsky.social was (& is) an inspiration.

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Kevin Anderson @kevinclimate.bsky.social · 6d

Thanks for reminding me of this. Sadly, 6years on we are in a much worse starting position than we were even then. The allure of fluff, nonsese & downright lies has not changed the physics - & it never will. Today the emissions are higher & the budgets much smaller! nitter.poast.org/anlomedad/st...

nitter.poast.org

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Reposted by Kevin Anderson

anlomedad @anlomedad.bsky.social · 6d

IPCC Chef Jim Kea saß 2019 mal mit @kevinclimate.bsky.social vor der Klimakommission vom UK Parliament. Kannte Kea vorher nich. Aber die Grimassen, die er schnitt bzw. ostentativ versuchte zu vermeiden, wenn Kevin redete, sagen schon alles. 2 Twitter posts mit Clips: nitter.poast.org/anlomedad/st...

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Kevin Anderson @kevinclimate.bsky.social · 6d

I hope you’re right, but all too often& over many years I’ve witnessed how the ‘influential’/the great&good/senior people in organisations do often see themselves as unquestionably superior & are often uncomfortable in the company of the ‘little people’; certainly not all demonstrate this, but many.

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Kevin Anderson @kevinclimate.bsky.social · 7d

1) deep & rapid cuts in the discretionary hi-energy-consuming ‘norms’ of hi-income/wealth groups. 2) hi-levels of demand management 3) zero carbon energy supply alternatives including wind & solar.

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Kevin Anderson @kevinclimate.bsky.social · 7d

I get your point. My concern from a UK perspective is that the v.wealthy minority are both disproportionately responsible for the UK’s discretionary emissions - and control the resources, land & even the labour of much of our obscenely unequal society, resources urgently needed for decarbonisation.

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Kevin Anderson @kevinclimate.bsky.social · 7d

Hi Aarne. I’m not sure I fully get what you’re saying. Is it that in Finland many in the top 1% or so also live frugal lives (from an emissions and resource use perspective), or that there are some exceptions who manage it … or?

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Kevin Anderson @kevinclimate.bsky.social · 7d

I’d need a bit more to go on than just that if I’m to make any sense of your comment.

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Kevin Anderson @kevinclimate.bsky.social · 7d

Yes, a contemporary of Adam Smith. But as with Smith many of his comments are pertinent/insightful beyond the libertarian views that are often over-emphasised for these historical figures. Eg. Smith's Wealth of Nations only really makes sense when read in conjunction with Theory of Moral Sentiments.

Kevin Anderson @kevinclimate.bsky.social · 8d

Sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) plays the same role in aviation as CCS/BECCS/DACCS play for other fossil-fuelled sectors: more a stalling tactic than solution. Good engineers work on SAF, but CEOs/politicians/etc deliberately mis-sell their role in mitigation.
climateuncensored.com/gatwick-expa...

Gatwick Expansion: A Direct Assault on Climate Commitments - Climate Uncensored

Comment on UK Government announcement of Gatwick Airport expansion by Professor Kevin Anderson and Dr. Lois Pennington, of Tyndall Centre, University of

climateuncensored.com

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Kevin Anderson @kevinclimate.bsky.social · 8d

But it’s essential the little people get to hear the pearls of wisdom from these intellectual & moral titans. Sadly (from experience), this elitist thinking is widespread amongst the great & good. Furthermore, they choose to travel business/first class to avoid contamination from the hoi polloi.

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Kevin Anderson @kevinclimate.bsky.social · 10d

Was there any serious discussion of the one, or even two, order-of-magnitude gap in individuals emissions? Climate discourse often overlooks a key point from Piketty’s analysis: most emissions are discretionary & concentrated among a relatively small, & relatively affluent share of the population.

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Kevin Anderson @kevinclimate.bsky.social · 10d

👍

Kevin Anderson @kevinclimate.bsky.social · 10d

Yes … happy to pointed to alternatives?

Reposted by Kevin Anderson

Prof Dan Osborn @bowl200.bsky.social · 10d

Just look at Transport Sec speech to aviation sector earlier this year. Message is expand as much as you like. Target is capacity to have just under 500m passengers using UK airports by 2050 and achieve so-called "net zero" leaving 20m tonnes of emissions to be cleaned up somehow or other.

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Reposted by David L. Roberts

Kevin Anderson @kevinclimate.bsky.social · 10d

I genuinely hope to be wrong, but I suspect @rory-stewart.bsky.social & @alastaircampbell2.bsky.social are in the top fraction of 1% of hi-emitters & so cling to future tech salvations & the allure of weak but well crafted legislation. The challenges we face raise profound questions of "moral code".

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