CHAPTER 5

Groups Concerned About Aviation Activity

The preceding chapters covered facts about climate change, how emissions may be abated, and the economic benefits that would be forgone if there were less aviation activity in a community. These materials outline statements made by groups concerned about aviation activity.

What Do Groups Concerned About Aviation Activity Believe?

While groups and people concerned about aviation activity are quite diverse, their concerns about aviation are fairly consistent as outlined here and quoted in Figure 5-1.

1. This is a climate emergency. Because it is an emergency, drastic steps are needed. As was noted in Chapter 2, continued aviation growth without technological change and abatement would lead to emissions doubling by 2050. Some groups then mix this with more dire warnings for society; one example is Scientist Rebellion, which has made statements such as the following (56):
   1. “If we proceed with business as usual, there will be endless growth, permanent crises, genocide, famine, and social collapse.”
   2. If instead there is a climate revolution, there will be “managed growth, degrowth, equity, justice, and redistribution.”
2. Air travel is an outsize contributor to climate change and is done largely by the so-called Global North, the rich industrialized nations such as the United States, at the expense of the Global South. A small number of relatively wealthy people fly, but the effects of climate change are felt by everyone.
   1. For example, Stay Grounded says that the CO₂ emissions of one return flight between Paris and New York are nearly three times the emissions by the average person in Uganda in a year (57).
3. Awareness needs to be raised to educate the public and media about the polluting effects of aviation, with a view to getting people to fly less or not at all. The groups believe that the media and public need to be made aware of the impact of aviation through high-profile activity, including protests which can lead to arrests.
   1. For example, in November 2022, coordinated protests were staged in 13 countries, including the United States, following the United Nations Climate Change Conference COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. The objective was to call for a ban on private jets.
   2. In the United States, protests took place in Teterboro, New Jersey; Charlotte, North Carolina; Los Angeles, California; and Seattle, Washington.

4. Polluting industries are by and large not serious about climate change but instead engage in “greenwashing” efforts to make the public believe that they are doing something when they are doing very little. Harvard University and the Algorithmic Transparency Institute looked at fossil-fuel brand campaigns in Europe. The researchers concluded the following (58):
   1. Two-thirds of oil and gas (72%), auto (60%), and airline (60%) companies’ social media posts paint a ‘Green Innovation’ narrative sheen on their business-as-usual operations, which are given less airtime.
   2. “This ratio of ‘green-to-dirty’ in each industry’s public communications (3-to-1, 4-to-1, and 1.2-to-1, respectively) misrepresents their contemporary commitments to decarbonization, implying that at least some of their social media content constitutes ‘greenwashing.’”

Advocacy groups are quite active in Europe and may become more active in the United States. They are bottom-up organizations and share the view that aviation activity must be reduced because they believe there is no other way to slow aviation emissions or get them to net zero. This line of reasoning reflects the high costs of abating aviation emissions.

There is some evidence of coordinated, simultaneous activities across different countries—e.g., the protests against private aviation at Teterboro and other airports in the United States and 12 other countries.

What Do Groups Concerned About Aviation Activity Want?

The changes wanted by concerned advocacy groups are captured in three areas.

1. Ban or severely curb private aviation.
   1. Private jets are seen by climate campaign groups as the most polluting form of transport.
   2. The nongovernmental organization Transport & Environment, for example, claimed that due to the small number of passengers on a private jet, they are 5 to 14 times as “polluting” as commercial jets on a per-passenger basis (63).
   3. Many users of private jets are celebrities; attacking their use of the aircraft puts a brighter spotlight on the need to curb activity to cut emissions.
2. Tax frequent fliers.
   1. The advocacy groups’ logic is that an “elite minority” is responsible for most flights and hence aviation emissions. Therefore, that minority should pay air miles or frequent flier taxes.
   2. For example, the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) proposes a global charge based on how often a person flies (64).
      1. The first flight would have no carbon tax applied. This means that someone flying once a year pays nothing.
      2. The second flight in a year would cost $9, and the 20th flight $177. The ICCT proposes that the proceeds from this levy go into paying for industry decarbonization.
      3. Note that the ICCT’s proposals are not designed to be punitive or to “punish” frequent fliers. Instead, the ICCT sees this as a way in which most of the cost of aviation decarbonization could be met.
      4. There are significant practical issues when it comes to the implementation of such a scheme. Globally, it could only be done through the cooperation of a body such as the International Air Transport Association (IATA), and the airline industry has shown little appetite in adding an extra cost onto the tickets of their most profitable customer base—frequent fliers.
3. Curb airport expansions.
   1. Environmental groups say that if cuts in aviation emissions are wanted, we should not be constantly growing the industry.
   2. As a result, climate change activists tend to oppose airport expansion projects.
   3. Examples of such local groups in the United States include No Jets Santa Monica Airport, Oregon Aviation Watch, and Stop OAK Expansion.

Who Are the Groups Concerned About Aviation Activity?

Many groups concerned about aviation activity are grassroots organizations, but others have a national or even international footprint. Most are very active on social media platforms such as X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook. Figure 5-2 is a partial list.

Groups’ Concerns About Aviation Messaging Greenwashing

Accusations of greenwashing in the aviation industry can be heard frequently in the media. An article on Frommer’s website asserts that “travelers want to feel socially responsible—and the travel industry, true to character, is more than happy to take their money. Even if it’s doing nothing meaningful to help the environment.” The piece goes on to talk about “lofty promises made by airlines peddling gimmicky carbon offsets” (65).

In Europe, activist groups are starting to take airlines to the relevant national advertising regulator, or even to court, to strike down what they see as misleading environmental claims. The

best-known example from 2022, which made headlines internationally, was KLM being taken to court in the Netherlands for what climate groups said were misleading environmental claims in the airline’s advertising (66).

Dutch activists have since gone one step further. In a test case in front of the Netherlands advertising regulator, activists have stated that ads run by the leisure airline Corendon are misleading despite having no sustainability claims. The activists contend that as air travel contributes to global warming, airline ads should have health warnings similar to those applied to tobacco advertising.

More recently in Europe, German airline Lufthansa had an ad struck down for misleading environmental claims. However, in March 2023, when Lufthansa was in the news for its ad, United launched a sustainability campaign of its own, featuring the popular Sesame Street character Oscar the Grouch. More detail on these two cases is presented herein.

Lufthansa

Over the summer of 2022, Lufthansa ran an ad in the UK with an image of an aircraft at the top and a picture of the planet at the bottom. The tagline was “Connecting the World/Protecting its Future.” However, the Advertising Standards Authority in the UK ruled that it misled consumers (67). The regulator claims that the airline’s ad “made an absolute promise that their services caused no harm to the environment.” There is no context provided in the ad or the six-word copy as to how Lufthansa is protecting the environment.

Lufthansa’s ad is an example of why marketing teams in the aviation industry may need to now think differently about how they communicate sustainability efforts. The mantras of keeping copywriting short and simple may be reevaluated versus authentic storytelling and different, richer types of content.

United

On March 2, 2023, the day after the news of the Lufthansa ad ban broke, United Airlines introduced something very different. It announced that the Sesame Street character Oscar the Grouch would become its new “Chief Trash Officer” (68). The context is that United Airlines is an investor in alternative fuels company Fulcrum Bioenergy. Fulcrum uses household waste as the basis for SAF.

United was linking turning trash into SAF and using Oscar the Grouch to talk about SAF in a fun, accessible way. However, the fine print on the “Oscar” microsite stated that right now, 0.1% of United’s fuel is SAF.

Five points in United’s campaign demonstrate the importance of sustainability storytelling and make it a great case study:

1. It is real. It is based on something that United is actually doing—working with a company that converts landfill waste into fuel.
2. It is interesting. Who knew that (as one of the videos says) your old banana peel could be turned into jet fuel?
3. It is accessible. It is a reasonable assumption that more than 90% of people outside of aviation have no idea what SAF is. United introduces them to the concept in a fun way.
4. It is proactive. It shows how United is doing something to decarbonize aviation.
5. It is realistic. United makes no inflated environmental claims about how Oscar will allow passengers to fly “green” or “guilt-free.”

In summary, through Oscar, United is using a range of content tools, including video and vague, fact-free, aspirational slogans.

What Does the Public Think?

Several opinion polls have been conducted over the past few years. They tend to show the following:

• Broad awareness that climate change is a cause for concern.
• A recognition that air travel is a contributor to climate change.
• There is no large-scale appetite to change behavior yet. However, younger age groups are much more cognizant of climate change and more likely to talk about it, so the situation may be different in the future.
• There are some moves to cut employee travel among large corporations, in part for sustainability reasons. This matters, as business travelers account for a high proportion of airline profits.
• More specifically, recent polls show the following:
  • According to a 2022 study by the market research firm Ipsos, 57% of Americans polled believed that climate change is due to human activity, 27% said it was due to natural activity, and 6% said climate change was not real (69).
  • Three-quarters of respondents, including a majority of both Democrats and Republicans, then agreed that “humans can slow or reverse climate change but aren’t willing to change their behavior” (69).
  • Another Ipsos study conducted across multiple countries in 2021 showed that 11% of Americans polled said that they fly less often for business or leisure due to the environment. This compares to 27% in Sweden and 26% in Belgium (70).

Of course, the caveat is that the latter study was carried out during the pandemic when air travel was down anyway. However, simultaneously, it can be stated that if 11% of Americans have cut flying due to environmental concerns, then this is significant.

Importantly, another Ipsos survey also shows that a large majority (76%) of U.S. respondents polled around Earth Day 2022 felt that airlines had a responsibility to reduce their carbon emissions (71). Consequently, the idea that aviation is a contributor to climate change is fast gaining acceptance.

It is worth noting that other surveys show that the demographics most likely to change their consumption habits are higher-income and college-educated groups (72). These groups are the demographics more likely to constitute frequent fliers. Meanwhile, the frequent fliers of tomorrow—younger age groups—are also more likely to be aware of and talk about climate change.

According to Pew Research, two-thirds (67%) of individuals in Generation Z have talked about climate change and the need for action at least one or two times in the past few weeks, compared to 50% of baby boomers. A more recent Pew Poll found that nearly 8 in 10 Democrats (78%) describe climate change as a major threat to the country’s well-being, up from about 6 in 10 (58%) a decade ago. By contrast, about 1 in 4 Republicans (23%) consider climate change a major threat, a share that is almost identical to 10 years ago (73).