See Through the Greenwashing. Know the Facts.
General Aviation
The best place to start is the Stay Grounded Get Information page. There is excellent information on climate change, who flies the most, why carbon offsets don’t work, “green” flying, the cost of flying, the military’s role in aviation and global heating, and more.
For a brief explainer on aviation and climate change, you can read this short article from MIT.
To learn more about international aviation, you can read this article from MIT. It is worth noting that emissions from international aviation are not counted by any countries or reported to the United Nations. There is no international plan to reduce emissions from aviation.
Biofuels
Biofuels are called “sustainable aviation fuels” by the fossil fuel and aviation industries. This term is greenwashing.
In short, they are plants burned as fuel in planes.
View this fact sheet from Stay Grounded to cut through the greenwashing. It’s important to note that less than 0.01% of jet fuel is biofuel. That means approximately 1 in 10,000 flights uses biofuel.
Biofuels are a false solution for many other reasons, including rampant deforestation, violation of Indigenous rights, health problems, and more. Read about all the problems with biofuels in this case study about the Omega Green Biofuel Refinery in Paraguay.
Biofuels Greenwashing
The graph to the left is from slide 15 of BTV’s Sustainability Implementation Plan’s Progress Report from November 22, 2022.
The graph is pulled directly from p. 6 of the 2021 United States Aviation Climate Action Plan.
Everything in green is “sustainable aviation fuels.”
Nearly the entire “net zero by 2050” plan for aviation relies on this false solution.
If we replaced all aviation fuel with biofuels, we would need to harvest an additional 200 kg (440 lbs) of plants every year—double our total production of food.
In short, there’s not enough land—especially considering we have to halt deforestation and feed the world’s 8 billion people.
Carbon Offsets
Carbon offsets are a scheme created by the fossil fuel, aviation, and other polluting industries to pretend that they are sequestering the same amount of carbon that they are creating. This is not true.
Carbon offsets are unjust. In most cases, they shift the responsibility of drawing down carbon to the poorest and most marginalized people and places on the planet so that the world’s rich can keep polluting and making money.
Carbon offsets are rife with fraud. They are, in effect, not real. To learn more about all the problems with carbon offsets, listen to this 14-minute podcast.
This Guardian article (18 January 2023) explains how more than 90% of rainforest carbon offsets from Verra, the world’s biggest certifier of carbon offsets, are worthless.
