Stay Grounded

By various - Safe Landing, March 15, 2023

By Jarlath Molloy and Finlay Asher - Green Air News, January 27, 2023

This year begins with a reflective assessment of the aviation sector’s climate credentials and the challenges it faces, write Jarlath Molloy and Finlay Asher, who point out this may not be an easy read for some, as there are many barriers to overcome. The strategy so far has been to stick our heads in the sand and ignore these, they say. Yet there are pathways to a safe landing and the costs of doing something are less than the costs of doing nothing. In this article the authors look to shine a spotlight on aviation’s full climate impact and how the sector alone could put us over the 1.5°C goal of the Paris Agreement. They highlight the common failings of the sector’s hypothetical decarbonisation pathways and propose an alternative to the sectors’ net zero aspirational goals – which will feel radical to industry leaders but are consistent with how other sectors are setting science-based targets.

As a group of scientists, engineers, air traffic controllers, pilots and airline workers, climate change keeps Safe Landing members up at night. We worry about the future and our legacy to our children. Meaningful action and change is frustratingly slow, despite all the warnings about planetary boundaries^[i], tipping points^[ii] and the costs of inaction in response to climate and biodiversity crises. We should have the confidence to critically ask ourselves whether the sector’s environmental practitioners can have any hope in terms of impact, relevance or effectiveness^[iii].

Aviation greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reached one billion tonnes of CO₂ emissions pre-Covid^[iv] and are expected to pass this again in the near future^[v]. This threshold is also known as a ‘carbon bomb’. But of course the bomb is even bigger because most of the sector has historically refused to recognise its non-CO₂ emissions impact. While it is true this is more complex to measure^[vi], the data and tools exist to assess the full climate impact the aviation sector is responsible for^[vii] and to confidently reduce non-CO₂ emissions.

How did we get here? This problem has been 30 years in the making. Heads of states from around the world agreed the formation of the UNFCCC in 1992 at the Rio Earth Summit and to stabilise GHG emissions in the atmosphere to “prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system”. Action on aviation GHG emissions was deferred by giving the problem to ICAO. In 2015 the Paris Agreement refined our collective ambition to limit climate change to 1.5°C this century, with GHG emissions to peak “as soon as possible” and reach net zero by 2050.

It took exactly 30 years from the Earth Summit at Rio for governments (and industry) to set GHG emission targets for the aviation sector, in 2022, but which are still only aspirational^[viii] and fall short of what is required to achieve the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C temperature goal^[ix]. This was in spite of ICAO commissioning a special report from the UNFCCC on aviation’s climate change impact in 1997^[x] and a slew of scientific studies and research since then on the same topic. Despite its name, ICAO’s flagship initiative known as CORSIA (Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation)^[xi] won’t reduce^[xii] aviation GHG emissions. Instead, it relies on offsets from other sectors to keep carbon emissions from international flights below a 2019 baseline.

By Tahir Latif, Secretary - Greener Jobs Alliance, July 21, 2022

The GJA Secretary went to Farnborough to join campaigners and activists from the anti-aviation/pro-worker organisation Stay Grounded in a protest against the Corporate love-in that is the Farnborough air show. A photo shoot with a ‘pigs might fly’ theme, complete with masks, took place, before three of the group went to the show itself to continue the protest from within the heart of the beast.

It’s hard to understate the sense of irony and hypocrisy that permeates the atmosphere over Farnborough. The air show opens on the very day that the country is subject to a Red Alert for extreme weather, that temperature records (including the 40^o thresh-hold) are being broken, and thousands across Europe are suffering illness or death due to the conditions. By any objective measure those supporting a ‘yep, we need more of these here planes’ would surely be considered dangerous psychopaths.

As a trade union-oriented organisation, we have to recognise that a number of our constituent unions, and many members otherwise supportive of our campaigns for green jobs, feel a sense of job security bound up with the continuing success of the aviation industry. This exerts significant power over worker viewpoints, and union policy, in the context of an industry that – due entirely to strong union representation – treats them relatively well in comparison with those struggling in the gig economy.

One thing we should all be clear about is that the Corporate hob-nobbing at Farnborough, the multi-billion deals and contracts, have absolutely nothing in common with the interests of workers, let alone with the communities sweltering in the excessive heat. At Farnborough – and I know this from my years as an industry employee – workers are never mentioned at all, or if they are it is as annoying ‘overheads’ to be reduced as soon as automation allows. As for unions, they are even more bothersome because they insist on making those overheads so expensive, a barrier to corporate objectives and shareholder benefits.

By various - COP26 Coalition, March 29, 2022

By Todd Smith and Magdalena Heuwieser - Tipping Points, February 2022

By Dayton Martindale - Truthout, September 27, 2021

Airport employees and community allies protest a proposed expansion of Los Angeles International Airport on September 14, 2021; image by author.

“Are you scared you’re going to lose all your jobs ’cause there will be no planes?”

The audience chuckled at MSNBC host Chris Hayes’s first question for Sara Nelson, international president of the Association of Flight Attendants, at a March 2019 special on the Green New Deal. Nelson, an ardent climate advocate, dismissed the notion out of hand: “We still have to get around.” The real threat to flights, she insisted, is an increase in extreme weather events. It is climate inaction, then, that could keep planes from flying, rather than climate action.

Across the Atlantic, the messaging is notably different. Environmentalists across the U.K. and France have campaigned against airport expansions, and the Swedish language now has a word (flygskam) for the climate shame felt by those who fly. In August 2019, Swedish climate change activist Greta Thunberg chose to ride a boat to New York to reduce emissions and draw attention to the crisis.

So, will we have to keep any airplanes on the ground? The answer is complicated, depending on how quickly certain technologies become widespread, how willing we are to tolerate financial and environmental costs of jet fuel alternatives, and whether we aim to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions entirely or merely reach “net-zero” emissions (in which scenario we would continue to emit, but attempt to offset the climate impact through carbon capture and storage).

But there is a growing consensus that even in technologically optimistic scenarios, some constraints on demand will be necessary to curtail the expected growth in flights over the decades to come. Many climate activists argue that because these technologies are uncertain, we should start reducing flights as soon as possible. And some early indications — such as an ongoing union-led fight against an airport expansion in Los Angeles — suggests that the climate movement’s most powerful ally against rampant growth in air travel may be labor.

Few demonstrators at the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) during a September 14 rally held greenhouse gas emission foremost in their minds as they decried the proposed expansion. The 50 or so protesters — most wearing the shirt of either SEIU United Service Workers West (SEIU-USWW) or Unite Here Local 11 — were more vocal about issues such as health care, wages, and the impact of air pollution and traffic congestion at their jobs and in their neighborhoods. The two unions, representing thousands of food, custodial and passenger service employees at the airport, were joined by Sunrise LA and other community and environmental groups outside a meeting of the Los Angeles Board of Airport Commissioners (BOAC).

An SEIU-USSW press release argues that the current plans to expand LAX “ignore the needs of workers at the airport as well as those who are most impacted by it: nearby neighborhood residents,” but they do not oppose the expansion outright. Instead, the labor groups want to see a community benefits agreement — an enforceable contract between the airport and community groups that allows workers and residents to provide substantive input, ensuring any airport development respects economic and environmental justice. If this demand is not met, SEIU-USWW President David Huerta tells Truthout, the union “could transition into direct opposition.”

Any solution must ensure worker voices are heard, says Sunrise LA spokesperson Josiah Edwards. Airport employees kept LAX running through the pandemic for inadequate pay, and already bear a heavy environmental burden. That they are not invited to the BOAC’s closed-door meetings is “a clear instance of environmental injustice,” Edwards says.

By Stay Grounded - Popular Resistance, February 11, 2021

London/Vienna – Today, the UK trade union PCS and the global network Stay Grounded published together a paper entitled “A Rapid and Just Transition of Aviation – Shifting towards Climate-Just Mobility”. Tahir Latif, PCS Aviation Group President, says: “This paper clearly shows: the aviation workforce needs to accommodate the urgent requirement for a reduction in flying. This is imperative to avoid climate catastrophe. We need to retain job security through retraining and redeployment into jobs, some within aviation and some in other sectors, that help to restore the planet, not destroy it.”

This Paper makes it clear that there is no option to go back to business as before Covid-19: instead of bailing out airlines, airports and manufacturers, recovery packages must directly finance a just transition. This includes providing a living wage and social protection for workers leaving the industry, retraining programmes, creating jobs in climate-safe sectors and fostering alternatives to flights and harmful mass tourism. 

“Public money must save people, not planes”, says Magdalena Heuwieser, from Stay Grounded. “If we try to go back to the old high-speed fossil-fuelled transport system, it will crash very soon. Let’s be realistic: aviation will change, and it will do so either by design or by disaster. So let’s choose design.” 

The discussion paper has a global scope and is the result of a collective writing process by people active in the climate justice movement, trade unionists, indigenous communities and academics from around the world. Several aviation workers who were involved also advocate for a just transition and less flying, like ex-pilot Paul Taylor: “I was made redundant from my airline due to Covid-19 – and I won’t go back to flying. I realised it’s neither healthy for me, nor for the planet.”

The document has its focus on the question of how to fairly reduce passenger flights and it makes clear links to freight as well as tourism. ”Mass sun and beach tourism is a sector that is highly dependent on aviation and very vulnerable, as the Covid pandemic has shown. We need to focus on more inland and local tourism, based on sustainability, respect for the territory and on more sustainable mobility options,” says Carlos Martínez, member of the Secretary of Environment from CC.OO. The Trade Union Confederation of Workers’ Commissions (Confederación Sindical de Comisiones Obreras) is one of the biggest Spanish unions. In another paper published in January 2021 with the biggest Spanish environmental NGOs, it argues for reducing dependency on mass tourism and air travel. 

“It is key that the climate justice movement, trade unions and workers join forces to fight for our future”, concludes Magdalena Heuwieser from Stay Grounded. The demand for a just transition has been developed by trade unions and the climate justice movement. It aims to protect workers and communities currently dependent on fossil fuel industries, but is also a broader process to help safeguard the future of workers, communities and the planet. It is not an argument for delaying the changes needed, rather for managing them effectively, fairly and democratically. 

The Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) is one of the largest unions in the U.K., with around 180,000 members. PCS represents workers in the civil service and ex-civil service areas that are now in the private sector, including aviation. PCS is one of six UK unions with members in aviation, representing around 1,800 workers in air traffic management, airport ground and security staff and in civil aviation regulation.

Stay Grounded is a network of about 170 member organisations from all over the world, among them: NGOs, climate justice groups, indigenous organisations, labour unions and civil initiatives against airport noise and expansion. Together, they fight for climate justice and a fair reduction of aviation.

By staff - Stay Grounded, February 2021

Covid-19 has grounded air traffic. The aviation industry itself expects to be operating at a lower capacity over the next few years. This Paper discusses how long-term security for workers and affected communities can be guaranteed, without returning to business as before. 

With the looming climate breakdown, automation, digitalisation and likely climate induced pandemics, we need to be realistic: aviation and tourism will change – and they will do so either by design or by disaster. They will transition either with or without taking into account workers’ interests.

This Discussion Paper, published by the Stay Grounded Network and the UK Trade Union PCS in February 2021, is a result of a collective writing process by people active in the climate justice movement, workers in the aviation sector, trade unionists, indigenous communities and academics from around the world. It aims to spark debates and encourage concrete transition plans by states, workers and companies.

Read the text (PDFs: EN | DA | DE | ES | FR | PT ).