Matt Hancock decarbonising air travel

15th January 2020

The is morning Matt Hancock - a minister in "the People's Government" and a member of factcheckUK party - told Nicky Campbell that 'flying has already decarbonised and can decarbonise more'. He promoted the idea of electric planes.

What Hancock said is simply not true. Here are some actual, true facts.

• Mike Berners-Lee, an academic who specialises in environment and climate, wrote on Twitter: 'Flying has NOT decarbonised. The global footprint of flying is rising fast. We absolutely DO need to fly less'
• flying has not decarbonised: planes burn kerosine, which is a fossil fuel
• flying has not decarbonised: Aviation Environment Federation says that flying is one of the most carbon-intensive forms of transport, and emissions are forecast to grow both in real terms and as a proportion of the national total; they say that there will be annual efficiency improvements of less than one per cent between now and 2050
• flying has not decarbonised: the government's own consultation paper on the future of aviation, published in December 2018, shows that between 2010 and 2016, emissions from international aviation movements within the UK increased by 7% (para 3.78). This was a period when air travel increased by 20%, so emissions didn't increase by as much as travel, but that was mainly due to fewer empty seats, not decarbonising

This isn't the first time I've heard misleading Conservative "green aviation" propaganda. A Tory MP made very similar comments on Emma Barnett's 5 Live programme the day after the General Election. That leads me to believe that Matt Hancock isn't the person behind the idea. "Tell people that we've decarbonised flying" has been written on a memo and circulated to MPs and ministers by Conservative Central Office, and I'd stake £26 on that.

Whoever thought it up, it's thoroughly dishonest. We haven't solved the problem of emissions from air travel, and it is wrong to try to fool people into believing we have.

None of us is perfect, and many of the changes we need to make will be painful; but the bare minimum we should be able to expect from the government is to set out the facts honestly.

However clever your propaganda, and however many voters you manage to hoodwink, it doesn't change the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Australia is burning; Yorkshire has recently been flooded; the hottest UK temperature ever was recorded in Cambridge last summer. Sir David Attenborough warns that we're at a crisis moment. When Ilkley Moor catches fire again next summer, what will Hancock say to the people affected? The climate crisis is too important for propaganda and dishonesty.

I would say to Mr Jones, if you've got a backbone, speak up: please ask your colleagues in government to do basic research (if that's the problem) and get their facts straight; or (if they already know the facts) then stop lying to us.