Both a logical error and trivia over climate change

A groupuscule called Transport & Environment wants us all to know that:

It is clear that private jet use creates a disproportionate impact on the climate, and for questionable social and economic benefits.

However every sector should at least be given the opportunity to decarbonise.

As ever, start with everything else told to us in that conventional wisdom. Does this then mean that every sector should decarbonise? No - entirely the opposite in fact.

We are assuming agreement with the idea that lower emissions overall would be a good idea. But the task, then, is to still maximise human utility within whatever limits there should be. This is not, not at all, the same as saying that every activity, or sector, should reduce emissions.

To illustrate, the taking of a car to gain fresh bread for a sandwich might gain less value, on the whole and roughly estimating, than the same emissions from an ambulance taking a pregnant woman to hospital to be treated for pre-eclampsia. In that second there might be two lives saved, in the first a lunch. Rational thought about limiting emissions would - even given the insistences we are bombarded with about future costs - not demand a reduction in ambulance emissions but would possibly quite happily expunge fresh bread ones.

That is, it is total emissions that are to be reduced, those from all sectors in aggregate, not from all individually. Meaning that we should, rationally, be entirely happy with certain sectors just carrying on.

Whether private jets meet that ambulance standard is another matter of course. But that then brings us to the trivia point.

Private aircraft account for about 2 per cent of aviation emissions

Aviation accounts for some 2% of total emissions. 2% of that is 0.04% of the total problem therefore. This is not just a rounding error it’s something that we’d never even be able to measure the effects of whether it persisted or vanished entirely. We’re really very sure that attention might be paid to things of rather more import. Well, if anyone were actually interested in solving the problem as defined that is.