Two environmental protection collectives, Alternatiba and ANV-COP-21, organized a nationwide day of mobilization on Saturday for the discount of air site visitors. Civil disobedience demonstrations and actions concentrating on airports are organized all through France, as a part of a motion supported by scientists and public figures. In a discussion board for the JDD, Bertrand Piccard, psychiatrist, explorer and president of the Photo voltaic Impulse Basis, and Catherine Maunoury, world champion in aerobatics, president of the Aéro-Membership de France, name for the battle to not be mistaken . Right here is their textual content.
“We live in a time when humanity lastly understands the urgent want to guard its residing area to make sure the standard of its future existence. The inhabitants is even starting to revolt towards the excesses of a system that creates air pollution and inequalities. It was about time! However to be efficient, to get as a lot help as potential with them, activists should select their targets effectively, focus on the necessities and keep away from turning into confined to the anecdote by searching for scapegoats, corresponding to Christmas bushes and airplanes, on the threat of creating enjoyable of the trigger they wish to defend.
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The research of worldwide sources of CO2 exhibits that a very powerful come from combustion engines, poorly insulated buildings, inefficient heating and air con. However the incapability to resolve these big issues systemically shouldn’t justify turning towards lesser targets.
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A denigration, which borders on bigotry, as if to offer an excellent conscience and overlook that one pollutes elsewhere
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With regard to aviation, it needs to be famous that CO2 emissions per passenger have decreased by 80% over the previous 70 years to not characterize, earlier than the Covid-19 disaster, solely 2 to three% of worldwide emissions. Lower than the digital sector whose supporters of video streaming have by no means been singled out. And but aviation is below assault with out commensurate with its actual affect on the local weather. It has change into the hostage of an ideology which advocates degrowth as the one answer to environmental points and which unfolds a plane-bashing, a denigration, which borders on fanaticism, as if to offer oneself a transparent conscience and overlook that we’re polluting elsewhere.
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Allow us to not overlook that aeronautics made potential a dream lengthy inaccessible and as previous as humanity: to fly. France, a pioneer because the finish of the 19th century, has performed a basic position there. It is likely one of the international locations the place the fervour for flying is the strongest.
This irrational denigration of aviation obscures not solely the emotional dimension, but additionally the socio-economic affect of aeronautical actions which characterize greater than 1.1 million direct and oblique jobs in France, and four.three% of the nationwide GDP. . It’s subsequently an industrial success, a flagship of our means to innovate, and at last a serious guarantor of our independence when it comes to transport and protection. Past the numerous jobs and the financial dynamism it generates in our territories, aeronautics is likely one of the finest representatives of our know-how.
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If an trade can meet the problem of its transformation, it’s aeronautics
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And above all, plane-bashing overshadows the important: if an trade can meet the problem of its transformation, it’s aeronautics. The power to reinvent oneself is written in its DNA. The ladies and men who compose it, engineers, researchers, companions, technicians, are the heirs of the French pioneers who have been Blériot, Saint-Exupéry, Mermoz, Dassault, Potez, Latécoère and lots of others. For greater than 100 years, all have made the success and delight of the aeronautical area.
Acutely aware of the ecological points, producers have subsequently taken the trail of innovation and vitality effectivity to attain zero-emission plane as shortly as potential (batteries, hydrogen, third era biofuels or artificial kerosene). Electrical touring jets are already out there for flying golf equipment, however it’s clear that it’s going to take a decade for a similar to be true for business aviation. Within the meantime, airways should take their share, systematically charging the carbon cost on every ticket bought, which might be an oblique solution to be carbon impartial now. They’re enjoying their future there. As a result of was the plane-bashing not attributable to the delay that aviation has taken in carbon offsetting and the taxation of kerosene?
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There is no such thing as a doubt that industrialists within the aeronautical department should take their duties, however so do environmentalists. As a result of this stigmatization of aviation makes us overlook the very essence of its usefulness. The airplane is and can stay a novel vector for bringing peoples collectively, for cultural, social, scientific and financial exchanges, in addition to a formidable and efficient instrument for motion in occasions of disaster.
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Don’t give in to dogmatism or the temptation of the scapegoat
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It’s subsequently not by denigrating aviation, by in search of to interrupt it, that we’re going to resolve the ecological situation. Quite the opposite, allow us to make the most of the present well being and financial disaster to encourage it to evolve even sooner. Allow us to not give in to dogmatism or the temptation of the scapegoat. Allow us to not destroy, by ideology or ignorance, a aggressive trade which is a supply of jobs, data, exchanges, excellence and keenness, particularly since it is extremely a lot able to assembly this double problem. ecological and technological.
We’re at first of a brand new web page in historical past and writing it’ll take a while. However at present, like a century in the past, all of us have a novel probability to construct the aviation of tomorrow. Do not let it go. “
