Context: UK ad regulator banned advertisement from Air France, Lufthansa, and Etihad for alleged misleading consumers regarding the environmental impact of air travel.
Greenwashing
- Greenwashing is when firms or governments give a false impression that their products or activities are climate-friendly or help in reducing emissions.
- It may also occur when a company highlights sustainable aspects of a product to overshadow its environmentally damaging activities.
- Greenwashing can involve environmental imagery, misleading labels, or hiding all the facts.
Cases
- In KLM’s case, the company ran an advertising campaign telling its customer to “FLY RESPONSIBLY”.
- Environmentalists sued KLM for false advertisement, arguing there is no environmentally friendly way to fly.
- The infamous 2015 Volkswagen scandal, in which the German car company was found to have been cheating in emissions testing of its supposedly green diesel vehicles. This was a case of greenwashing.
Aviation industry
- Currently, the aviation industry is responsible for approximately 2.5% of all human-produced CO2 emissions, according to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2022 estimates.
- The IPPC has said that aviation’s contribution could increase to 5% of the total contribution by 2050 if measures are not taken to address these emissions. The highest predicted value is 15%.
- According to the UN Climate Change, if non-CO2 emissions, like water vapor, are also accounted for, the airline industry would be responsible for causing almost 5% of historical global warming.
- Emissions from domestic flights are attributed to a country’s emission accounts. However, emissions from international flights are not attributable to any country.
- They are instead counted as ‘bunker fuels and no country has any responsibility to curtail these emissions.