Add another crisis to the list of problems caused by climate change – a lack of jet parking at small international airports. To be fair, this isn’t a direct consequence of climate change, but it wouldn’t be a problem in Bali, Indonesia right now if not for the big UN climate change shindig that’s going on. Via Newsbusters, a report on the urgent situation:
Tempo Interaktif reports that Angkasa Pura – the management of Bali’s Ngurah Rai International Airport are concerned that the large number of additional private charter flights expected in Bali during the UN Conference on Climate Change (UNFCCC) December 3-15, 2007, will exceed the carrying capacity of apron areas. To meet the added demand for aircraft storage officials are allocating “parking space” at other airports in Indonesia.
The operational manager for Bali’s Airport, Azjar Effendi, says his 3 parking areas can only accommodate 15 planes, which means that some of the jets used by VIP delegations will only be allowed to disembark and embark their planes in Bali with parking provided at airports in Surabaya, Lombok, Jakarta and Makassar.
It’s bad, folks. It’s really bad.
Adding insult to injury is this nasty little fact:
Never before have so many people converged to try to save the planet from global warming, with more than 10,000 jetting into this Indonesian resort island, from government ministers to Nobel laureates to drought-stricken farmers.
But critics say they are contributing to the very problem they aim to solve.
“Nobody denies this is an important event, but huge numbers of people are going, and their emissions are probably going to be greater than a small African country,” said Chris Goodall, author of the book “How to Live a Low-Carbon Life.”…
…The U.N. estimates 47,000 tons of carbon dioxide and other pollutants will be pumped into the atmosphere during the 12-day conference in Bali, mostly from plane flights but also from waste and electricity used by hotel air conditioners.
If correct, Goodall said, that is equivalent to what a Western city of 1.5 million people, such as Marseilles, France, would emit in a day.
But he believes the real figure will be twice that, more like 100,000 tons, close to what the African country of Chad churns out in a year.
A couple of questions spring to mind:
- have these folks ever heard of videoconferencing?
- If that isn’t possible, wouldn’t it make more sense to hold the conference in a place served by many airlines that already fly regularly scheduled routes rather than a place that requires so many chartered flights? Say, someplace exotic like, oh, I don’t know – how about… New York?
A hat tip on the carbon footprint link goes to Texas Rainmaker, who closes this update with a friendly reminder:
The conference is aimed at developing a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol, the treaty whose members actually increased greenhouse emissions after ratifying it.
