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Go Home The End Of Aviation

ENVIRONMENT AND ENERGY AUGUST 27, 2008

The End Of Aviation

BY BRADFORD PLUMER

What will happen when America can't afford to fly?

As the age of cheap oil comes to a close, it's springtime for gloomy futurists. Visions of a brutish world marked by violent squabbles over dwindling reserves, of junkyards littered with abandoned cars, of suburban slums overrun by weeds, of the collapse of industrial agriculture--none of this sounds as outlandish as it once did. Still, most of these horror stories are likely overstated: Energy experts tend to agree that, with a little ingenuity and a generous helping of political will, we could transition away from fossil fuels without being forced to give up our modern lifestyles.

But there's one big exception--an area where a post-carbon world really could mean a radical shift in the way we live. That's the world of commercial flight.

Early signs of an aviation apocalypse are already upon us. As oil prices flirt with $130 per barrel and the dollar struggles, airlines are paying nearly 80 percent more for fuel than they did a year ago. Twenty-five airlines have gone belly-up this year--three to four times the usual yearly rate. Major carriers like American, Northwest, and United, still reeling from the industry downturn after September 11, go barely a month without announcing layoffs and capacity cuts.

And it gets worse from there. Despite recent fluctuations, a growing number of economists are bracing for oil to hit or surpass $200 per barrel in a few years, and most industry analysts agree with Douglas Runte, of RBS Greenwich Capital, who told The Wall Street Journal in June, "Many airline business models cease to work at $135-a-barrel oil prices." After all, most airlines barely figured out how to be profitable in a world of low fuel costs. Jeff Rubin, chief economist of Canadian investment bank CIBC World Markets, has predicted that gasoline will hit $7 per gallon by 2010, forcing some 10 million cars in the United States off the road. If that happens, he told me, "You're going to see an even bigger exit in the airline industry."

As if one plague wasn't enough, the threat of climate change could mean further doom for airlines. In Great Britain, green groups are lobbying hard in favor of aviation fuel taxes and against a proposed third runway at Heathrow Airport, wewhile activist groups, like one called Plane Stupid, have taken to unfurling banners from atop Westminster Palace and elsewhere with slogans like WE FLY, WE DIE. They argue that, at a time when greenhouse gases are pushing global temperature to perilous levels, flying--one of the most energy-intensive forms of travel around--is a luxury the planet simply can't afford. (While aviation currently accounts for just 3 percent of man-made carbondioxide emissions, it's one of the fastest-growing sources, and the true climate impact of flight is around 2.7 times that of carbon dioxide alone, thanks to the added warming effects of nitrogen-oxide emissions and jet contrails.)

As a result of this advocacy, a social stigma against flying is slowly spreading across Europe. While air travel isn't covered by the Kyoto Protocol, the next round of climate-treaty talks will likely address the issue, and the EU has recently announced that it will bring aviation into its emissions-trading regime--forcing airlines to pay for 15 percent of their carbon use starting in 2012. "That's the real deal," says Bill Swelbar, a research engineer at MIT's International Center for Air Transportation. "When you look at some of the taxes and fees being discussed in Europe, we might as well bankrupt our industry today." John Whitelegg, a transportation expert at York University's Stockholm Environment Institute, estimates that requiring airlines to pay the full environmental costs of flight could raise fares as much as five-fold.

Few of the analysts I interviewed wanted to venture predictions about aviation's end of days. One far-reaching scenario, however, was put forward by Anthony Perl and Richard Gilbert, two Canadian transportation experts who, in their new book Transport Revolutions, envision a world in which rising oil prices have reduced domestic flying in the United States roughly 40 percent by 2025--even assuming that airlines improve fuel efficiency by about 50 percent. In such a scenario, the United States could go from having nearly 400 primary airports down to 50 or so; instead of dozens of flights each day between New York and San Francisco carrying 200 people apiece, there might be only a handful carrying 800 or more in new extra-jumbo jets.

The Federal Aviation Administration, for its part, remains bullish on flight, predicting that U.S. airlines will carry 1.3 billion passengers by 2025, nearly double the current number. But even the FAA is starting to soften its outlook, since, already this year, fares in the United States have risen nearly 15 percent on average and some 2.7 million fewer people are expected to fly this summer than last. American Airlines has announced a 12 percent cut in domestic capacity for the rest of the year; United Airlines, a 16 percent cut. Regional jets--smaller planes carrying fewer than 50 passengers that account for one-fourth of all flights today--are being grounded en masse. In the short term, cuts may prove healthy for many airlines, letting them scale back to profitable core markets. But, if oil prices do soar past $200 per barrel, major carriers could start downsizing sharply, abandoning more routes and smaller hubs, and even going out of business for good.

Maybe the gloomy futurists have a point after all, and mass aviation could be coming to an end. No longer would air travel be like the Internet or television--a cheap technology available to virtually anyone, shaping our world in countless little ways. If that happened, the result would mean more than just the end of easy weekend jaunts to Bermuda or annual Christmas visits home. It could mean major shifts in the economy, changes in immigration patterns across the world, and perhaps even a remapping of the planet as we know it.

 

In the 1950s, flying was a special event: You could hardly find a ticket from New York to Europe for less than $5,000; men put on suits, women wore hats and heels, and some of the luxury planes, like Pan Am's Clipper, had bridal suites, dining salons, and beds. But, in the late '70s, under pressure from consumer groups and business interests, Congress deregulated the industry, allowing upstarts to open up new routes more easily and compete on price, ushering in the modern age of mass aviation. Between 1975 and 2005, inflation-adjusted airfares in the United States plunged some 40 percent, while the annual number of passengers more than tripled. A similar shift swept across the Europe in the '90s, as deregulation gave rise to popular "no-frills" carriers like Ryanair and Easyjet. By 2001, The Atlantic Monthly was envisioning a dawning age of "air taxis"--small planes that would make flight as quotidian as hailing a cab.

Deregulation had its costs: Airlines ditched amenities and service to offer rock-bottom fares; congestion and delays plagued travelers; and the industry itself became tempestuous for individual companies and their workers. Yet these seemed like minor sacrifices for the democratization of flight, as middle-class travelers were able to visit places once accessible only by books. Attractions changed: Small museums and historic sites tucked away on interstates began to collect dust, while popular hotspots like Cancún and Waikiki became choked with tourists.

Other sociological changes wrought by cheap air travel have also been striking. Since 1980, the number of international migrants has doubled to nearly 200 million, as skilled workers and low-wage immigrants alike, knowing they could affordably return home, became more willing to set off for foreign shores. Within Europe, low-budget airlines like the Hungarian carrier Wizz Air will transport Poles and Hungarians to Western Europe for as low as $26, which has enabled a surge of Eastern European migrant workers into the United Kingdom--most of whom stay for less than three months, according to a recent study by the Institute for Public Policy Research in London. "You'll have, for instance, a Polish doctor who spends most of his time in Poland but commutes to Scotland for a long weekend shift when most Scottish doctors aren't working," says Danny Sriskandarajah, who co-authored the report. "That would've been unheard of five years ago."

In large countries such as the United States, cheap airfare has helped facilitate the geographic dispersion of families and businesses alike. In the 1980s, some onlookers predicted that these trends would spell the demise of large urban centers. That never happened--there are still advantages to agglomeration--but new patterns did emerge. Academics took it for granted that they could toss around ideas with far-flung colleagues at conferences. Trade shows and conventions attracting millions changed the way business was conducted. For a growing subset of college grads, traveling abroad became a way of "finding themselves" before settling down. Long-distance relationships became commonplace--one recent survey in Europe found that three million Brits were looking for love abroad rather than at home, as flying to the continent for dates was just as cheap as taking trains around Britain. Of course, there was a dark side, too: Democratic air travel created new opportunities for terrorism and, as the 2003 SARS epidemic made clear, new pathways for the rapid spread of disease.

More important, if less evident, was the air-freight revolution of the 1980s, as companies like Federal Express bought up planes and transformed logistics and shipping in the United States, creating a system that sped up deliveries, gave the economy vast new flexibility, and fueled the rise of Internet distributors like Amazon and eBay. Air freight now plays a huge role globally, carrying, for instance, one-third of the value of all U.S. imports. And the system relies heavily on cheap fuel: Every night, FedEx keeps a number of empty planes up in the air, to better respond to requests at a moment's notice.

Airports themselves, rapidly expanding both in number and size, have become engines of urban growth. At the extreme end sits Brasília, which was not only conceived in the 1950s as both a capital and a major air hub, but had its first building materials flown in by air and was designed to look like an airplane from above. But airport-driven development is increasingly common in the United States, as well: John Kasarda, a University of North Carolina business professor, has coined the term "aerotropolis" to describe the mini-cities that have grown up around airports, bringing in first hotels for business travelers, then office parks packed with pharmaceutical and tech companies that need to ship out their products quickly. In the '80s, Dallas-Fort Worth's status as a major air hub brought in hundreds of thousands of distribution and manufacturing jobs, along with a conglomeration of high-tech firms that now rivals Silicon Valley.

 

Even in the most pessimistic scenarios, the social changes wrought by cheap airfares are not going to run perfectly in reverse, like the bombing of Dresden in Slaughterhouse Five. Kasarda, for instance, is skeptical that even large increases in fuel prices will mean the end of aerotropolises, which have become largely self-sustaining. But what if a hefty decline in air travel is upon us? What would that mean?

To start with, flight may become once again largely confined to a more elite jet-setting class. The rest of us may have to vacation closer to home: Even the relatively modest 30 percent dip in air travel after September 11 proved a boon to old-fashioned local attractions like the Texas State Fair and the Bronx Zoo. And many people may think twice about relocating a flight away from family members. "It will involve a shift in people's decisions of whether they have to move," says Vered Amit, a professor of anthropology at Concordia College who studies transnational mobility. "If people are separated for longer, don't see each other as often, it's going to hurt."

Immigration, meanwhile, did not begin with the birth of Easyjet, but some migration flows could cool off--the 465,000 Poles who have flown off on low-cost carriers to work in the United Kingdom since 2004, for instance, or the 70, 000 Filipinos who migrate to the United States each year, or the Caribbean workers, skilled and unskilled alike, who fly frequently up to North America, often maintaining homes in both places.

As for the economy, no doubt a number of business fliers--who account for roughly one-third of all air travelers--will start teleconferencing instead. (Those who do still fly will enjoy the drops in both congestion and delays that come with capacity cuts.) Air freight could be harder hit, which may mean, among other things, that Americans can no longer walk into a Whole Foods in January and find blueberries flown 12,000 miles from Tasmania. During the early '90s, local produce distributors were heralding the fact that air freight had nearly quadrupled the number of items available in U.S. supermarkets. Perhaps not for much longer.

As people stop crossing the globe so frequently, the landscape will change, too. Popular tourist resorts accessible mainly by air, like Orlando and Las Vegas, could decline--much as, ironically, Atlantic City did in the latter half of the twentieth century, when air travel made it easier for East Coasters to fly off and gamble in the Nevada desert. The entire state of Alaska--whose denizens have been called "the flyingest people under the American flag"--would be dramatically altered if the small planes dotting the small airports and frozen lakes across the state could no longer afford to fly quite so often.

Dismal fates could await areas with high per capita concentrations of airport employment, such as Dallas-Fort Worth, Miami, and Tucson. Jack Kyser, chief economist for the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation, points out that some California cities like Fresno have managed to attract business by promising easy air access from L.A. in precisely the sort of regional jets that are now endangered. And what about the airports themselves--which, as the greens engaged in pitched battles at Heathrow remind us, were often financed based on projections of near-infinite growth and $60-per-barrel oil? Will many of them become, as one industry analyst quipped to me, "half-empty mausoleums"?

Small towns will be especially vulnerable to losing scheduled air service. That's already happened to nearly 30 U.S. cities in the past year, from Wilmington, Delaware (population 72,000) to Boulder City, Nevada (14,000). Hagerstown, Maryland, lost all commercial air service recently, rendering its new $61.8 million, 7,000-foot runway useless. Some of the towns in danger--like Massena, New York, nestled along the Canadian border--lie nowhere near four-lane highways and have been connected to the outside world primarily by airplanes, which they rely on to bring in business clients or take residents to medical centers. One local official in northern Wisconsin recently offered to Milwaukee Magazine a theory on the influx of new residents who don't mind the harsh winters: "They know they're not stuck here. They can fly out for a month or two."

For now, the federal government picks up a large part of the tab for flights to roughly 140 smaller communities with its Essential Air Service Program, which costs $110 million per year and provides subsidies as large as $1,300 per passenger. As fuel prices rise, Congress will have to decide if it wants to directly bankroll ever larger portions of the air network.

Meanwhile, even worse troubles might afflict the developing world, where the global tourism industry brought in $205 billion in 2005; many poorer countries, like those in the Caribbean, have tourism-based economies that depend on cheap air travel. True, there are parts of the world under heavy environmental strain from stampeding tourists--the Gálapagos Islands were recently added to UNESCO's "danger list." But a decline in flight-based tourism could also hurt local ecologies as governments, seeking to replace lost tourist cash, raid their own natural resources: In Ethiopia, for instance, Germany recently funded an eco-tourism project to forestall illegal logging in the Bale Mountains.

 

Is there a way to avoid this fate? I reached Richard Gilbert, one of the analysts warning of a potentially drastic decline in U.S. air travel over the next two decades, as he was returning from a meeting in Toronto with the U.S. Transportation Research Board, a government research body. I asked him what sort of response he gets when he discusses his book with industry insiders. "You see three arguments," Gilbert told me. "One is that ingenuity, American or otherwise, will overcome the problem in terms of oil prices. The second is that we'll wrestle it to the ground with technology. And the third type of response--and this one doesn't have a specific argument--is that this just can't happen."

It's always dangerous to bet against human ingenuity. But, while most of the technology needed to replace gas-guzzling cars with, say, plug-in hybrids either exists or sits just over the horizon, decarbonizing air travel is a much harder prospect, not least because of the massive amounts of energy needed to lift a large passenger plane in the air. The industry has already boosted the fuel efficiency of jets 70 percent in the last four decades, and is now left sanding down the rough spots--tinkering with ultralight materials, flying more slowly, or even charging passengers for extra bags. Propeller planes use less fuel than jets but are only really viable for some short-haul flights. Engine manufacturers say that more advanced technologies like fuel cells and carbon capture are still technically infeasible, while "blended wing" designs--planes shaped like stealth bombers to reduce drag--have barely left the drawing board. Improvements in air-traffic control will reduce both the length of flights and fuel-wasting delays, but may not be enough to surmount $200-per-barrel oil.

Virgin Airlines CEO Richard Branson has held out high hopes for jet biofuels, though spikes in food prices and massive deforestation have dimmed ethanol's star. Someday we may get solar-powered jets or hydrogen fuel cells, but, as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded in its landmark 1999 aviation study, "There would not appear to be any practical alternatives to kerosenebased fuels for commercial jet aircraft for the next several decades." The military may be one exception: The Pentagon, worried about peak oil scenarios, has pushed to fuel its Air Force with liquefied coal, which may keep fighter jets aloft, but would have horrifying climate consequences if used on a broad scale.

That means, in the next few decades, high-speed trains-which require considerably less energy per passenger than airplanes--may prove the most viable alternative to flight. York University's Whitelegg notes that, in Europe, trips shorter than 300 miles make up about 45 percent of all flights; most could be traversed nearly as quickly by train, if the proper infrastructure were built. Hank Dittmar, CEO of the Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment, sees airports morphing into "travelports" that seamlessly link rail and air networks, with the latter used largely for long-distance.

Trains, of course, can't span oceans. Perhaps the most unlikely alternative to emerge in recent months is the rebirth of the dirigible or airship, as companies have already been unveiling new designs for niche tourist trips and transporting cargo. The good news is that modern helium airships are far safer than the Hindenburg and emit a great deal less carbon than jumbo jets. The bad news is that natural reserves of helium may be running low and, more to the point, airships can't carry many people at a time, don't handle heavy weather well, and are quite slow: A flight from New York to London would take around 40 hours. (Fast passenger ships would take twice as long, though modern ocean liners suffer in peak oil scenarios, too.)

In an age when American consultants can commute weekly by air and return home to their spouses on the weekends, or when Manchester United soccer fans think nothing of hopping on a flight to follow their team for a quick game in Turin, it's almost impossible to imagine a world in which employers gave workers, say, three weeks off so that they could board a modern-day zeppelin and float home for the holidays. As even George Monbiot, the British environmentalist who has thundered most furiously about the need to downsize air travel in order to stave off drastic climate change, concedes, abandoning the age of mass aviation would be a hugely disorienting change. "It flies in the face of everything we have been encouraged to regard as progress," he has written. But the end of oil, or the urgency of global warming, or both, could well force that change upon us. Is that something our world, increasingly accustomed to its frenetic, globe-trotting pace, could handle?

Bradford Plumer is an assistant editor of The New Republic.

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78 comments

You shouldn't dismiss biofuels so quickly. My understanding is that algae based biofuels are being seriously considered by Boeing. If massive amounts of algae biofuel can be created using vertical farms and refineries powered by hydro, wind, solar and nuclear energy, why shouldn't it be a perfectly viable alternative? I agree that there may be a lull for a while, but I don't think it will be long term, and it will be a huge benefit to the aerospace company that produces the first jets powered without fossil fuels.

- fwslusser

August 15, 2008 at 1:10am

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Great article, surveying terrain that's just over the horizon. Being an engineer, myself, I'm holding out for the return of hydrogen dirigibles. --JT PS-- Massena, NY. Not "Manessa"

- jt

August 15, 2008 at 7:40am

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Maybe like airplanes can drag an extension-cord along behind them?? If that's not practical, perhaps a rebuilding of a high speed passenger rail network across these fruited plain would be in order. Maglev technology from Japan, or French high speed rail systems seem to work. Ground transportation at 350 mph would be as fast as flying, at it's technologically feasible now.

- David H

August 15, 2008 at 7:50am

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Ok, Brad, this is a little silly for one great, big, whopping reason: If we managed to stop using fossil fuels for automobiles and electricity, the price for what is left is going to be a lot lower than $60 a barrel. In a world where fossil fuels are no longer the mainstay of energy, they can and still will be used for things such as air travel for which there are no substitutes. But then the price will largely be function of the demand for those activities and the supply will be relatively huge. Large supply, extremely reduced demand. What does that tell you about the price? That is not to say that getting off fossil fuels is easy, or even possible. Usable energy is, after all, not created but, in one form or another, must be provided by nature. However, if we do succeed in solving the much larger problem, we will not then have to worry about the viability of air travel. Very dramatic though.

- roidubouloi

August 15, 2008 at 8:17am

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are these people crazy? they must be made to realize that our air travel is saving us. were it not for the effects of global dimming, hastened in no small part by jet contrails, we might already be living in the day after tomorrow.

- kurt

August 15, 2008 at 8:38am

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I'm a democrat and a traditional environmentalist, that said, it's well known that the entire premise the so called "green" movement has been pushing, regarding global warming has been manipulated and much of it exagerated. Carbon credits, are a sham, as are the claims made for them are based on lies. The elevation of bio-fuels as some salvation for the energy crisis has lead to increased hunger and privation, and in Brazil and other Latin American countries, the rainforests (what we've learned help prevent the worsening of problems like the hole in the ozone layer.) are being razed so palm can be planted, and then harvested for bio-fuels. Palm being less effective than the sugar cane which has previously dominated in Brazil, for example. The "green" environmentalists are silent on the subject, as they are on the vast increases in over population and the burdens it imposes on resources. "Green" environmentalists are quietly promoting the bleeding of resources from the ever increasingly less developed west, into "undeveloped" nations, like Africa.. where more than 3 trillion in "aid" has already disappeared, and while hunger and suffering has sharply increased, the weapons, hummers, luxuries for corrupt government leaders, and increased war, genocide (Arab and African muslim slaughtering Africans who are not muslim) have proliferated. "Green" environmentalists are also quietly promoting an ideology that rationalizes the starving out of the majority of the populations of the world, so as to ensure that those they consider more "deserving" are able to maintain the lifestyles they have become accustomed to. The premise demands the pushing of the middle class and the poor into urban ghettos, so as to free up other land for "green" zones. The Episcopal church of the US invited one Professor Chris Rapley to promote this concept at the Lambeth Conference last month.

- Jenny

August 15, 2008 at 8:55am

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Higher oil prices will result in more oil from traditional sources such as additional exploration and drilling and from new sources such as shale oil. The real oil price and the portion of our incomes it consumes is well below its highs now and prices will come down as supply increases. Alternative energy will come on-line when it is profitable. There is more danger of global cooling than warming caused by carbon emissions. As word gets out that global warming is a hoax, the anti-western, anti-capitalist environmentalists will need to find another plan of attack. Their naked power grab is failing. Finally, airlines will fail and consolidate until they are of the right number and size to be efficient enough to be profitable. It is called creative destruction, it is market forces at work, and it is good. Move along.

- Mike

August 15, 2008 at 9:00am

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There is certainly some truth in the claim that aviation business models will change due to rising oil prices. However, the same mechanism that drives 10m cars off the streets, will also decrease demand and thereby decrease prices. You do not need to be a nobel laureate to assert that high oil prices won´t cause aviation to cease, what it will in fact do is increase ticket prices and get some Americans to rethink their Seattle-Florida-roundtrip holiday plans.

- commentator

August 15, 2008 at 9:51am

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Typical leftist doom and gloom. Petroleum won't hit $200 a barrel next year, man-made global warming will be proven as the hoax and scam that it is, and the fear-mongering industry will move on to some other scam that can be perpetrated on the susceptible masses of the world. Liberals, socialists and leftists around the world have always jumped on whatever doom and gloom bandwagon they think will bring a few more impressionable minds to their way of thinking. TNR and all the others just lap it up and and tell us the world is coming to an end, again. Rachel Carson was wrong, Ehrlich was wrong in the 1970s, Al Gore is Wrong today and the next round of doom-sayers will be wrong tomorrow. So, why don't you believers of the doom-sayers just get over it, find a job doing something productive, then jet off to your favorite vaction spot and CHILL.

- JAH666

August 15, 2008 at 10:07am

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When I was a child, born in the 50's, air travel was for the well-to-do, but movies and television taught us all to aspire to see the nation, and the world. By the time I started my career, air travel was cheap and common, they really did move their tails for us, they served us food even on fairly short flights, liquor flowed, we could even smoke. While all of that gradually changed, for decades I was able to travel all over the United States and the world a few times a year on both business and pleasure, sometimes even feigning business for pleasure just to excuse the travel. As cattle car flights, airport lines, delays and inefficiencies made flight less a pleasure, that passion subsided to flying more rarely, but I do hate to think the ever shrinking world our generation enjoyed is going to be replaced with a growing nation and world fewer are able to experience. Surely the same or similar technologies we hope to free us from fossil fuels will eventually be able to fly our airplanes in renewable and climate friendly ways. We surely can't be the only generation ever to be able to easily travel the nation and the world.

- Fred

August 15, 2008 at 10:15am

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roidubouloi--Oh, I agree, if we stopped using fossil fuels for everything else, we'd have plenty left for aviation. But that's certainly not going to happen overnight (it certainly won't happen in China and India), and in the medium-term, aviation will most get hit the hardest. It's worth noting, and I wish I had included this, that the Gilbert and Perl book foreseeing a 40% decline in domestic air travel by 2025 actually assumes that a lot of ground transportation--cars and so forth--becomes electrified over that timeframe, taking pressure off oil prices. So that's a "well-managed transition" scenario.

- Brad Plumer

August 15, 2008 at 10:42am

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A lot of good could come of this. The airlines, catering only to business and the up-market trade could actually make a profit again instead of constantly sitting on the edge of bankruptcy. We wouldn't have to travel with people in tanktops and sandals anymore. Maybe people would dress decently to fly again, although given Slacker Nation Slouch fashion, even amongst the well off, no guarantees. And the renaissance of decent train travel in the U.S. again might not be such a bad thing at all. Especially if it's high speed technology, maybe even magnetic levitation. 300 MPH city center to city center works fine. It's still only 7 to 9 hours coast to coast at those speeds. With stops to stretch in major cities. All this said, there is also the strong possibility that aircraft could switch from fossil fuels to something more advanced. If hydrogen proves viable, it is much easier for airlines to switch to that energy source than it is for automobiles. Airlines fly to a relatively few airports around the world. Unlike cars, they wouldn't need a distribution system in every town and on every other block.

- ChanRobt

August 15, 2008 at 10:50am

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The biggest problem I have is with the authors unbacked claim that commercial aviation is the most energy intensive way to travel. Not even close, certainly compared to motor car. Avation uses about 3-5% of daily oil consumption, but, along with ancilary industry's is responsbile for 10% of GDP.

- EJK

August 15, 2008 at 10:56am

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Oh my, oh dear, oh, what shall we ever do??? [Flaps hands, feeling a little weak-kneed and overstimulated.] Back to reality . . . . Pseudo-journalists such as Mr. Plumer have had their depressing effect on mainstream consciousness for a while now, but their influence is diminishing rapidly as even the relatively uninformed come to the realization that the "global warming/energy crisis" movement is political - - and leftward leaning to an extreme. We will not stop flying. We will, as we have many times, regain our footing economically and continue to be the most free and innovative population on the planet. The fear Mr. Plumer enjoys peddling is the real threat to our well-being and progress. Shame on the nay-sayers.

- I'mSoSure

August 15, 2008 at 10:56am

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Nice Article, but it necessarily only scratches the surface. While the article is sobering, I'm more worried by the comments of people that think "nothing will change, it's all a hoax." The world does, has, and will always continue to change. A brief few decades of cheap air travel seem to be enough to lead some people into thinking we'll always have cheap air travel. We may, of course, but it's not a given. I do see the return of transatlantic transport cruises (with cargo), high speed rail, turbo prop passenger planes, and even, potentially, high speed dirigibles as proven, lower carbon, reliable transport mechanisms. Most of these have already been romaticized. All of them will be slower and have high price tags. But, at least, the slower part is not that serious. The difference between crossing the US in 4.5 hours by jet, or 7.5 hours by turbo prop is not, really, that daunting. Ticket prices? Ah, there's the rub!

- Anonymous Lout

August 15, 2008 at 11:09am

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If this scenario is credible, and I have no reason to doubt it at this moment, then a few conclusions are in order. Unless alternative fuel is developed, nuclear perhaps, public air transport is doomed. Businesses will have to depend upon internet communications. Not a bad thing, eliminating the wasteful perks of wining, dining, etc. Disaster for the vacation spots, which would have drastic implications for otherwise 3rd world countries. Drugs would be the alternative income. And disaster for family connections, except for small countries where driving is an alternative to air travel. Could this situation/reality signal major changes in life-style? Well of course. Would the privileged classes put up with this--I doubt it. So the environment be damned as far as they are concerned. The rest of us should be prepared for another way of life.

- moran

August 15, 2008 at 11:14am

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I think some of the gloom and doom is hysterics. Yes fuel prices have gone up recently, thanks Madam Speaker, but we do have the resources to lower them, if there was the political will to do so. But in addition to lowering artificially high fuel costs, other issues have to be addressed for flight to continue to be relatively cheap. 1. The air traffic system needs a radical overhaul. Simply taking advantage of computer's 3D graphic systems would radically reduce the work and stress load of air traffic controllers. Currently they rely on 1960&70 radar style screens, which don't display information intuitively. 2. Infrastructure has to be improved. From building more oil refineries (How come Iran is building 7 while we haven't built 1 in 30 years?) to expanding road and rail systems. And scrap Amtrac, its a money loser. We should be going mag-lev backed by nuclear power. 3. Longer term solutions would be developing new aircraft propulsion systems at all levels of flight. Right now NASA has a program to improve the fuel efficency of light "personal" aircraft. New jet engines are becoming much more fuel efficent. 4. Bio-fuels from food crops have to be banned. They do nothing but drive up the price of food. And often take more energy to produce than comes out. Oil gives excellent bang for the buck. Plus its useful for things other than fuel. That's why it superceded peanut oil back in the day. (Peanut oil was used in the original diesel engines). Algea based fuels are nice, but they've been have great difficulty scaling up to commerical level production.

- Viperlord

August 15, 2008 at 11:18am

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Hard to know what to think. The current energy crunch does make total market logic a little iffy in retrospect; Reagan wanted to quit supporting rail and hence, as a practical matter, put it out of business. That was predicated on an era, perhaps brief, of cheap energy that made flying a better deal. One role of governmen is to help maintain forms of infrastructure that constitute a fail safe, and a form of national security, during flucuations in the strength of underlying business models. Sure, you don't want to maintain a purely obsolete industry, but it wouldn't take total brilliance to realize oil was a non-renewable resource, and placing all bets on an infinite future of oil was not wise. Ditto for the American auto companies, who went for the fast buck with a new era of gas guzzlers, the SUV behemoth, and ditto for Reagan and successors, who said, let Americans drive big cars, and drive them fast. So, let's not jump to the conclusion aviation as we know it is obsolete; don't mothball the airports.

- MereMortal

August 15, 2008 at 11:19am

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Golly gee Mr. Plummer what world do YOU live in? " it's almost impossible to imagine a world in which employers gave workers, say, three weeks off so that they could board a modern-day zeppelin and float home for the holidays." Not so hard to imagine once one escapes from 'Amerika'. The rest of us get AT LEAST 3 weeks off [plus health care, etc. ;-) ]; and as CUNARD used to say, "getting there is half the fun" @ Jenny 'The premise demands the pushing of the middle class and the poor into urban ghettos, so as to free up other land for "green" zones.' Some of us do chose to live in them, and they are like my beloved Berlin, VERY livable!. BTW: Here in old EU we call them 'cities'

- megacephalus

August 15, 2008 at 11:21am

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Aviation isn't going to end, but jets will probably be phased out for civil aviation and replaced with turboprops. Turboprops are nearly as fast as jets, and consume far less fuel.

- Robert Laughlin

August 15, 2008 at 11:36am

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An interesting article, but you are dismissing too quickly synthetic fuels, which will eventually replace oil. This in effect puts a cap on the price airlines must pay for fuel. This cap is really already here, since synthetics can be produced more cheaply than $130/barrel. However, it awaits the capital investment necesary to build the plants. Look at South Africa to see what this future will look like.

- alans

August 15, 2008 at 12:11pm

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Rachel Carson was definitely wrong. If not for her the government would still be spraying DDT mixed with fuel oil over private property and on citizens without permission, and we would still be reaping the benefits of this enlightened behavior. Erlich was a moron. The hundreds of millions of people who have starved to death or died prematurely from a combination of poor nutrition and lack of access to medical care should have simply gotten good jobs. Really. People should stop taking these people seriously.

- Elvis

August 15, 2008 at 12:11pm

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In 999, Medieval Europeans worried about the coming Apocalypse. In 1999, we were warned of the impending y2k doom. And now, in 2008, TNR warns us, in an undoubtedly reasonable article, of "the end of aviation." I am not too concerned though; according to the Mayans, the end of days will occur in 2012--well before the end of aviation.

- JR

August 15, 2008 at 12:13pm

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I'm struggling with my attempt to respond appropriately. The only word that pops to mind is "silly," and the last time my brain did so was when The Atlantic's James Fallows reported just a few years ago that by this time commuters would be so frustrated with clogged freeways that we'd all by flying around in a new generation of light, high-tech affordable business jets. Aviation gets cleaner and quieter and safer every year with each new generation of engines and aircraft and regulatory stretch targets. Today's jetliners burn far less fuel than the jetliners just 10 years ago. They pollute far less. They're much quieter and efficient. Air travel on flights of more than an about 45 minutes is cheaper, more efficient and usually more environmentally friendly than driving. Smaller aircraft have much greater range which means gargantuan fuel savings when, for example, you can fly New York to Singapore non-stop without having to go to a major hub to jump aboard a huge 747 or A380 and fly far out of your way to Tokyo, then transfer to another big plane for the rest of the journey. fuel and emissions savings. Imagine Driving from New York City to Seattle by way of Miami and you can get a sense of what that means for airlines, passengers, fuel burn and emissions. In addition, there is research suggesting that contrails - condensed water vapor produced in the wake of high-flying aircraft - cool the planet to a significant degree. Aviation is too important to business, to families, to the global economy and to world peace for there not to be a market for it, and as long as there's a market there will be someone to fill it. Perhaps this was meant as satire?

- Sean

August 15, 2008 at 12:16pm

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You beat me to it. Bravo for seeing the obvious.

- Daniel

August 15, 2008 at 12:27pm

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roidubuloi: "If we managed to stop using fossil fuels for automobiles and electricity, the price for what is left is going to be a lot lower than $60 a barrel." That's a pretty big if, and I can't see how it's possible without immediate rationing, and I don't see how THAT is going to happen: "ok, Americans, you can't drive anymore because people still want to go on vacation in Europe."

- psantillana

August 15, 2008 at 1:31pm

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In the article, it is stated that jet contrails contribute to global warming. Actually, I believe I'm correct that the contrails are actually a cooling agent and therefore they counteract warming.

- MikeH

August 15, 2008 at 1:35pm

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Well, there's that little talked about, and I suppose controversial, issue that maybe, if there are climate changes at all occurring as a result of hydrocarbon emissions, stratospheric jet flight may be the reason. That's a big mouthful, but its the summary of the issue as well. And if so, then it puts the elitist promotion of the hydrocarbon issue in a new light. They want us to suffer on the ground so their secret life in the stratosphere can go on. How about linking up major cities in North America with a high speed, high capacity dedicated rail line? Doable.

- The Mike Field

August 15, 2008 at 1:36pm

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Revenge on the Ludites!

- B Marks

August 15, 2008 at 1:50pm

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JAH666: Less than 2 years ago those "liberals, socialists and leftists around the world" predicted that oil would rise about $100 per barrel and you scoffed at that notion so who are you to now say, "Petroleum won't hit $200 a barrel next year, man-made global warming will be proven as the hoax and scam that it is" Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son...

- starr69

August 15, 2008 at 1:51pm

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Hydrogen combustion is the future of aviation as it should be for all transportation. I know everybody is pushing electric cars, but you can't transport a family of 5 in a Prius and you won't be able to in a Volt or Tesla. Hydrogen has all of the umph of hydrocarbons with, guess what, no carbon. Oh yeah, and we can make all we need from water via electrolysis (a process of passing an electric current through water) and we can generate the electricity from solar, wind, geothermal, etc. Boeing, Airbus, and others have hydrogen-fueled jet engines, whether or not they ever publicize them. Electrolyzers need to be installed in fuel stations all across the country to start cheaply producing hydrogen and watch how quickly people switch away from gasoline.

- H2Energy

August 15, 2008 at 2:15pm

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I think continental and transcontinental air travel will be here for a good time, even after oil is over the top. But, the connector flights may have to go; they are very inefficient. It seems that one of most foresighted things that governments could do is to force the airports to link the rail system, as in most of Europe and at our own DC National airport. Especially, link the regional airports to the major hubs, so that after a long flight, we can jump to the rail for a short connector.

- Trafamadore

August 15, 2008 at 2:22pm

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Don't cry just yet over loss of air to Boulder City, NV. Have you heard of Las Vegas, which it almost abuts. Manessa?, New York... try Massena, New York. Has the fact checker been outsourced?

- Jeff

August 15, 2008 at 3:02pm

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Light, sweet crude for September delivery fell $3.26 to $111.75 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, after earlier falling to $111.34, its lowest since May 2 and more than $35 -- or 24 percent -- below oil's July 11 trading record above $147. Try again.

- Jack Sheet

August 15, 2008 at 3:10pm

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I like the millenarian flare. If calmer notions prevail, we have centuries of fossil fuels if we open the wilderness to exploration. I don't know how many backpackers vacation in ANWR but its a pretty expensive operation for all the millions of people who live their human lives in cities and suburbs.

- anon

August 15, 2008 at 3:13pm

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Doom & gloom for the airlines may mean sunny skies for a serious high speed train system in the U.S. Trains, powered will electricity from clean, renewable resources can provide large numbers of people with cheaper access to cross-country travel. It's true that train travel, even high-speed, will take longer than airplanes, but trains are more comfortable, have power outlets for electronics, tables to work at, WAAAY more space... The airlines that survice can raise prices and cater to the business traveler.

- Wyatt McDowling

August 15, 2008 at 3:34pm

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Our current situation is nothing to do with the end of fossil fuels as a natural occurence. It has been artificially mandated. Restrictions on drilling by government cause an artificial lack of supply. If all nations said no drilling then we would run out of oil. If all nations said it was illegal to slaughter cows we would have a beef supply problem. We can't wish for alternative energies to be here when they are not. We don't yet know what the next fuel will be. The fact that we still have to use gasoline when it is at $4 a gallon tells you that we don't have a replacement ready. $4 a gallon gasoline gives a pretty good high mark as far a price you have to beat with a non subsidized energy. It hasn't happened and won't simply because we want it to. We should use oil now since it is the cheapest most efficient energy we have for our existing technologies. That and the actual data shows that there is little cost in terms of its pollution. You might not agree with that, but if that is so you need to do some research outside your inner sphere of climate change fear mongers.

- AustinG

August 15, 2008 at 4:22pm

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"Hagerstown, Maryland, lost all commercial air service recently, rendering its new $61.8 million, 7,000-foot runway useless." This writer is clueless. General aviation accounts for 90% of civil aviation now and will be least hard hit by expensive fuel. That 7,000 foot runway will host many FBOs, businesses, and related services.

- K. Sherman

August 15, 2008 at 4:33pm

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Air travel AS WE KNOW IT it may be doomed by energy prices, but that hardly means that humanity will be banished en-mass from the skies. The transonic flight that we currently enjoy is inherently wasteful, but in general, aerodynamic drag increases with the square of aircraft speed. That means if you halve an aircraft's speed, theoretically you slash its energy requirements by a full 3/4rs. In fact, a high-efficiency, high-aspect ratio airframe operating near its designed LD/max (speed at which the plane produces the most lift for the least drag) is among the most efficient vehicles on the planet- as evidenced by the world of unpowered flight, where the mere energy in the atmosphere is sufficient to keep gliders in the air for hours and allows them to travel hundred, if not thousands of miles without burning a single hydrocarbon. I'm not saying aircraft of the future will all be gliders, instead, I'm suggesting that our children will fly in large (747 sized) aircraft of similar proportions. These aircraft will be designed and optimized to fly near LD/max, often cruising no more than 200 knots (less than half current air-travel speeds), but at efficiencies and speed rivaling the best high-speed trains, without the extra energy requirements of building and maintaining a track infrastructure. There is plenty of room in the modern practice of aeronautics to handle high fuel prices, because a well designed aircraft can be designed to rival any other form of transportation in terms of net efficiency. It's not flying that's inherently an energy hog, just flying fast.

- Scott

August 15, 2008 at 4:41pm

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As a frequent business traveler who knows a few hundred others, let me say that the majority of business travel could be eliminated and handled with phone calls or video conferences. Yes, it's nice to meet face-to-face, but the high cost and unbelievable hassle of air travel (not to mention the lost productivity) makes it increasingly unattractive. Maybe we'll finally realize the full potential of all that communications technology we developed in the '90s and drive some profit back into our businesses.

- Man Is 5

August 15, 2008 at 4:54pm

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As a frequent business traveler who knows a few hundred others, let me say that the majority of business travel could be eliminated and handled with phone calls or video conferences. Yes, it's nice to meet face-to-face, but the high cost and unbelievable hassle of air travel (not to mention the lost productivity) makes it increasingly unattractive. Maybe we'll finally realize the full potential of all that communications technology we developed in the '90s and drive some profit back into our businesses.

- Man Is 5

August 15, 2008 at 4:55pm

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Chicken Little came to mind when reading this.

- Nate

August 15, 2008 at 6:07pm

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The crisis in aviation is the result of government subsidies to parts manufacturers, prime contractors(Airbus, Bombarider, Boeing, Embraer), local gov't subsidies in waved airport useage, etc. Aviation is a giant, communitarian, populist, socialist project and like most other such endeavors it isn't profitable. Only a small percentage of the human population needs to have access to aviation; those who can afford to pay for it with their own money. Learn to fly, buy a small piston powered plane(burning either AVGAS or if a diesel biodiesel/waste veggie oil or Jet A/A-1 kerosene) otherwise, let the airlines die.

- steve

August 15, 2008 at 6:15pm

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here's another vote for increased train capacity in the U.S. - this solution seems so obvious. but of course, it would require unpopular government subsidies to put in a better rail system. never mind that government already funds costs that underlie our auto, truck, and airplane use. perhaps companies in the U.S. will be forced to begin offering longer vacation periods - how about 4-6 weeks off in a row, for everybody! then we'd have the time to travel overseas by sea. i'd enjoy that.

- love to fly

August 15, 2008 at 6:29pm

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Ehrlich, Carlson. Don't forget Malthus and the Club of Rome. No one really believes in climate change and accordingly on one has changed their behavior. That's why Boeing's 787 has a huge backlog of orders. When progressives start riding Greyhound, then I'll start listening to them. By the way, the price of oil is falling rapidly.

- Mark

August 15, 2008 at 7:12pm

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Far too often people believe our current state of technology is the pinnacle of achievement. We will develop technological marvels yet undreamed of! Not only will we find ways to produce more petroleum based energy - not only will be develop other sources of energy, including those not even on today's horizon - but you can be certain that one day we will develop modes of transportation we can only imagine today. You can be sure that 150 years ago people didn't even imagine the automobile, let alone the airplane. Read more history... it will make you more optimistic about our future.

- Chris

August 15, 2008 at 8:14pm

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Flying should be very expensive. Currently, it is subsidized by the government. The price of gas at the pump isn't high enough either. When we can't fly, I suppose and hope super-fast electric trains will be the replacement. Otherwise, we'll drive to those long distance locations.

- JM Webber

August 15, 2008 at 8:53pm

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Hy is this post date August 27? Article from the future indeed.

- ingolfson

August 15, 2008 at 9:13pm

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Before I go and slit my wrists I think I'll say that while this is an interesting article it is utter nonsense. The world is no more going to quit travelling than eating. We face a lot of challenges and we will get the new energy right...and still be able to enjoy travel all over the globe.

- John Nail

August 15, 2008 at 9:45pm

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Mike, extracting the oil from marginal oil fields and shale oil beds is so expensive and energy-intensive that such activities are only profitable at high oil prices. Why do you think nobody's been trying to get at the tar sands/oil shales until now? You lost money selling it at $60 per barrel. We are starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel in terms of potential sources of oil. The most expensive sources are always the last to be tapped. Yes, the oil is there - but it's not going to be $60-per-barrel oil.

- Travis Mason-Bushman

August 15, 2008 at 10:13pm

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Dear JAH666 - Frankly you sound like the one who seem all worked up into a froth of hot denial, & could use a good chillin'. Time will tell about all this, so what's the use in getting so excited? You say Rachel Carson was wrong, Paul Erhlich was wrong? Do you have a basis of comparison between the world of 30 or 40 years ago, & that of today, to make such a statement? Too many data points prove they were right in their basic assumptions & prognostications to allow your casual dismissal. Look at the facts regarding species extinction, environmental degradation, resource depletion - & global warming - & you will see the great mass of scientific data indicates a generally negative trend. Its' sad but true, & bloviating trash-talking will not change the facts.

- Humble American

August 15, 2008 at 10:44pm

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Oil "flirting with $ 130" ? It's about $ 115 today, DOWN FROM $ 147 a mere week ago due ENTIRELY to merely TALKING about increased drilling..... NOT ACTUAL drilling -- just TALKING about it.... If CARS which use NO crude-derived-fuel AT ALL, are still a decade away, then AIRCRAFT are 30 years away. DON'T FORGET all those Crude-free ENGINES which will STILL require OIL for lubrication, as well as the GEARBOXES too. If the CAR is a decade away, then the 18-wheeler which can carry 80,000 lbs. across the country in a timely manner, is 20 years away. What about all that PLASTIC derived from crude & natural gas ? I guess we can just bend over at the waist & CRAP that, right ?? ( ...we'd have just about as much effectiveness.... )

- Chet

August 15, 2008 at 10:48pm

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As a Boeing employee, I second fwslusser's comment that biofuels may still be an option. We're still working on it at Boeing, definitely. It's just corn-based ethanol that does nothing and less than nothing to help with fuel prices. Not having a crystal ball, I couldn't predict for sure, but I suspect that the airplanes in the future will be lighter weight and use a mix of kerosene-based fuel and biofuels.

- DC

August 15, 2008 at 11:00pm

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Jenny, you remind me of when and why I was once a proud Democrat. If only rational thought and true concern for America and the world still prevailed in the Democratic Party. Today I see 50 years of Marxist seeds taking root all over this country. I know, when I read posts like your's, that there are still Kennedy Democrats, but alas what I am bombarded with all the empiracal evidence that the party has been taken hostage by radical, America hating, liberty hating, politically correct Marxists, who, when they say they love America, it is the America they think will exist once they've destroyed the America that now exists. It is still painful for me to suggest voting Republican, so I'll do what I can, which is to hope and pray that rational people will vote against Obama.

- Tallulah

August 15, 2008 at 11:10pm

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Do TNR articles usually attract such a high ratio of bozo commenters? I suppose 2 out of 10 "global warming is a hoax" comments roughly represents the national average, but still...

- Bill

August 16, 2008 at 12:20am

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First of all, I want to tell you that I live on the Big Island of Hawaii. Kilauea has become extremely active again and is erupting just about daily for months. This is a new situation and the last couple decades the active volcano stays active, lava flows daily into the ocean growing the island. I went last night to see two of the three craters that are emitting lava and sulfer dioxide up into the air. It is a spectacular sight. I have not seen this volcano erupt fountains high up into the air like this. Lets start here, I am born and raised in Hawaii and am 38 years old. I am educated and in business successfully for my self since 1992. I have never lived in this VOG this badly ever. My friends and family have never been affected with health problems like this. We go weeks here without seeing the sun. This is not because of clouds or weather systems. This is from brown particles forced into our local micro-climate. Depending on the trade winds or lack thereof, this VOG shows up on Maui and Oahu and makes those islands air brown or red and sometimes hiding the sun from view. We read in the local papers repeatedly that the state keeps working on studies on what the long term effects this new eruptions are having on the states residents. We will not know for generations to see the long term effects. I do know the next island is expected to surface in 10,000 years south east of the Big Island, so we all know this volcanic activity is going to continue. With this said, I do not want to hear anymore about your stories about contrails. This author has no idea what it is like to live in this environment. This author has most likely never even flown above 40,000 feet where contrails are formed. There are very few airliners that ever make it above 40,000 feet where contrails are formed. I am really upset that authors like this and politicians keep preaching about contrails and other man-made hoax global warming schemes to promote either their products or political agendas for personal gain. Come move to my state and live here for the next 90 days and find out what mother nature has unleashed on my family and neighbors. See how often you can find the sun or the moon. See the brownish/reddish clouds that sit over your head all day long in a strange "end of days" like feeling. See how it feels to be a young healthy person but yet have a cough and shortness of breath all day. For the 37 years prior to this year that I have been alive, all the cars, contrails, boats, aquanet cans, etc have never made me, my family, or all my neighbors and friends feel this physically bad. Please contact your local journalist, congressman, or senator and request they find ways assist us to stop mother nature from polluting our lands. I want to thank the American public and former Vice President Al Gore for all their help with purchasing Hybrids and reducing their consumption of consumer products and fossil fuels, but unfortunately all of the efforts over then last 15 years have been trumped by madaam Pele and her unleashed furry over our state of Hawaii. I can see now that If all humans were to leave Hawaii today and there were nobody here to consume fossil fuels, Pele would still triumph and this VOG will still be unrelenting to any living creature who would desire to inhabit these lands. Vice President Gore, Madaam Pele is winning your global warming war and there is nothing you can do.

- JJJ

August 16, 2008 at 1:36am

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Does anybody else have trouble with the following: "You could hardly find a ticket from New York to Europe for less than $5,000"... then few sentences later: "Between 1975 and 2005, inflation-adjusted airfares in the United States plunged some 40 percent". In 2005, I often flew from U.S. to Europe for $500 or so. Even now with high oil prices, it's usually ~$1000-$1500, not 40% * $5000 = $2000. The doom and gloom of the whole article is as clearly exaggerated as the contradiction above. There may be minor contraction in demand (if even that), few less vacationers, and few less business travelers in cases where they can telecommute. That's all.

- Crocodile.

August 16, 2008 at 8:39am

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This very up-in-the-air article could be brought back to earth with a little number-crunching. Passenger airplanes consume something like 1000 gallons per hour in the air. So a standard 3-hour domestic flight with 200 passengers uses 15 gallons of fuel per passenger. Even with av fuel up by $1.25 per gallon since last year, we are talking about something in the range of 5% of the ticket price, or far less than the cost of leaving my car in the airport parking lot. Will that marginal difference cause some airlines to fail, if they can't recapture it from passengers in a recession? Of course. Airline operation has become a business for the dumb and poorly capitalized, the real value added is done by the manufacturers, the lessors, the insurers, the software creators, etc. (airlines are to Boeing and Airbus as your local car service is Toyota). Competition is heavy, margins are narrow, failure is frequent, and every recession has its crop of bankruptcies. So what? No, this is not the end of aviation as we know it.

- cartographer

August 16, 2008 at 8:58am

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Hey, I don't fly any more, already. Not out of fear or economics; I just refuse to be groped by strangers.

- just john

August 16, 2008 at 10:30am

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If we fail to consider the global warming and other polluting aspects of the petroleum-replacing fuels then we have clearly not learned anything from the past 150+ years of industrialization and rapid destruction of the earth. Its not just about "cheap" its also about sustainability. Killing our planet with cheap fungi-fuel is no better than killing it with petroleum. Being able to do things "easily and cheaply" is how we got into this mess in the first place. But humans seem incapable of learning from their collective history.

- Molly

August 16, 2008 at 11:16am

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Mr. Plumer please be informed that America in the name of our continent .... the name of our country is the United States of America (USA)!

- R B Quinn

August 16, 2008 at 1:57pm

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I'm always amazed by those who want to totally disregard the effects of increased population, increased production of industrial wastes, increased pollution of our air and water and other such man made effects as merely political rants by environmentalists and leftist politicians. Rachel Carson was not wrong. We eliminated huge amounts of DDT from the environment and we now have a resurgence of species such as bald eagles and osprey which were most effected. The list goes on when we wake up to the realities of mans effects on the planet and do something about it. If everything is just fine please explain why glaciers that have been around for thousands of years around the world are swiftly disappearing. Global warming is not a hoax. Reputable science backs up the reality of global warming overwhelmingly. Sorry, Al Gore is not wrong. What I have come to realize is that being a conservative is an easy, convenient personal or political philosophy. To be a conservative you get to self-justify all manner of flagrant behavior that is destructive, wasteful, and self-serving. The conservation position seems to be live large and every man for himself. You get to take the position that technology will always bail us out and bottom line you don't have to give a damn about future generations. Conservatives seem to prefer to live large and not give a hoot since the next generation can, or will have to figure it out for themselves. Trashing those who take a responsible attitude to their existence on this planet is nothing but cheap shots from those with an attitude of selfish irresponsibility to their fellow man and future generations. Remember the excesses of our rampant environmental disregard in the US before we started cleaning up and regulating industrial wastes. I guess you don't remember. Now look at the unchecked environmental pollution in China where you have 16 of the 20 most polluted rivers in the world. Where we have just had in the news almost daily the problems with the polluted air in Beijing for the Olympics. Nope man just doesn't have a thing to do with the environment, right! Tell that to those whose lives are cut short or their health is degraded by short-sited expedient industrial production. Just keep telling yourself that the whole problem is hysterical leftist environmentalists and that conservatives do have it all figured out just don’t drink the water and maybe you can buy a respirator so you can breathe the air.

- Conservative Cheap Shots

August 16, 2008 at 6:34pm

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Mike, the world does not begin and end at our shores. Please do a little homework and check out what the world's per capita consumption of oil is vs. the USA (and Europe). Now multiply that population number by a measily 25% of the USA rate and you will quickly realize that oil prices will only continue to go up year over year... no matter what we do at home... shale oil, deeper off-shore drilling, etc, etc! It really is basic math! Higher oil prices will result in more oil from traditional sources such as additional exploration and drilling and from new sources such as shale oil. The real oil price and the portion of our incomes it consumes is well below its highs now and prices will come down as supply increases. Alternative energy will come on-line when it is profitable. There is more danger of global cooling than warming caused by carbon emissions. As word gets out that global warming is a hoax, the anti-western, anti-capitalist environmentalists will need to find another plan of attack. Their naked power grab is failing. Finally, airlines will fail and consolidate until they are of the right number and size to be efficient enough to be profitable. It is called creative destruction, it is market forces at work, and it is good. Move along.

- Jose

August 17, 2008 at 7:30am

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What about nuclear?

- Matt

August 18, 2008 at 8:20am

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In this article we have the "crisis in aviation"; the "global warming crisis"; and the "energy crisis." But there is no mention whatsoever of crisis management by airlines, a field that may well have achieved its zenith in the late '90s with the highly visible disasters of TWA800, Swissair111 EgyptAir 990 and begun a largely invisible decline during the Bush administration. Invisible, that is, until tested by the next major disaster. The lack of government oversight of airline crisis readiness, together with the economic pressures amply detailed here, are likely to make for a most unfortunate set of circumstances indeed.

- Jim Brokaw

August 18, 2008 at 11:14am

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Aviation's visionaries are so far beyond petroleum-based, bio-based fuels it would make you swoon. In fact, earth is simply too small an area to even consider more than a doormat for now travel concepts. Hypersonic, low-earth-orbit flights with yet-to-be perfected green fuels are nearly ready now...NY to Tokyo in a 2-3 hours. Faster than a drive to Boston. Personal flight with highly efficient and green engines into neighborhood airports are the future. The so-called "jetropolises" will be the global launchpads for international and near space travel. Don't worry about the rise of Fred Flintstone. George Jetson will soon be upon us, Chicken Little.

- JetMech

August 18, 2008 at 11:22pm

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Relax. It's only a matter of time until Al Kaida and Iran gets the Bomb. When suicide bombers go nuclear, the world will see a global population (and,hence, energy usage) crash -- not only in the West, but also in the middle east and central Asia (as rival sects excommunicate and exterminate one another in the all-against-all battle to decide who speaks in the name of the One True Faith). Huge tracts of land poisoned by 50,000 years of radioactive fallout will become sources of wild, oxygen-producing wilderness. In the meantime, algae-based oil and other synthetic fuel will eventually put a lid on oil prices. However, we will still see a significant per-capitat reduction in the use of air travel as the U.S. goes from being a rich Western country to one with pockets of prosperity in the midst of widespread poverty -- much like Brazil. Current predictions are that by the year 2048 a majority of the U.S. population will be Third World.

- fsilber

August 19, 2008 at 3:15pm

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Although I found Mr. Plumer's article very newsworthy and informative in general, I also found the opening two paragraphs truly mystifying & contradictory. Somehow Mr. Plumer has managed to separate what he sees as the aviation industry's ensuing woes due to Peak Oil, from the myriads of other fossil-fuel based industries, not the least of which in the USA, is food; planted, watered, sprayed, harvested, packed, warehoused, trucked and collected by fossil-fuel powered machines. I'm not sure who the "Energy experts" are that Mr. Plumer seems to place faith in by stating that the scenarios he over-simplistically describes in that first paragraph, but people such as Matthew Simmons (chairman and CEO of Simmons & Company International, the world's largest energy investment firm), Dr. Colin Campbell, Dr. Richard C. Duncan et al, seem to have concluded the opposite of what such "Energy experts" are stating. Even if we take those "Energy experts" opinions as real, one wonders what the "little ingenuity" is that they are talking about which will replace the utter & total dependency on fossil-fuels upon which almost the entirety of the world depends. Regarding the "generous helping of political will" that these experts seem to place their faith in, one also wonders whether they are the same politicians & fatcats responsible for bringing the world to the brink of this precipice in the first place, where we must now depend on their 'generosity' (?). It seems to me that the aviation industry is just one tiny fragment of western civilisation's society that will be affected by the "apocalypse" that is "already upon us".

- Dr. G. Adhikari

August 21, 2008 at 9:53pm

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The author has made the assumption that peak oil will bring about a radical change in world finances. Bilateral trade between petroleum exporters and food exporters could radically change international markets and how they operate. There is a lack of understanding of the radical changes taking place in the petroleum industry as the easy oil is disapearing and difficult $80-$100 per barrel oil is replacing it and in smaller quantites. Extracting oil from five miles down in 7000 ft of ocean instead of 3000 ft down in an Oklahoma field is the same leap as between flying a Cesna across a state and sending a Rover to Mars. Cesnas are commonplace, Mars Rovers are not. The lack of drill rigs, labor and engineers has many projects stalled or even shelved today and the problem is only getting worse. As oil production capacity declines, shortages and price will clip the wings of aviation as we know it today.

- NJ Chem E

August 21, 2008 at 10:29pm

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ahhh yes, were all that easy. My one hope is that you live to see what a truly self-absorbed freakin' idiot you really are.

- csommer

August 23, 2008 at 12:06am

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"jt" in comment #2 hit the nail on the head. The jetliner is obsolete; air travel in the future will be by buoyant flight, which is environmentally friendly, uses far less energy, and can be run on almost anything that burns. Reserve me a place on Hindenburg II.

- Robert Firth

August 24, 2008 at 11:49pm

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Talking about the "price" of oil, I think, confuses the basic issue. 100 yrs ago, it "cost" 1 barrel of oil to get 100-125 barrels out of the ground... i.e. cheap, easy oil. Today 1 barrel of oil gets us 10 to 15 barrels of oil. The "possible new oil fields" are so deep that we do not even yet have the tools developed to get it out of the ground. The tremendous heat and pressure will take large amounts of energy to pull it up, if the tools and techniques are ever developed. What happens when it takes one barrel of oil (energy expended) to get one barrel of oil out? Demand destruction in the USA, i.e. using less gas 'cause the price is too high to buy it, will be met by an increase in the world's ever-growing populations who want "their share". Remember our $'s that are held by foreign governments (trade deficit, folks) and guess who WILL have the dollars to buy it as they compete for a dwindling resource. We will (the average american making $10-20/hr) be priced out of the market. 95% of american's live paycheck to paycheck.. think they can absorb much more price increases before they have used all their "disposable" income? Especially now that their credit cards are maxed out. Sure, we will technically still have aviation. The question will be: who can afford it. Oil has gone down in the last few weeks. Oh yeah, right... I remember this dance... we've been doing it for several years now. big push up in price for a while and then a slight drop... able to breath for a moment. The slight drop gives hope for the future as we adjust & are thankful for the "minor" reprieve. But wait, another month or so down the road... the price hikes begin again. Look at the PATTERN... Drilling in ANWR will give the USA roughly 290 days or less, of oil at our current rate of usage, in about 10 yrs or so. Why waste the time & money? If you need to do it, go ahead, but it does not change the endgame one bit. Do your own research. Now is the time to face reality and give up the child's fantasy that growth goes on forever, because you (and your children) will have to cope with the consequences. Be careful before you laugh too loud and long... I applaud the author for bringing up some of the issues that need to be faced, despite the unpopularity of the topic. It's "easy" to call it all a conspiracy and pretend that the basic underlying problems will disappear just 'cause we don't like what it means. Takes integrity & strength to call it like it is!

- ThinkOutOfTheBox

August 25, 2008 at 4:47pm

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if the darn FAA would update their cira 1980's flight computer systems, that would enable flying cars. everyone is talking about airlines like they "SHOULD" be there. my opionion is that they should be out of business. They are a legacy business model that should be put to rest. I see airlines for cargo use only, not to move people (at least not as much as they use them now) www.moller.com - The flying car Obviously expensive (and not out yet), but mass production would make this an option for most people at some point. Stop living in the past and put these airlines down!

- Canton

August 27, 2008 at 11:34am

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Lot's of spoiled people throwing toys out of prams here! The basics in the article are sound! Our supply of liquid fossil fuels, and the illusion of prosperity it has generated, is dwindling faster than most people recognise. Currently oil production no longer keeps up with demand. The price goes up and demand falls, then the price falls back until equilibrium is reached. As global oil production continues to fall in the coming years it will no longer keep up with need. That is people will be unable to decrease their consumption because they have to drive to work or use their tractors to farm regardless of price. The price of oil will soar: Food prices will continue upwards. House prices will fall (depending on how expensive the commute to work becomes) and more banks will crash. The aviation industry will disappear and most people, with far more important things to worry about will barely notice.

- The Ghost of Sir William Arrol

September 26, 2008 at 7:09pm

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You mention that the airlines' business model cannot handle expensive fuel. This will require a change in their model. The "new" model (quoted because it's just more of what they've always done): 1. Continue making sure Amtrak gets no money and high-speed rail never happens. Keep deriding it in racist terms (e.g., "rail is good enough for Asians and Europeans but real Americans want their planes (and by the way their cars)). 2. Continue whining about how important they are and how in a supposedly free-enterprise system they deserve ever-increasing levels of subsidy. In other words, if airline passengers can't pay for the true costs of their flights, make everyone else pay for them through their taxes. Thus, call subsidies for rail transportation "socialism" but subsidies for air transportation "capitalism".

- Roderick Llewellyn

October 6, 2008 at 10:28pm

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The blogger roidubouloi who said that weaning cars off fossil fuels would lead to a huge cut in use of such fuels and thus a reduction in fuel prices, by implication leaving aviation free to use them, is dead wrong. First, cars won't stop using fossil fuels if the price falls. In reality there is always an equilibrium in which the "cheapest" and "most convenient" fuels are the ones used. (ignoring regulation, subsidies, externalities, etc for the moment). In market equilibrium, the costs of each fuel will establish a level in which they all cost roughly the same per unit of energy delivered. The reason we use large quantities of fossil fuels and not much alternative energy yet is not deep evil conspiracies by oil companies (although that plays a role) but that fossil fuels are just simply cheaper... ignoring externalities like pollution of course! So the idea somehow that aviation will have access to cheap fuel while car drivers deal with high energy prices is unlikely. It's not a stable situation. If oil prices fall way below the costs of whatever fuel that cars are using, cars will rapidly switch back to using oil. Unless, of course, the government mandates this situation, which is merely a way of stealing money from people who don't fly and giving it to those who do. Different transportation modes can be ranked into a hierarchy of fuel flexibility. Airplanes sit at the bottom of the hierarchy, with the least flexibility. That is because planes must be very lightweight and therefore must use the fuel with the highest energy density per kilogram. That's what jet fuel is. That's why you can't run planes on batteries. Cars, trucks, and buses are above them in the hierarchy. They have more flexibility because they don't have to fly. Thus it's at least somewhat practical to operate cars on batteries or other low density fuels. Doing so still results in significant efficiency loss because of the need to carry heavier fuels or batteries. At the very top of the hierarchy, the most fuel-flexible transportation mode is the electric train. It runs on electricity which can be made from a huge variety of sources, many sustainable. Dual-mode locomotives can even run on electricity supplied by overhead wires (catenary) when in electrified territory but on diesel fuel when not. To be fair, any electric-powered vehicle suffers from inevitable conversion inefficiency... a point that many electric car advocates simply refuse to recognize. With trains, however, this is more than mitigated by the huge efficiency of rail travel over other modes. The reality is that due to airplanes' fuel inflexibility, and their huge environmental impacts which have little likelihood of elimination, the true fairly-priced cost of air travel is MUCH higher than today's ticket prices. At fair prices, most short- and medium-distance air travel would vanish, replaced by bus and rail systems. Long-distance air travel would remain (particularly transoceanic) but would be used by many fewer people than now. Of course there is the question of scaling down: would operation of the air infrastructure, production of airliners, etc., be economical if it were at a significantly lower level than today's? Ultimately the real problem is that our modern dispersed development patterns were made possible only by cheap energy. Wishing for fantasy breakthroughs so that we can keep our car/plane lifestyle is fruitless. Things are going to change. Deal with it.

- Roderick Llewellyn

October 6, 2008 at 10:59pm

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High Speed Rail is the present and future...think about the job creation building a bridge across both Oceans....no jokes here...it's part of the new world economy.

- Tony from Canada

October 20, 2008 at 2:52pm

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"Air travel on flights of more than an about 45 minutes is cheaper, more efficient and usually more environmentally friendly than driving." And if only planes could land downtown, that might be a good argument. But a considerable amount of driving to and from airports has to be taken into the equation also, while the train scores on delivering people to, say, Union Station in DC instead of Baltimore airport. By the way, I think the most amusing aspect of The Vine is the people who are opposed to any kind of thinking (let alone action) on alternative energy, resources conservation, or transport planning, entirely on ideological grounds. Their response to facts is to deny the facts exist, because their philosophical preferences demand that those facts not exist.

- ironyroad

August 28, 2009 at 6:02pm

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