I am in Jyväskylä in the western part of the Finnish Lakeland, about 270 km north of Helsinki. It is the white night season; the days are unrelentingly hot with clear blue skies. Invited to teach on JAMK University of Applied Sciences Summer School on Responsible Tourism in a Finite World, focusing on Local Economic Development. I requested the use of their studio facilities to record a lecture on Tourism & Climate Change in a Finite World.
Professor David Alexander told the UK Covid-19 Inquiry the previous day that he was at a Red Cross symposium in 2008, and an infectious diseases expert gave a lecture. “My job is to tell you something you don’t want to know and ask you to spend money you haven’t got on something you don’t think will happen.” This accurately describes the challenges we now face as the impacts of climate change worsen, affecting all of us in increasingly grim ways. 40% report that they are put off having children by the consequences of climate change.
Climate change is no longer only impacting negatively on others. In Europe, we face wildfires, drought, flooding, heatwaves and climate-sensitive diseases.
Our procrastination has made our situation much worse. Now we have to reduce emissions and adapt, there has been too little action. The Secretary General of the UN calls it out “The world’s biggest polluters are guilty of arson of our only home. … half of humanity is living in the danger zone now …” The International Energy Agency reports that that global energy-related CO2 emissions grew in 2022 by +0.9%, when the need to fall by 7% per year every year to meet the goal of halving emissions this decade. They report that about half of the increase in oil-related emissions in 2022 was due to a rise in air travel. Never mind the patter, watch the hands, real reductions are required now.
Aviation is the Achilles Heel of our sector, we must demand that the aviation sector adopts and develops zero-carbon fuels before there is a forced reduction in flying. Hydrogen is our best bet. There are reasons to be optimistic about progress.
While I was speaking in Finland, Airbus in Paris was outlining parallel paths for the development of a replacement for the A320 and the development of hydrogen power. “Airbus has delivered a strong indication that the airframer will seek to replace its A320neo family with a “relatively conventional” design in the mid-2030s, in parallel with the possible introduction of a hydrogen-powered aircraft in the same timeframe.” In China, the University of Science and Technology is reporting that it has been able to re-engineer catalysts to increase their efficiency in electrolysing water or produce hydrogen.
John Coplin argues that hydrogen will be a liberator for international travel. John Coplin, FRAE, was the RB211 aero-engine Chief Designer and then Director of Technology and Design at Rolls Royce.
John speaks with passion about why tourism matters and argues that the engineers need to be funded to make the transition to hydrogen, it needs to happen faster across the world in the next ten years.
Engineers, physicists and geologists are making substantial progress in developing affordable sustainable supplies of hydrogen for aviation and other energy-intensive uses. The problem with aviation is not flying; it is dirty fuel. The aviation industry needs to move beyond business as usual, follow Airbus’s example, and prepare for a step change in fuel.
Sadly we are beginning to regard accelerating climate change as the new normal and wildfires, drought, flooding, heatwaves and climate-sensitive diseases as occasional. They are the new normal with all the suffering and damage they bring.
Visiting the Serlachius Museum the following day I was struck by how powerfully art can covey the future to us, a cautionary experience. The Finnish artist Elena Näsänen’s Night and Day runs until march 2024 and is worth seeing projected at scale. She describes it thus “Elena Näsänen’s video installation interlaces two scenes from different parts of a Europe struggling with climate change. One of the scenes takes place on an island in northern Europe, the other in a depopulated mountain region in southern Europe. Night and Day focuses on the consequences of climate change: migration, global inequality and the resultant guilt.”
If you can’t get to see it at Mänttä, Finland, you may see something of it and hear Elena talk about her art online.
