Illustration: Khylin Woodrow
The Big Take
Airline Passengers Will Be Forced to Pay for $5 Trillion Carbon Cleanup
The aviation sector's plans to pass along the cost of decarbonization could add hundreds of dollars to the price of some flights.
Fresh from surviving the Covid-19 pandemic, the aviation industry is about to hand passengers the multi-trillion dollar bill to fight its next existential threat: decarbonization.
Cleaning up flying is a mission of improbable scale: Neutralize the carbon emissions of about 25,000 planes in the world’s commercial fleet that typically ferry some 4 billion people a year and burn close to 100 billion gallons of jet kerosene.