Analysis: UK would need forest ‘twice size of London’ to offset new airport expansion
Analysis: UK would need forest ‘twice size of London’ to offset new airport expansion - Carbon Brief
For her part, the chancellor told BBC News that she thought “sustainable aviation and economic growth go hand in hand"
As said in the article, the technology to reasonably decarbonise planes doesn't really exist yet - so the only path to "sustainable aviation" is to reduce it to the point it can be properly offset by other decarbonisation efforts.
That makes these two concepts almost entirely mutually exclusive without proper planning, and just slapping multiple airport expansions down then saying "It's fine, we'll plant a few trees at some point" doesn't fucking cut it.
I mean, assuming nothing will happen for at least 5 years (this stuff always takes ages) then it could come with some conditions on emissions - yes you can now fly 50% more planes, but lets say you have an emission cap of 120% (numbers made up).
That gives them an incentive to start looking at this stuff now - airlines will know they won't get new slots unless they do it in an environmentally way.
