When you compare aviation emissions to other means of human transportation its footprint is significantly less then other means of transportation such as road transportation (ATAG, 2016). One word explains why this is the case and that word is efficiency. Aviation is much more efficient compared to road transportation especially with the newest wide bodied jets such as the Boeing 787 and Airbus A380. Contrary to public perception large jets are not the biggest polluter into our atmosphere. The public is confused because when you compare a jet to a semi it's obvious the jet has a bigger footprint. However this is only one of the many parts of the equation. To fully understand you need to also look at how many trucks it would take to haul whatever the jet can the same distance. We also have to consider how many jets there are and how many semis there are in operation to fully understand the big picture. According to the Air Transportation Action Group global aviation only accounts for 2% of the worlds C02 emissions and 12% of transportation emissions.

As we discussed in class the United Nations recently came up with a plan to try and reduce carbon emissions from Airliners. The basic plan they have proposed is the idea of limiting companies' pollution by giving everyone in the international airline industry a cap or a maximum amount of carbon they are legally allowed to emit. If a company goes over the legal limit they will have to purchase carbon credits from other companies that have emitted less and have some left over to sell. I think this is a good idea on paper but I honestly do not think it will ever work in reality for many reasons. For starters how will we accurately track how much a certain company emits? Also I have a very hard time believing airlines will pony up the cash to actually buy carbon credits. Just the idea of marketing pollution monetarily doesn't seem like a feasible plan however the intentions are all very good.

President elect Donald Trump has publicly stated that he would try cancel the United States involvement in the Paris agreement if he was elected president (Fox News, 2016). He has stated he thinks that the Paris Agreement is "bad for business". Whether he's right or wrong isn't really what we need to debate. The question is whether or not he'll actually follow through now that he has been elected. There are lots of things President elect Donald Trump has said he will do and chances are he wont follow through with all of them. We'll just have to wait and see what his priorities are but getting us out of the Paris Agreement will be a lot easier said then done and I don't think he will actually do it.

I believe that the new laws and regulations are for a good cause but will not ever actually work the way they're proposed to. We should also be making laws and regulations in the other parts of the transportation industry that are less efficient such as trucking. Maybe we already are but I honestly haven't done the research. The bottom line is that the airlines will always want to burn less fuel so do we really need to implement the carbon credit system?

References
Fox News, Bill O'reilly, November 2016
Facts and Figures, Air Transportation Action Group (ATAG). (May 2016) Retrieved from http://www.atag.org/facts and figures.html