Airplanes Next in Line for Carbon Rules?
Efforts to regulate plane emissions have been delayed, but might soon be cleared for takeoff.
As the Solar Impulse plane makes a landmark journey powered solely by the sun, thousands of daily flights still burn regular old jet fuel. More people than ever are taking to the skies, and as aviation grows worldwide, so does its carbon footprint.
Airplanes sent about 700 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the air in 2013, an amount set to more than triple by 2050. Yet efforts to regulate those emissions, as many countries do for cars and trucks, remained in a holding pattern for years—until now.
This month, the United States plans to move ahead with its own proposal, and the clock is ticking on United Nations’ efforts to set a global standard. The European Union has
