LONDON: New lockdowns mark a bleak start to the year, but vaccine scientists’ glow will likely mean a return to flying in 2021. Many business travelers gagged to return to departure lounges may have to wait, however . Advertising Advertising It’s not just that cutting costs from post-virus companies will keep many travelers at home. It’s also that the environmental pressure against theft increased rather than decreased during last year’s lockdowns. It wasn’t what I expected. In more than 30 years of reporting, I had noticed that bosses tended to abandon corporate responsibility commitments during downturns. I thought COVID-19 would mean a dilution of recent corporate devotion to environmental issues. Investors are pushing companies to respect the environment more than ever. Advertisement Advertisement READ: Comment: Want to travel again? It’s not sitting on a plane that you should be worried about, evidenced by shareholder pressure on ExxonMobil which last month led the oil group to announce emissions cuts – which were immediately denounced as inadequate. that the company was not moving fast enough towards greener fuels. Companies are not just re-emphasizing their environmental goals after the coronavirus: they are linking them to their travel policies. ADVERTISING FILE PHOTO: A combination of archival photos shows the logos of five of the largest publicly traded oil companies; BP, Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell and Total. REUTERS / Jim Tanner Nestlé said last month that its goal of “net zero” required not only changes in the way its agricultural suppliers operate, but also a reduction in business travel. An article published in November in the journal Global Environmental Change challenged the statistic that there were 4.4 billion passenger air trips in 2018, suggesting that the equivalent of more than half of the world’s population took the plane that year. Almost all of those trips involved return flights, or for those connecting to hubs, more than two flights, so the number of passengers was much smaller, according to the newspaper. Evidence suggests that only 11% of the world’s population flew overseas in 2018 and at most 4% READ: Commentary: I never planned to visit Hong Kong any time soon, but the air travel bubble could change the frequency of “major emitters” flyers, which represented only 1% of the world’s population, were, according to the newspaper, “responsible for 50% of emissions”. You might dismiss this review as unfair for several reasons. First, aviation accounts for no more than 2.5% of carbon dioxide emissions. Even if you add other harmful emissions, theft is, by some estimates, only responsible for 3.5% of global warming activities. In contrast, industrial production represents 21% and agriculture 24%, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency. The problem is that thefts were growing rapidly until the shutdown last year. In 2000, there were only 1.7 billion passenger trips. Although business trips may be slow to return once the plane feels safe, a survey conducted in nine countries in October by management consulting firm Oliver Wyman revealed that 63% of people are expected to fly on vacation. Much or more than before the pandemic WHY ARE BUSINESS TRAVELERS TARGET? The fact that a resumption of the airline boom owes more vacationers than business travelers may be another reason why the latter feel unfairly targeted. There are two answers to this: First, business travelers are more likely to fly in high-end parts of the cabin, which, with the larger space they occupy, means they are responsible for ‘a greater share of the environmental damage of the aircraft than that encumbered in economy. life is unfair. Environmental activists always choose prominent, seemingly privileged targets. They are targeting Starbucks, Nestlé or Unilever not because there are no worst offenders, but because these are companies that people have heard of. Seemingly glamorous business travel is easy to laugh at. Many business travelers learned during the lockdown that a lot of the flights they previously took were unnecessary anyway, and they’ll now focus on the trips that matter, which is probably better, because neither the green activists nor, more importantly, their bosses seem in the mood for much more. Listen to experts discuss what a post-pandemic world of travel will look like on CNA’s Heart of the Matter podcast :.



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