The World Bank has published a new working paper (PDF) that shows how passengers in premium airline classes create more of the C02 that leads to global warming. Essentially, all the extra space for high-paying customers means airlines expend more fuel to move them, especially if some of the more expensive seats are left empty. Plus, first class passengers tend to take more luggage. Controlling for relative passenger weight, the efficiency of the aircraft and the length of the trip is tricky, but the numbers in the table below represent a benchmark of how many times greater the carbon footprint is for various classes compared with the average passenger:
The World Bank commissioned the study in part to figure out how to reduce its own carbon footprint (air travel makes up more than half of it). According to their calculations, eliminating first-class travel for employees between 2009 and 2012 reduced the organization’s carbon footprint by some 20,000 tons.
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