 Mae blwyddyn yn gym Freiddiogol, ac mae'r du oes. Rho yn ddysgwm y pethau o'r gweithio. Rydw i chi'n ei beth? Felly yw mwyn o'n rhaid o'r holl. Rwy'n George Wight. Rwy'n gweithio o'u cyflwyno. Mae'n Graeme Simpson. Mae fofiannig i Llywodraeth, a chi'n meddwl i'r cofinizio arwaith y Gwyl panfio. Rhyw unrhyw sefydau o'r gweithio gyda'r cross-party group. Mae'r ddechrau'r cyrraedd mewn MSPs, ydych chi, ac mae'n gwybod yn rhan o'r cyfnodau. Rwy'n credu'n cael ei wneud o'r ffordd bydden nhw i'r ffordd. Mae'n rhan o'n rhan o'r cyfnod, Mae'r sllwer yng Nghymru, Mike Robinson, wedi cael ei gael yn gallu hynny. Mike i'r gwisdyn yma efo i'n gwneud i eisiau wneud i eithaf gael bobl yn y methyr gwag amddangos i'r holl fwyb Jesus. Rwy'n ddweud o'r fan, ac hefyd i'n cael ei ddigon. Nw ddim yn fawr i'r gael i'r holl ffordd. Peidio'n gwybod am ddegwael, ondd yn ei gael, unrhyw o'r ffylgar. Ond mae hwn wedi cael ei gael i'w fideo. The panellists will all get around about five, six minutes to say what they want to say. Michael will be up first with his video. I haven't watched it. I've no idea what he is going to say. Fingers crossed. Those of you have to go to business meetings nobody wears ties any more. No rhai gydaAM gael. I'm reflecting with the people in this meeting. Yes you have. I only wear a tie now when I'm in the parliament. Because I think I should look smart and, well there you go. Hi. And there he is, Mike, Tyler's mic. So I apologize for the rest of the panlis but I've turned up suited and booted and looking the part. Now. Felly, mae'n meddwl yn y fawr o'r sgolgell yma, ond mae'n gweld eich rhai, sef ydy'r gwaith i gael y ddechrau, i gael i'w mhobl yn cymhwyllt yma, mae'n tro i'r rhaglen o'r rhaid i gyfriffyrddau a'r ddefnydd yma, ac mae'n ddifnwch i'r ddechrau i'r ddechrau i'r ddechrau i'r ddechrau i'r ddechrau i'r ddechrau i'r ddechrau i'r ddechrau, 35 Shape and board already and I'll stop there. I didn't know what fly-shaming was. I never actually heard of it. I didn't know what it was until yesterday when one of our panellists told me that it comes from Sweden, where it's called Flagscam, and it recognises the guilt that people have when flying. It was originally a celebrity-led campaign to challenge behaviours. Rwy'n ei wneud am gyllidol i felch yn cychwyn i'r ffordd erbydd hynny, ond rwy'n eich bod wedi'u gwaith, dwi'n rhaid i ddim yn cael eu gwahau, dwi'n rhaid i'r gwahau. Rwy'n eich bod yn ei wneud i gael y ddraethu i'r ddraethu i'r ffordd, a ydych chi i'n lleol i'r ddraethu i'r ddraethu. Rwy'n eich bod eich bod i'n lleol i'r ddraethu i'r ddraethu i'r sgoltoi. I can be impartial honestly, but before we get into that, as the joint convener of the cross party group, I obviously have views on aviation, and the group is there not to bash aviation, but I think that we all accept that aviation has us to improve on. We have to decarbonise and we have to produce fulfilled a phob gambol was published in February, which set out what both of our Scottish完成 season's government, UK Government, needed to do. One of the key calls was that they needed to create a market for what's called sustainable aviation fuel. We may get onto that, particularly here, in Scotland. We've got to be honest with you, on the personal level I've never fel ysgolwyddo i gyflau. Fy rydyn ni i gyd yn ddod 24 oes o gilyddio. Felly byddwn ni gyd yn ddod 5 oes oesolwyddo i'r Gwlad, Eiland, Ynglid, Americaa, a Canedra. Rydyn ni'n ddod 11,000 oesolwyddo i gyd yn ddod, a rydyn ni'n ddod gyd yn ddod gyd yn ddod gyd yn ddod gyd yn ddod. Felly, mae'n gyd yn ddod gyd yn ddod, But it hasn't put me off. I'll do it again, because, as far as I'm concerned, travel broadens the mind. Now, my understanding is that you lot have actually paid to attend. You have paid. So we'd better be good and I hope you don't ask for refunds, because you might be waiting longer than it'll take to get your suitcases back at Edinburgh Airport. Rwy'n credu'n gwybod. Rwy'n credu'n gwybod i'r ddweud. Mike Robinson, wrth gwrs, yn y cyfnodau cyfnodol yng Nghymru, a yn 2006, rwy'n credu'n gwybod i'r ddweud, i'r clywedau clywedau, i'r cael ei ddweud. Rwy'n credu'n gwybod i'r ddweud, i'n credu'n gwybod i'r ddweud, i'n credu'n gwybod i'r ddweud. Rwy'n credu'n gwybod i'r ddweud. Rwy'n credu'n gwybod i'r ddweud. Rwy'n credu'n gwybod i'r ddweud. Rydw i Gwyl Llywodraeth Cymur, yn cómers Cymru, yn y sgol Llywodraeth Gwyl Pfeiryddol, yn cysylltiadol a ddweud. Rwy'n credu'n gwybod i'r ddweud. Rwy'n credu'n gwybod i'r ddweud. Felly, mae'n gweithio i'r cymdeithas o Edinburgh. He's your man. If you've lost your cases, he's your man. He's also worked in the bus and rail sectors, and Gordon is known for being outspoken, and he certainly was about both governments during the pandemic. Finally, we have Finlay Asher. Finlay is an aerospace engineer. He spent eight years working at Rolls Royce, where he designed engine concepts for future airbus and Boeing aircraft, and he's the co-founder of Safe Landing, which is a group of aviation workers pushing for long-term sustainable employment. So I think we'll just get into it now, and if we can have the video, and we'll hear from Mike. We might hear from Mike. We'll come back to him. Okay, we'll come back to Mike. So in that case, what I'll do is I'll take Gordon, and then I think we'll take Finlay after that. So Gordon, have you got five or six minutes? Sure, I'll be shorter than that, I'm sure. Hello to everyone, my name's Gordon Dure. I've been working at Edinburgh for 11 years now, but as Graham said, I've always worked in transport buses and trains before. So thank you for the opportunity to come and speak about this pretty important topic, not just for us, but I think for everyone. But the opportunity is maybe not, it's not the best start point, I would argue, and the question about to fly or not to fly in the title of this, because it's pretty poor and narrow start of the debate, because that's rarely the question people ask yourselves. If I started from an aviation perspective, starting from an airport or an airline, you might ask ourselves how do we fly sustainably, and then I'm sure we'll get into many of the things that we can do to achieve that. But really for a bigger question is why do we travel? You know, what is it we're doing? Should we travel or not? And that then immediately gets into the question of the purpose of what we're trying to do, and therefore something towards the value of what we're doing. So questions like should we go on holiday or not? Should we go on that sales trip to improve the benefits of our business? Or should you even go to Grandmas funeral next week? And if you ask these questions yourself, it comes down to the value, and it's not necessarily financial value. In fact, quite often it's a lot more than financial value, but that's part of it. And if you think about the choices you make about going on holiday, and if you live in Scotland all your life, then the idea of never going somewhere sunny feels quite a sort of dismal prospect. But if you think about the economic impact, if we stop all the other things, about economic growth, about jobs, about the tax base that we need to actually pay for health and education, and to live the life that we actually aspire to. Or even if you think more about the sort of non-business sides around culture and arts, we're in the middle of the biggest international arts festival in the world by some margin at the moment. We have a very different experience if there was nobody flying here to enjoy that or more importantly contribute to that as an artist. And we're in the middle of our very unsettled period in history where there's wars in just about every continent. If we think that not travelling is going to help in terms of understanding each other, trying to resolve issues, trying to get into the understanding what causes the problems in the first place, then I think we're again missing the value of travel which is about that human engagement, that ability to swap ideas. And even at the very highest level of the sustainability challenge itself, some of the technologies we're going to rely upon are going to come from international collaboration, from universities, from business, from government, going forward. And I think getting together is a key part of all of these things going forward with that. So none of that avoids the need that we absolutely do need to decarbonise. And that's true of absolutely every sector and aviation quite often held up. I would argue in a different light and perhaps not necessarily a fair light, but one that we're not shirking, we know we have to do things differently. But if we're going to do it and we'll get on to the, I'm sure the challenges of how we make that happen and aviation is not as quick as say road transport where you know ready by an electric car that's technology that's here, we're a bit slower to get there although I'm confident we'll get there. But if we're asking ourselves the question, what are we going to do about that? Then I would argue that Scotland's most important contribution that is going to be leadership. It's about doing things that other people will want to follow because we are a very small part of the issue. Not to say that our decarbonisation is as important as everyone else's, but in pure volume terms, if you think about the fact that in China the increase, just the increase, not the baseline of carbon output in the last 10 years is more than the entire UK output, then clearly doing it ourselves won't get us very far. But more importantly, if we do it in a way that causes huge harm to the economy, avoids us being able to, or stops us being able to fund the things that we value like health and education, if we trash the economy, if we do all these other social damages in the pursuit of decarbonisation, who's going to follow us? People don't follow poor leadership, they follow things that look sensible, that achieve outcomes. And if we do it ourselves, we might be feeling very good and very moral about it, but we will have achieved nothing despite doing huge damage to ourselves. So the challenge for me is how do we do that in a way that others will follow, how do we do that in a way that will be effective, and how do we do that as fast as possible? Thank you. Okay, thank you, Gordon. And move on to you, Sharon Deane. Was it Finlay? It was Finlay. Yes. Let's go for Finlay. It's my microphone, okay? It's good. Can you rate it? Yeah. Thanks very much. So as well, thank you very much for having me here. I was just saying I've never been in this building before, so it's great as a Scottish citizen to be able to visit and be able to have such an audience and talk about something that I spend. The majority of my life talking about and having people come and listen is great. I think I agree with everything that's been said so far, pretty much. We travel has so many benefits. However you do that, being able to connect cultures, family, friends is super important. Why I set up my group, and I'll explain that in a second, is because we fear that we stand to lose everything. We stand to lose all of that within the next 10 to 20 years if we don't change what we're doing at the moment in our industry. I'm an aviation worker. I used to design aircraft engines, spent eight years in the industry. I'm a mechanical engineer by trade. I set up an employee sustainability group within my company, Rolls Royce. They were one of the biggest engineering companies in the UK, the second biggest aircraft engine manufacturer in the world. I set up a group of employees inside the company challenging the sustainability strategy that they brought out. We saw massive risks in every part of the strategy. This is an industry-wide thing. It's not specific to my company. Everyone speaks off a very similar hym sheet, and I think we'll get into some of the specifics of that. At the heart of this, it's definitely not an agreement with all of that stuff. The economy, the ability to travel is very important. That's why we need to be extra careful and extra critical and explore things in depth and really challenge things that we've been told by leaders, whether that's politically, corporately, or just in the media. A very brief summary is that we do not have, as someone who works on the technology, who's working on what's going to come along 10, 20 years time, there's no technology or fuel that will work in the time required, at the scale required, to decarbonise aviation. Additionally, the policies that we've got at the moment, policy frameworks, the main one being a Corsia scheme, which we'll explain as well, are just frankly inadequate. We've got massive air traffic growth planned around the world. We've planned to double the number of aircraft being produced and in the sky before 2040 in the midst of a climate crisis, so I don't need to explain this to you. You look at the news last couple of weeks. You saw Rhodes, the Greek island on fire, you saw heat waves in China in the US and actually this affected our industry. We were on the front lines of trying to get people out of those islands. Aircraft were grounded, they couldn't take off, there was lots of flights that were cancelled. That's just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the disruption that's coming when climate change will get worse year upon year upon year and particularly into the next decade. That's what my group is about. It's called safe landing. It's for aviation workers within the sector. We've got pilots, air traffic controllers, engineers, airport workers, airline staff, cabin crew, air traffic controllers and we all just get together and we say, actually, we're really worried about the consequences, the impact our industry is having on the planet and also to our very industry ourselves. This isn't just about morals and doing the right thing for the global south. This is actually about self-interest and our future careers. I'm 33 years old. I hope to have a career for the next 30 odd years. I'm going to be living and working through this. This is going to affect me so I want to hold people that are in leadership positions to account and ask them questions and have good responses. So, hopefully, we get into that in the discussion this evening. Thank you. Thank you, Finlay. We'll go on to Sharon Deep and then we'll try the video again. Thank you. Thank you very much. Like others, it's really good to be here tonight to discuss what is an exceptionally important topic because it hits every aspect of our lives, our economy and our communities. I guess that the angle that I would like to share just to set the scene from a Chamber of Commerce perspective is on trade and why trade is not just an important aspect of the economy right now but actually for any history of offens that are in the room of which I'm sure there are some. There has been one constant in civilisation and that constant is human connectivity to enhance and develop our social connections, our cultural connections and, of course, our economic connections. Right now, the aviation sector and, of course, aeroplanes, that form a really important part of that, are critical enablers of Scotland's economy. Not just here in the UK but also in many other economies around the world that rely on aircraft to send their goods, particularly time-sensitive goods, so in Scotland, salmon, for example, which is a £600 million industry, and those rural communities rely on exports to thrive and to survive and to keep people in those regions. So, aircrafts play a really important part in those communities. Other countries like Kenya, for example, have a thriving industry to export freshly cut flowers. They rely on aircrafts to be able to do that because no other mode of transport would be able to send our produce in a time-sensitive and high-quality manner. From a Chamber of Commerce perspective, we need to balance economic protection in those communities and our international partners. The chambers are a global international network, so we do not just care about Scotland or the regions that we operate in, we care about every international economic region, but we also have to balance the impacts of our activity as a business community. Regulation is really important because it has to exist to allow businesses to operate but to protect the communities that we operate in. We take a very active role in trying to develop and inform what that regulation could look like. From our perspective, it is not an either or. Both are exceptionally important. It is going to be a big challenge, and it is right now. There are no easy solutions, but there are solutions out there that the industry is developing, investing in and implementing. However, as Finlay said, will there be the answers to all the problems that we are facing? We will know, but they are an important contributor. Whether it is sustainable aviation fuels or whether it is amending flight policies in terms of how long they should be taxing on the runway, every policy that we can tweak or introduce is a very important part to achieving net zero. We do not believe that shutting down the industry. I was very curious about how big the aviation sector was before I came tonight, and I do like my stats. The global aviation sector, if it was a country in its own right, would be 17th by global GDP, which would be the same size as Indonesia and the Netherlands economy. It is a massive global sector. We have to navigate it in that way. From our perspective, we also work with international chambers of commerce to make sure that policies that we are implementing in Scotland and the UK, where they are good and they are improving conditions, can be applied globally and vice versa. Slyt Gordon said that it is a very important topic that we have to tackle from a global community perspective, but maintain our economic activity and jobs, but also have an eye on the long term as well. I think we should applaud the three speakers so far. We can applaud the technicians if they can get Mike's video to work. Good evening. My name is Mike Robinson. I am the chief executive of the Royal Scottish Geographic of Society and I am currently also a chair of Stop Climate Chaos Scotland. I have been involved in climate change and environmental issues for probably 25 to 30 years and been very heavily involved in a number of government advisory groups and across the whole of civil society. I guess to start by simply saying that we have been having this conversation about aviation for a long time. The first public conversation I remember was back in 2008 and here we are 15 years later ostensibly having the same conversation. We need to do something about flying. Flying emissions are some of the most impactful individual emissions any of us can have. Taking a long haul flight can equal the total number of emissions from an entire household in a year. So this is clearly a really critical issue and flying is responsible for more probably over 3% emissions. Now flying could arguably be accused of being responsible for 5% of emissions because the emissions happen at high altitude and therefore have a much higher impact, much greater impact than they would at lower levels. And that means there's a multiplier to the emissions that come from aviation. That's actually acknowledged in the 2009 Climate Change Scotland Act which features not just aviation and shipping emissions as part of the counting metric but it also has a multiplier for aviation. Slightly astonishingly knowing full well that the multiplier should have been set between 2 and 3 so that all aviation emissions should be multiplied by 2 or 3 times to account for that high level impact. The actual multiplier was set by Scottish Government at 1 which completely negates the point of a multiplier but the principle is there and actually it's something that this Parliament could very easily go and rectify. Back in 2009 the big headline measure was a 42% reduction in emissions of national emissions by 2020. We're actually the important point to make is that's a 42% reduction on 1990 levels. Here we are in 2023 and we fly at least twice as much as we did in 1990. So even a 42% reduction would actually now require an 80% reduction or more. And of course in 2019 in the emissions reductions target act the revised targets are now net zero by 2045. So the aviation industry has 20 years to get to as close to net zero as possible. Now maybe that isn't actually possible aviation struggles because by its very nature it emits, it uses kerosene, most of the fleet use kerosene, they're emitting emissions at high level and we're not going to all suddenly stop flying. Why don't we though, we've actually done the opposite. A group of people because not everybody does fly but those that do have actually doubled the number of flights or maybe even more. And there's a real inequity in flying. We know that the top 10% that travels account for a very significant chunk of emissions. So how do we make it more equitable? Should there be a frequent fire tax which is the obvious thing? Even the only tax that is there and aviation is tax less than almost every other form of transport which is why it can afford to be a lot cheaper. But the one tax that is there is a passenger duty or air departure tax. The UK implemented that some years ago, it earns about 2 billion for the UK Exchequer. So it's a really valuable form of taxation and even that is up and is often questioned and challenged. It's the only tax that currently really applies and it's absolutely essential that we do not start incentivising flying even more than we do at the moment. Our transport system is incredibly poorly joined up. It's one of the least well connected sectors that there is in Scottish society. Our trains are still largely reliant on infrastructure we've put in in the 1880s and we haven't done a lot to upgrade them except to connect them to London. So our priority has been getting people from Edinburgh and Glasgow to London as quickly as possible. And yet 70-80% of flights from Scottish airports are to London. It's sort of insane. There are alternatives. We really need to think better about our priorities. I think we all know that we need to fly this and I'd be surprised even if the industry didn't recognise that we need to fly this. There are technological things that could come along and help and actually some of the airports have done quite a lot to try to get people to a plane more sustainably than they have in the past. Edinburgh of course has the transit system as an introduced and very high car parking charges etc. But the reality is the biggest thing probably is the flying itself. So how did we tackle that? The gains that the possibilities that there might be new fuel types have been very slow to come on board. Electric is a form of flights. That's a possibility but we've already got fleet around now that will still be there in 2050. Plans are kept in service for good 30 years, 25-30 years no problem. So we should be making all these changes now and in fact to be honest 15 years ago, 10 years ago, we need to get on with this. We need to accelerate that change. We cannot keep sitting on our hands hoping that it will go away or that somebody else will come up with some technology that might sort it out. How do we hit our targets now? We can see the impacts of climate change day to day. It is impacting people all over the world right now and this year we've seen that in the headlines more than ever. We're going to get to a point if we're not careful where there's nowhere left worth flying to. Well it's a shame Mike's not here because I think he raised some really interesting points there. So what I'm going to do now is I've got a question for each of the panellists based on what they've just said and I didn't know what they were going to say so I was making notes and then what I'm going to do is invite them each to ask the others a question so you can be thinking of that and then I'm going to throw it open to you which is always a risk but we'll give it a go so you will get your say. So if we start with Cherendip I mean you're essentially saying that for your members aviation is essential to export goods. Do your members actually look at sustainability when they're doing export deals or does it not bother them? That's a really important consideration. Companies of all sizes are looking at how they can contribute to achieving net zero but it would be right to say that each company, small, medium, large, multinational, multinational corporates, they're all at different stages of being able to do that depending on the size of the company and the industry and sector. So our review is larger companies have a responsibility to support the supply chain, particularly the small, medium-sized businesses, on the journey to net zero and make sure that it's a collaborative effort but in terms of the exports aspect I think it's a really important element because sometimes we forget that actually on an aircraft it's not just people that are flying on holiday, there is millions if not billions of dollars worth of pounds so I've been reading dollar stats for the last week but millions of pounds worth of cargo in these flights and we mustn't lose sight of the fact that it's not just people who are on holiday that are on the aircraft, it is high quality globally renowned Scottish products and goods mainly food and drink but also pharma as well and that aspect is often forgotten about and we need to make sure that actually we don't lose sight of that because airlines when they choose to operate in any country or any market will look at both aspects of viability now that doesn't necessarily mean that might be the future before aircrafts there were other options to send these goods whether it was by ship or by rail but potentially those were not the best options for these companies in terms of profitability or growth so aircrafts will continue to play an important role we do need to make sure obviously that we're taking the steps that we can to support companies to continue exporting but be net zero at the same time but it is going to take a team effort to achieve that but there are steps that companies are taking whether it's joining up with other companies that have got same orders on that cargo and if it's not an aircraft on shipping for example many companies share containers to avoid duplicating or to be sending empty containers around the world so these types of solutions and collaborations are already happening is it happening at the scale that we need it to? I don't think so it's not but that's why we do need to make an effort to make sure that we do that the other aspect that I think does need to be taken into consideration from a Scottish perspective is we do have a lot of exports that go from Scotland to Heathrow and in Heathrow onwards is that the future I would say no I think we need to have more from Scotland to the markets direct but that is a bigger topic than it is for tonight okay now Finlay you know you were very clear that from your perspective and your former colleagues in the industry you think something needs to happen what I didn't hear was what you think needs to happen so perhaps you could tell us yeah absolutely so um what we need more than anything else is government regulations and effective policies right and my industry is actively lobbying against those policies which we think is really dangerous for the future of the industry and for workers because yes there is ways that we could fly that will minimise the impact on the planet um but we are not developing those technologies and reconfiguring our airports and our airlines and our transport network in any way towards that direction and it's because of a lack of policies now my industry says we don't need those policies technology is going to solve it no it won't because we don't because policy leads to technology so what policies do we need we need to start pricing emissions so from a business perspective if you want a business to change businesses think about money um that's what counts at the moment you might well catch some prawns off the coast of some mussels or clams of salmon off the coast of scotland send it to vietnam to get shelled send it back here to packaging a factory you wouldn't do that if it was absurdly cheap to to do it so clearly like a sensible cost driver is really important and that comes to passengers as well if you're making a decision to go from Glasgow to London and it costs you 20 pounds on an aircraft and 100 pounds on a train you're being incentivised to make the wrong decision and clearly financial policies matter so there's different ways of pricing we can discuss those jet fuel taxes the easiest thing slash emissions price um so basically barn a kilogram of jet fuel you get three kilograms of co2 roughly uh tax jet fuel you tax emissions there's also the non co2 emissions the contrails um that mike mentioned on the screen which multiplies um the the climate impact of flying and we could financially penalise those as well and airlines would quickly clean up their act because there's very easy actionable solutions available to reduce the majority of contrails in the sky we've known about these for 20 years and we've sat in our hands and lobbied against the regulations rather than get on and try and fix it so policy policy policy and also um discard the false solution so there's a bunch of false solutions out here that are stopping us on these policies i'm offsetting biofuels um being the main ones um and we need to be very strict on actually saying these things aren't going to work we need something else so at the moment the only policy mechanisms out there are really carbon offsetting and that just simply doesn't work it's fundamentally flawed um the united airline ceo one of the biggest airlines in the world has omitted that yet it's the main plank of our policy mechanisms for the next 15 years and we might not have a planet in 15 years so does that seem sensible we think it's very dangerous to the planet and to aviation workers okay i'm just going to press you on your comments on biofuels um you mentioned earlier uh that you you didn't think we have the fuels um but so what we want to view on sustainable aviation fuel which has been talked about a lot now yeah so everyone in the audience you might have heard the term sustainable aviation fuel this was a term coined about 10 15 years ago when the industry realised that the term biofuels sounds pretty bad for very important ecological and environmental reasons um now the majority of sustainable aviation fuel is biofuel and will remain biofuel for the next decade or two um and it's really important to understand that often these biofuels are actively damaging to the environment um firstly from a land use change perspective um there's a study out recently by the royal society that showed if we just existing jet fuel use in the uk without expanding without growing our fuel use just that if you want to make it from crop based biofuels you grow crops on farmland you need half the farmland in the uk at a time when we're already experiencing land pressures and look at the house prices um look at the fact that we've got all these climate impacts on farming as well um so it's just not possible so the industry's sort of saying and we're not going to we're not planning to do that we're going to use bio biomass waste instead so we harvest some corn there's some stalks stems and leafs and we're going to use the waste instead but they have not certified they've not commercially developed this fuel um literally there's not there's not been one kilogram used um in an aircraft flying a commercial airline with passengers um we haven't demonstrated that we can we can scale it um and even if we did there's lit this constraints on the feedstock so the input to that fuel and basically very importantly there's competition with other sectors so our government's very reliant on negative emissions that in turn is of reliant on biomass waste as is shipping road transport um bioplastics the list goes on and there just simply isn't enough of this stuff around on the planet to even like touch the sides of existing jet fuel use okay thank you very much um now gordon um i did rib you about the baggage problems at Edinburgh airport i'm going to give you an opportunity just to explain what the current position is and why you think you've had these problems i know it's straying off the agenda slightly but it you know it does give you the chance to explain that but i'd also like you um to say what what your airport is doing because i know you're doing stuff to you know try and try and become more sustainable so a couple of things there i've not spent too much on the baggage if you don't mind i mean there's two there's two fundamental problems at the moment um because there's so much disruption in the wider network we're getting a lot of aircraft arriving with the passengers that don't have bags on them because they're not being put on the aircraft in hub airports across europe or in london so what that means is all of a sudden we've got um you know 150 quite unhappy people who leave the airport without the bag and then the next day 150 bags turn up that we've got to find a way of getting to the people and you know no matter how well you do that um that we're going to be pretty annoyed because they should have the bag in the first place so that problem's created elsewhere but obviously the reputation is that we has hit it and then compounding that the handling companies who operate that service on behalf of the airlines are under resource at the moment so we're seeing some different issues around individual handlers saying instead of getting that bag to someone within 12 or 24 hours it's been taken too long so we've stepped in as airport um not you know this is not the area we we managed directly we've stepped in by bringing the additional third party resource into help that happened so while we can't stop the bags being sent to us a day late what we can do is try and get the minimum time to get that to people so they're not waiting for three days for the bag now we're hopefully there so and we're seeing a big improvement on that but it's you know it is one of the most frustrating things at the moment because this should have been avoidable we had it last year for understandable reasons i don't think we should be seeing it again but um it's it's a network wide problem and not not created here but we we're struggling to do the best we can once we've that problem presents itself um what was your second question the second question was what is your airport doing to become more sustainable so we're already carbon neutral um and to do that we've got a very very modest amount of sort of residual offsetting we have to do and i know offsetting um sort of is a bit of a dirty word with someone i think that's largely because of the sort of quality of somebody offsetting that's happened before but the stuff we're still having to sort of buy offsets for things like um fire engines nobody's making electric fire engines at the moment so we can't do everything but pretty much everything else that we can electrify that we can reduce use we've done we're building our own solar farm that will come on stream later on today that's generated about a third of our energy we're electrifying the ramp so we're not having diesel generators powering aircraft so on so forth so all that's happening i'm really proud of that progress we're doing but as i'm sure i'll be reminded by others that know about this we're about one to two percent of aviation emissions if you because all the stuff happens in the aircraft up in the sky so you know we've done that to take a seat at the table to do everything we can but that's not solving the problem because our issues we're enabling aviation which is the far bigger challenge so there is uh you know where we're part of the industry group sustainable aviation where we're trying to lobby for many of the things that our family's talking about you know we we do believe there needs to be better regulation uh we do need to believe there needs to be better price incentives to develop sustainable aviation fuels we do believe that we want to actually have our true recognition of the cost of carbon what i think is missing from that to be is the fact that it's somehow aviation is treated differently i just think we want a level playing field and when we make choices about how we save a ton of carbon there's two elements to it what do you have to spend to do that and is that the best way of using what are ultimately always scarce resources is that going to be the fastest way of decarbonising the whole and are we making sure that when we make these difficult choices and there are costs to come with it both financial and other that that is the best answer to get there and i think focusing on aviation which is such a high value contributor at the expense of looking for easier solutions or allowing more credible solutions around things like equitable pricing of carbon is going to make some bad decisions i mean everybody talks about the comparison of rail to and air to uh london you example by the way we don't have anything like 30% of our flights to london that would be ridiculous we had i think we had about 40 flights a day to london um out of many many hundreds at redden but so and the reason that happens is because it's by far and away the most effective way of getting to london people say we're not taxed well we're not subsidised either like the railway um we offer a service that people want to buy and they're making that decision but even if you look to it purely from a carbon side never mind the cost side you're probably saving about £1.50 worth of carbon at the current rate of carbon which is too low i'd be the first admit it we deliver the price carbon a lot more expensively internally to manage our decisions so you think it should be higher but even if you take if you take the market rate at 24 pounds a ton at the moment you're saving about £1.50 worth of carbon but if you add up all the time it takes to do it by rail if you add up the subsidy if you actually add in the true cost of carbon in the railway which because conveniently ignores all the stations on the way all the road network on network rail all these other things you're probably spending as if you're sending somebody down in business and forced to take the railway as opposed to flying you're probably investing about 150 to 200 pounds worth of time and money to save £1.50 worth of carbon our challenge is let's take that if you're willing to spend that great but let's use it effectively and actually take not one ton out but let's take dozens of tons out because we can do it far more effectively if we focus on the choices in front of us rather than kneejucking and seeing flying bad real good HS2 if they ever build it which it looks like they won't is going to be one of the most ridiculous investments ever the carbon payback of HS2 having dug up hundreds of miles of pristine countryside having put tough millions of tons of steel and concrete into the ground the carbon payback will be about 40 years compared to what you would be emitting by flying on today's technology and using today's railway so we're investing in a 19th century technology do you really believe we're going to be flying around with kerosene in 20 years i don't so effectively this is you're never going to get that payback you're going to have done all this hard ecology you're going to rip up this pristine countryside and you're not even going to get a benefit never mind the fact that we're spending billions of pounds on an asset that won't give us that return and could be far better used in investing in true decarbonisation policies okay some food for thought there now start thinking of those questions or points so it's not not yet not yet um they're all going to get a chance to ask a a question to each other quick fire if we can now i'm going to start with you finley because you were shaking your head so much when gordon was speaking that that often happens when gordon speaks but finley i'm wondering what you're saying em we should have a realistic price of carbon so i'm wondering in 2030 what do you think a ton of co2 should cost i can put a number on that what is edinbury airport put on for you must have a business risk management plan with maybe medium low high carbon prices what's your high price your medium price and your low price for 2030 we don't run that policy what we do is we are treating our decisions in terms of the way we invest and we are actively treating carbon cost as double the market rate and i don't see any reasons why we might change that we might we might choose to triple the market rate but there's the point i'm making about carbon pricing is it's got to be consistently applied because otherwise you're going to get perverse decisions if we're paid if the aviation is expected to pay 100 pounds a ton but they're always paying 10 pounds a ton or industry or education or anybody else is paying a different rate we will make perversely bad decisions so everyone needs to pay the same the challenge we've got is actually aviation might be able to afford to absorb huge amounts of additional cost in carbon because we're a relatively wealthy business that's not true of the third sector that's not true of the public sector that's not true of many other industries that are low margin businesses but they all provide really critical stuff but if all we do is punish one sector which happens to add huge values of the economy to build that tax base that pays for the third sector that pays for the public sector all we're doing is cutting off our nose to spider face and let me remind you the other thing we're not going to do is persuade anybody to follow us could could ask a specific well i'll maybe allow you to come back but i want everyone to get a chance you will get a chance jaren deep thank you finlay i wasn't actually going to ask you a question but only because you declared your age earlier on of 33 i'm also 33 so from a fellow 33 you know to another are you talking yourself out of a job and potentially other 33 year olds as well absolutely not so i feel like i'd be talking myself out of a job if i just went along with the industry's plans at the moment i don't think there will be any flying from 2035 onwards i don't think we'll see any the economic benefits we're seeing today don't we well be able to export salmon to people in Africa because i think a lot of people have to have migrated from Africa i think we need to be very careful of salmon industry in Scotland as well if i worked in the salmon industry i'd be worried about the future for various reasons as well so this is absolutely about jobs this is about employment this is having a not just a sustainable plan but sustainable secure careers and i think the only way we can get that is by asking our leaders difficult questions and holding them to account because fundamentally they're not going to be around in 2035 i don't know do you still plan to be CEO of Edinburgh airport in 2035 no i will be around so i will be around so it matters yeah about age it's depressing isn't it go on yeah maybe that's friendly i mean i i don't disagree with an awful lot you say about legislation and about getting a group but let me ask you what do you think is the minimum scale that needs to be at um i would argue it has to be at least the european level but how do we get that it's a very good question so um i think we we we need international action um but international action um with with global kind of global multilateral agreement of all 190 countries in the world like that's a process we've already got we've got the cop process which is demonstrably failing we've got the iq um general assembly which produced the carbon offsetting scheme that i was talking about earlier which is any analyst will tell you that's just going to have no impact on on demand and emissions in the aviation sector so that's the result of that so i think what we need is we need to see leadership from high income high emissions countries creating bilateral agreements and obvious examples would be europe north america china india um the g20 um i think the amount of devastation we've already wrought on other parts of the world our historical responsibility and our current responsibility i think it is inherent on us to act first and we've agreed to under the paris agreement common and differentiated responsibilities high income high emitting countries will move faster than low income low emitting countries and groups um and aviation as we were saying is one of the highest income highest emissions activities that we're capable of doing as human beings other than getting on a space rocket and going for it for a tour like richard branson or jeff bezos does so i think um yeah so we what we need is governments working together more on a bilateral scale and saying we need to go further and faster than course here so i just follow up that do you think we should charge more for the aviation ton of carbon than any other ton of carbon um possibly yes because of the socioeconomic differences by the average person that flies compared to the average person that heats their home or drives their kids to work at the moment that's not the case we're talking about having a level playing field if any of you fill up your petrol or diesel car with fuel you'll be paying roughly 50 tax there's a zero percent rate on jet fuel so there's a massive massive structural socio economic um like injustice that's happening here um and and that's just like the first part i mean i would say arguably it should be higher because of the socioeconomic reasons behind it we don't tax everybody the same income tax um because we've recognised that low income groups suffer the most um so i think we need a way of shielding low income groups somehow and building that into the policy okay great so we're getting some real difference of opinion here which is what this is this is about and i'm sure there'll be differences in the room um before i ask you to put your hands well i'm going to ask you to put your hands up because i want to know genuinely want to know who in the audience has deliberately chosen not to fly and have chosen other forms of transport because you think it's too environmentally disruptive well that's quite quite quite a number um and my other question is do any of you actually bother to look before you make a decision on how you're going to get to somewhere what the carbon emissions are less i would have thought that's quite a difficult thing to do but um right you can try the lady says okay interesting um right so it's over to you you can ask questions of the panel or you can just make points i think we've got a roving mic we do um so i'll point to someone now this lady at the front was really eager so you first i've no wish to shame our chair but i'm actually quite surprised that you're not don't have a tiny bit of feeling of guilt about flying all over the place i a lot of us have been very aware of the problems flying for many many many years i read a book it was written at least 10 years ago called beyond flying it's about a huge national conference in um New Zealand with hundreds of delegates one person flew and they managed to do the whole thing online which is a perfectly possible thing to do for an awful lot of business i'd take on board that an awful lot of people have relations or really good friends in other continents including myself that's the one flight i'm allowing myself actually because every time i go and visit friends and relations in scandinavia germa or wherever or when i've gone holiday i go to francell spain or italy by train it's perfectly possible the problem is that trains cost an arm and a leg and flights on the whole don't there's completely wrong policy in the whole business of no aviation tax it's just a nonsense i'm sorry as um as sorry what was his name again um mike said sooner or later we won't have anywhere to travel to if everyone burn everywhere's burning like roads and all over greece and southern italy and everywhere i mean who wants to go on holiday to places that are 40 degrees or 45 degrees quite honestly people go and they just turn on the um the air con the middle east and all over the place well that's adding to the problem i mean you know we we have to develop some sense of responsibility about this if we want any kind of future for our children because finley is absolutely right we're not going to have much of a future quite honestly and i'm worried about these young people especially the young activists who glue themselves to things they're splendid young people they're not jobs they're not criminals but they're they're doing their best to to raise the alarm because what's coming towards us is terrifying okay um so i think she had a little bit of a pop at me which is quite all right um uh on my my my uh summer holiday um but i don't fly all over the place i've actually chose um this year um i had a couple of visit trips trips to london where i might have flown in the past but um i actually took the train uh deliberate choice uh and from edinburgh uh i thought the service was was really good um you get to london in just over four hours um but uh i don't normally talk in detail about where where where i've travelled to but we we went my wife and i went to america and you know that was really the most practical way of getting there and we did visit family um normally we don't fly all over the place so you know it was a it was a big it was a big one for us and very expensive so we might not do it again for a while you'll be assured to know who else wants in uh yes up with the back there thanks um yes uh more of a sort of british specific one but um it's great that some people are deciding to use uh more eco friendly forms of travel but um there's a bit of a subtext that in britain we've got a rail system that's been left in the hands of um very large corporations like virgin which are charging huge fees for journeys uh and not necessarily paying a whole lot of tax and it's much more expensive to take rail as finlay mentioned than it is to fly so some people simply can't afford to make that um that eco friendly decision so you know when are we going to see a bit more regulation of uh the companies that are running our that are running our rail through the country when there's so many people who are who are taking flights instead because it is just so much cheaper thank you okay does that does anyone want to comment on that because that came up earlier um in the discussion that you know rail rail appears to be uh more expensive than than flying i mean i used to be commercial rich for scott rail and ran the franchise bid for one of these horrible big corporates that you seem to dislike so much i mean effectively if you look back at the history of railway when the privatisation reversed terminal decline in usage um from post war to about the when was it the early 90s when the franchise systeming and it's it's not perfect by any stretch these businesses are making something like half a percent margin out of it so they're not running off with all the money and making it work that's simply not the case um they are massively constrained by government dictate right down to the timetable they have to have to run and the reason it's so expensive is because it's a massively expensive thing to operate because at scott rail when i was there it may have changed now but scott rail um for every pound the consumer put in the passenger put in the government put another pound in they're not investing in anything like that in other services i would argue are um you know out on by the other thing as well railways not particularly equitable in scotland if you're a bc one you're far more likely to be connected to the railway than if you're to c2d so it's not equitable either um it's not particularly effective way of getting people to and from where they're going to go and it's not as environmental environmental as everyone thinks because of the massive network certainly you look at the sunk cost of all the steel now i'm not saying we should get rid of the railway because it obviously has a hugely valuable thing once you've got it but what i'm saying is reinvesting in it is debatable and throwing yet more subsidy at it is is a really bad use of money but it could be better spent if it's a decarbonisation investment you're looking for so i give an example of the the current subsidy level to go on the the sleeper this marvellously touted wonderful idea of the the grand old days of railway is we're spending about 250 pounds of government taxation money on taking somebody to go shooting in the highlands i don't think that's a good use of the money i have no idea why we do that and yet we keep doing it and it's certainly not a decarbonisation solution if we took that 250 for every single person you could absolutely take all the carbon from their visit to Scotland out of it that would be a decent use of the money so all i'm saying is let's make credible decisions about the constrained resources we have if it's about decarbonisation but it gets all hung up in so many different things and we're just not making good decisions as to how we're actually going to take tons of carbon out rather than attacking one sector or the other okay can i just make a point on that sure and then i'm going to come to the lady down there just very briefly i mean we also as a group have explored like should we have more public ownership of the air transport network and i think it's quite an interesting question when you've got something that's basically a bit of fundamental infrastructure and you know like the water network like the train network and the air transport is kind of part of that but we're very market led and we're hyper privatised as well but actually what we need is a transformation of air travel and it's very difficult to see how that's going to happen like fully market led when you've got big big resistance to that from the private sector for obvious reasons now i'm not of the position that actually private or public is better what i think is good management is good bad management is bad and you can get both in either you can give lots of examples of bad management and private and in public so we actually really need to be clear on what we want to achieve and for example hs2 not a supporter either i think it's massively badly managed there's other ways we could update the rail network to make it much more manageable final thing on subsidies is is like yeah it's expensive to put in but then it's cheap to operate and it's well there's employment that comes with the expenses as well i mean if as just a thought experiment think about a poor country is everybody travelling by by plane or by another mode of transport and are people in yeah just wherever you want to end up in whichever country are they all flying around if they aren't really low incomes or are they using another mode and that kind of tells you about the real cost of this there's a lot of hidden subsidies in aviation fossil fuel subsidies being the obvious example and subsidies for aircraft technology and aircraft sales and et cetera so there's a much bigger story to that than just like aviation gets no subsidies and rail gets lots okay hi there um on the case of rail i'm pretty sure there are solutions out there to make it more profitable i think hong kong in japan has a way i don't know if like the uk can do it like transport oriented development but that's my question my question is more for gordon right gordon what does sustainability look like for you so you say it's not about demonizing so on an objective level what does it look like if you were to describe that it's going to be a journey we're going to have to completely change the technology of our aircraft so the first thing we can do now is be uh getting into more sustainable aviation fuel and i agree biofuels are are not the answer because we can't do the volumisation of that so if you look around at the capability the the reason why sustainable aviation fuels the answer in the short term but it is only a bridge because it doesn't solve all the problems but you can take the the the density of carbon out that network but to the tune of about 70 to 80 percent if we go down this route assuming we get an effective way of producing stuff and getting and the reason it matters is for the reason raised by a number of people these aircraft are going to be in the market for 10 20 years you can drop this fuel into an existing aircraft engine now and it works so we can do things tomorrow what's missing and again as I agree with Finlay we don't have a legislative environment we are and if i'll use a proxy for this 15 years ago you would you would have found that offshore wind was the most expensive way of producing electricity because of all the it was a startup business nobody knew how to do it's really expensive as a result of putting in a price for change mechanism where people investing in that were getting a guaranteed price a premium price for the electricity that allowed them to invest that and we shared that cost across everyone buying electricity from the network for the greater good if you did this and now it's the cheapest form of electricity generation and of course it's renewable so it's a win-win we're just saying let's do the same sort of thing for sustainable aviation fuel and other technologies so electric's coming although probably going to have a limit of maybe a couple of hundred miles of distance and it's going to be smaller vehicles but for the Scottish Highlands and Islands might be absolute perfect hydrogen's coming let's get investing in that same reason let's find ways of making these things work that's what easy jet investing in now is hydrogen technology for the long-term future again you're not going to do transatlantic in that but you can probably do most of Europe with hydrogen solutions that's coming so you know we're just going to take steps and my argument is not to wait for everything to be right my argument is take the right steps forward and make sure that every pound you spend on decarbonisation is getting the maximum decarbonisation don't spend on it because it's it's political or it's trendy or it's hitting something that people are trying to shame you out flying spend it where you'll get the best of impact one of the things i'd love to do is that revisit this whole offsetting because i think it has got rightfully in many cases a really bad name but if we as an industry where we can take that money and say the next the next ton of carbon we could try and lose in the airport would probably cost us 200 pounds i would love to take that 200 pounds and save 50 tons of carbon by investing in domestic decarbonisation of boilers and you know why would that be a bad outcome because the council are not going to do that for localised housing because they don't have the money the residents are not going to do it because they don't have the money why are we not finding ways of taking what is our wealthy industry is prepared to pay more and prepared to get on that technology route why are we not finding ways of taking that value without trashing the industry and getting rid of all the things that we add the biggest employer in scotland is tourism if we start making it really expensive to get here particularly if we do it alone and we don't do that at least at a european level we're just going to trash it on economy who's going to follow that nobody's going to follow that right um some people down there so no hang on i haven't come to you yet just wait is it there's a nice chat down the front once in no no chat down the front there hello everyone i'm bangali kita i come from paris in france first of all i need to thank you all of you for your speeches um i just have two questions for sir garden duo first of all you earlier you mentioned the question of balance to make a balance right so i need to know um how to do that balance between um sustainability and aviation and uh people economics of people and the second one is to know uh in your own business in your own office how um what's your um policy to make your co-worker more sustainable in your own company okay thank you so i think you know balance about how do we how do we reflect the fact that aviation is not accessible in the same way to everyone i think it comes down to why are you traveling so people are making consumer choices at the end of the day or they're making corporate choice about that you know so you say you know i think suggesting that poor countries don't use the plane is a bit it's a bit right it may be true but it doesn't help you get the answer anywhere if you're using the plane to go um you know collaborate on you know fusion power between universities americ between american european universities you're going to use the plane if you go in transatlantic because there isn't an alternative now you could use um you could absolutely use uh like teams or zoom but we know that that isn't the same quality of interaction that we get that way so it's good for some but it's not the ideal for all so we've got it these are this is what i mean at the start is you've got to look at your choices so there is a legitimate choice of taking the train to london i don't potentially find it works i've done it when it occasionally does suit but arguably it's not the best way for my type of purpose and i would argue the value that that's generating on business trips is going to be on the whole good but we're going to give people choice and we're going to give people choices not to travel as well in terms of how can we make things easier to access more localized circular economy all these things are true as well but that's not at the expense of anything else we've got to do all of this what i'm saying is we shouldn't spend lots and lots of money solving one sector do not understand the damage that's done to lots of other sectors and then think we want to watch we haven't we've made we've made bad decisions in terms of what we're doing internally there's i mentioned the fact that we treat carbon at double the price of the market rate and i think you know that's maybe not enough to really drive this but but it is already driving consistent behaviours and what i mean by that is if you teach people we're all trying to cut carbon everyone's interpretation of that across the business whether a project team or the finance team or the marketing team they kind of don't know how to apply that but if you set a market rate everyone's at least making that rational decision so i know that where we spend a pound on a car decarbonisation i'm getting the same value out of that in car decarbonising as i would if some other part of the business is doing it and what we've found is that also works into the supply chain so we're now saying to our supply chain whether it's people are going to come build new terminal space or people providing other services we're we're selecting them on the basis of their carbon footprint so we're doing a sort of a little microcosm of the bigger scale policy now i would argue that needs to be far bigger needs to be much more consistent probably does need to come of the ledges of the background but don't wait for that get on and do the right thing okay right the chap hotel to sit down you can stand you can stand up Gordon can you give us an idea of the contribution in Britain what it makes to the scottish economy in terms of employment GDP it wouldn't have escaped anyone's notice walking on princeton street how many tourists have flown in who are spending a vast amount of money both in scotland and in Edinburgh so i've been interested to hear what your view is and how much you generate towards the scottish economy yeah i mean i've done a few studies i mean i think this is you know you see the industry does this quite a lot and trying to understand it and we're well over a billion in terms of added value and i mean if you think about the airport 7 000 people work at the airport only about under a thousand work for Edinburgh airport as the operator so a 7 000 jobs and everything from retail projects UK border force you name it so that in itself that's that's the that's the number of jobs of town the size of such sterling actually so you know this is a big human drive on that one and then if you think about all the jobs created by all the people that are coming here and you know you could not be in a better place in the world to understand the importance of international travel and what it means for culture for the economy for you know like the whole social mix and everything else than being Edinburgh in august so you know it is vastly important but we have choices to make you know i sit with you know sit with the tourism industry and the festival is desperately trying to grapple with this how do they deal with it if you've got international in your title how are you going to be decarbonized if your acts are all coming from across the planet and that's the point and i'm just in terms of like don't be defeatist you've got to you've got to expect the community and i use that rather than society community decides what they want to invest their value and then it's not all money and if we continue to decide that the arts festival is something we truly value we'll find ways of putting that in the girl the bigger picture and prioritising it to a degree that we want to do it because you know it's all very well if we say no we should do this we should do that what i tend to find when i'm talking to people is when they say we should fly less what they mean to someone else should fly less because their decisions to fly are always very important they always justify them but they think everyone else's isn't so i think this has got to be a community led decision it's a value decision which will ultimately be political because that's where we reflect our value system and that's where we'll come through legislation but it'd be very very dangerous for people that are educated understand the problem understand the risks we're taking to impose your solutions on other people because one it won't work and two i think it's quite arrogant so we've got to ask people what is a community that we want to protect when we're doing the decarbonisation and and and the best way of doing that is demonstrate everyone that we're doing the best version of decarbonisation as fast as well as possible now that was a shameful patsy question to his mate so i'm going to ask finley to come in is i have a show of hands for people that are aware of the uk citizens assembly on climate okay so can everyone that's not put their hands up go and have a read of this and have a read of the recommendations for aviation within there that is a group of 50 or 100 scotter citizens that are brought together to look at how to get to net zero by 2045 which i think is is too long a timeline we've got the next 10 years but they looked at that and they said we need to limit how much we fly we need to tax aviation fuel the further you fly the more you should pay we should have a frequent flyer levy we should ban air miles we should ban private jets so those were all decisions that were voted on by representative groups of citizens across the scotland and this was done in the uk as well and they had basically the exact same recommendations so all of those things i just mentioned had 60 70 80 90 support on them so listening to what the citizens of scotland say do you agree with those recommendations well if we have a if we have a democracy well then if these things happen they happen because that's why decisions are made that way i'm not necessarily saying i agree these will be the most effective ways of achieving decarbonisation i think that's the point it's it's very easy to say we'd elect something free and they say yes if you ask somebody should somebody else pay more tax they say yes um the question is do you understand the implication for employment do you understand the implication for scotch universities where we send our kids free at the cost of all the chinese and american students to pay for it do we understand that and and all i'm saying is let's make informed decisions about the implications of our choices decarbonisation is crucial i'm not denying that we have to do it as fast and as well as possible understand the choices you're making and make sure that the best ones are available and just to be clear the citizens assembly took place over multiple weeks with multiple experts brought in including from industry they were massively informing the citizens that are making the decisions is a major pinnacle of that process um and and the scotland government ignored all of the recommendations on aviation and said it was a matter for UK government and the UK government isn't doing anything on this um so that is listening to the community and it's it's not listening it's saying you can have a voice but we're just going to ignore everything i'm not the government yes i know you're not but some of us are you you quickly learn in politics that consultations are there to be ignored by government i'm not in government that's what happened so folks i'm not in government i am an opposition msp no it's not no it's not no i'm not in government oh dear well then we get into the whole question of democracy which is not which is not what this meeting is about but you know people people elect parliamentarians from different parties we all have a role we all have our say and that's what parliament's about but i'm not in government now i'm going to go to the back green t-shirt thank you um so i guess um what i'm wondering is uh so mike in his video said he'd be surprised if the industry didn't recognise the need for us all to fly less so i was i was looking for a direct answer from each of the panellists do you think we need to fly less um if you do then how much less how much do we need to reduce that if not then is it fair for us in the developed western world to fly as much as we do while the rest of the world doesn't and isn't sustainable for the rest of the world to fly as much as we do well let's start with charon dade is the excellent question look you know i am is and i've got a couple of points on that because it's a really important question and i do want to address this there's seems to be a theme that's that's either developed here or or it's commented on a few times you know the develop the developing world is flying and a lot of the growth for the industry is going to be coming from the developing world now i'm not saying that's a good thing or a bad thing but it's a fact so i think it's um it's not quite accurate to say that it's just the west that that is flying and you know you've got major airlines like Ethiopian airlines is one of the biggest airlines in the world you know so i think it's it's it's false to say that that is just the west i think the other aspect for for and i've been reflecting on this um and we do have a sustainability strategy in the global chamber of commerce network um and one of the principles that we have is to view one industry in isolation and ignore the rest is is is not a helpful start or a helpful approach so this topic today is aviation and the sustainability agenda it could easily be agriculture and the sustainability agenda it could be house building and the sustainability agenda so um in in direct answer i think to your question um taking this sector alone or agriculture on its own or whatever on its own it's not going to be enough to solve the problems that we have all created as as a global community whether you want to say it's the west or the south that's up to you but that that's not my opinion um secondly should should we fly less i think that's a binary question i i don't think that's the right attitude to have because my earlier points in my opening remarks is an aircraft does not just lie people it flies in very important products goods to different markets around the world and we saw that not least during the pandemic when we were flying vaccines to other parts of the world which is i'm sure we would all agree an exception important contribution that the industry has made and i'm sure we'll continue to make but whether regulations are introduced to limit or curb what this industry does that is a that is obviously a decision for governments and families already alluded to some of those policies have not been taken into consideration i'm sure some might in the future depending on what government gets into place either in scotland or of course with the reserved issues in west minster but i think what's absolutely critical is as a global community um in terms of we were talking earlier about who's flying and who's not we've all become wealthier over decades and centuries so i think to say it's just a small group of people that are flying contributes to it is clearly not correct there's more people flying we are becoming wealthier there's more middle class emerging all around the world so we do need to take the steps that others have alluded to and i did as well whether it's sef and fuels or whether it's in our domestic agenda and how we get people to airports and to and from and the other aspect i think that's really important is some of the reasons and choices as to why we go to different markets and in the route we choose to get there and obviously in this case it's an aircraft and an airplane it's for some people too expensive to stay at home and have a staycation staycations became quite big during the pandemic and then they've dropped off and people are now flying elsewhere so i think there's a lot that we can do domestically for people to have more choices as to where the holiday i don't think a lot of consumers don't set out to go abroad they set out to go on a holiday and they have to do a cost benefit analysis as to where that happens and as a business who's exporting they will do the same as well so i think that's an important contribution in terms of how we factor these decisions in there is obviously an element of when we talked about fly shaming earlier like there's already regulation in place in the UK of where companies and individuals are shamed because they're not following particular policies you know there's high taxes on diesel cars for example the you know the road tax was i think tripled several years ago but people are still buying diesel cars because getting electric one for some in different geographies around the country is effective pointless because they can't charge it and the charging network in scotland in particular is a very poor network it's unreliable so i think the shaming agenda other policies are already shown us that it doesn't work so we need to learn from that and understand well what could work and the majority of it is around better informed choices and the final comment i do i do want to make on on the on the information education is we all want thriving high streets in all of our communities and you know a staple in all of high streets is is is a local travel agent and we saw during the pandemic travel agents and agencies offering really important support around what people wanted to do by their leisure time so re-educating our local high street retailers in this area is going to be really important so that they can understand how do we offer choices that are carbon friendly or carbon neutral that doesn't always involve flying so i think there's a lot the industry is already doing in that front but there is a lot more to do as well and the choices part is is is going to be a really difficult one to counter because as Gordon said earlier we do talk about flying less but we never necessarily think it's for ourselves doing that so there's a lot there's a long journey to go on that front okay good answer charity good extensive answer the other two you've both had good air time so quick answer should we fly less we need to decarbonise aviation if we don't we will end up being forced to fly less because it'll be taxed or it will be restricted in somewhere or so the challenge of the industry is decarbonise and if we don't we will have less people flying as simple as that so but i'm up for a challenge of decarbonising industry yet so it's a budgeting problem when we need to rid off emissions in the next 10 years and we have to look at other sectors when you look at other sectors they're blowing their own budgets so there isn't wiggle room so that means aviation has the budget it has now and there is no way to half emissions in the next 10 years without flying less however do we need to fly less it depends who you are the majority of people that produce the majority of emissions are the one percent of the planet and even in the UK half of people don't fly and people that do fly once or twice that make up the next 25 percent fly once to Spain or to Italy that's kind of like equivalent to your emissions from driving your car for a couple of months say so there's a minority of the planet and it is a minority and across all countries that wealth but in the UK more so than others in the US as well that do the predominant amount of flying and produce the predominant emissions and they need to cut back but the average person this is barely going to affect and it's quite an important point to get across okay I've got time for two more from the audience and they will have to wrap it up so you're way down the front and then the guide just behind her okay thank you I'm from Indonesia I've come here for for for study I work for a line company and I also have worked for FMCG company so it is really relatable that you said about cargo because back then like 10 years ago like in my country we sell like four like daily products and then to distribute the products like until to the east to the west it's almost I'll spend more most of the time it's almost expired to come to to come to the distributor so you know like the affordable of the cargo is actually um you know has developed us the have several of the have asked the industry and you know we're talking about the the price carbon the carbon price that you mentioned maybe it's just a sharing you know like what happened in our country like it's a new day it's a triple Lego country so we have no um toll or access under the sea so yeah if you come from east to west maybe east to west it's it's it's quite like from here to america so it's it's quite far and you know what there was like one domestic airline you mentioned maybe it is known for the worst on-time performance but because it's very cheap yeah so is the is the is the most wanted is the most wanted airline even it's for the worst on-time performance and etc so yeah it's just it is hard for people who live in a you know like in a developing country like ours maybe to you mentioned about the carbon price and then you mentioned about the even like um if actually to the to the FMC industry and everything yeah so maybe i don't know like iata also talking about this kind of things yeah maybe this is the thing that we as a employer in this industry that also think helps solve this kind of issue yeah just sharing very quick response from chair and deep only yeah i think you know you've answered you know you've made you've made an exceptionally important point and you've and you've seen it you know in in reality um and this is why the chains of commerce exists it is to spread economic prosperity across every community around the world but that doesn't mean that we're not aware of the challenges and drawbacks in and around that so you know we completely understand but you've seen that at the cold face the prosperity that's been brought to the companies communities that you operated in as a result of having an aircraft i took that project produce on time and and and it didn't expire on route and and the supplier received it what i would say in terms of that drawback aspect because there'll be people in the room thinking well just because it's bringing prosperity does that mean we just forget about everything else well no no it doesn't we do have to understand how we can get efficient and smarter about it but we do need to also be honest about if we stop doing x activity then what impact does that have on on scotland's economy on the communities that we operate in what does it do to jobs or does it do to people's livelihoods and if we understand the impact that it can have on that then what solutions are we offering those communities because ultimately if we can take communities with us then we can get to the solutions potentially faster and i think it has to be the driving force around all of this but it can't just be about scotland it has to be about our international partners as well this can't just be a scotland narrow focus only it has to be about if we're exporting and importing from a country like indonesia and we decide to implement a you know carbon tax policy that might make it uncompetitive to import or export what does that do to the suppliers that we're working with because this can't just be a narrow focus on scotland okay and the final contribution from the audience yourself yes um private sector here and their role and the private sector in this context i mean those who design aircraft and those who buy lease and they operate them as well that's my my definition for the moment of private sector um being in the private sector myself of course we're all driven by the consumer demands and we're also driven to to have a bit of a unique selling point to differentiate us from competitor and that provides a lot of innovation within our businesses um so with the dawn of artificial intelligence for example we've now recently seen that the technology was created they was clearly the need for it and then there was calls for regulation at governmental level and if i use a reason example that affected all of us in the pandemic we originally were told that we can't get a vaccine because it takes years and years and years and lo and behold it became a matter of life and death and private sector very quickly proved is possible and regulation followed so my question to each of the panellys is who here doesn't get that this is a matter of life and death is it the government in your opinion is it the private sector or indeed is it the consumer who just happens to be the employer of the public sector as well i have a funny feeling that a lot of the suggestions that are coming out of everybody's mouth is to shame the latter and to make this the general public's problem whereas my expectation coming from the private sector is i need airlines to buy well designed aircraft that fly sustainably why are they not proving the technology just like the wind energy no government would have invested in that or regulated that if it was a bad idea it couldn't be done right now before you respond we have to finish in about two minutes otherwise we're going to get thrown out so what what i'm going to ask you is to wrap up if you want to answer that that's your wrapping up done if you don't you can say something else so we'll start with you then okay so definitely not the consumer's fault they've been greenwashed massively by private companies and the government's being complicit in that whose fault is this it's it's the free market which is determining short-term profit over long-term risk so CEOs of companies and governments government politicians are only going to be in office for the next few years and then they're out they need to return they need to deliver quarterly profits they need annual reports where they deliver it and they don't want to take on massive costs in the short term to do what's necessary to reconfigure their factories their airports their way of doing things all of that's cost it's additional employment which is good for us workers which is why we're pushing for it but we've got the market against us and we've got the current systems that are in place commercially and within politics which is why in order to address this we need to transform the way we do politics and the way that we do business i think he's agreed we had finished and i think the answer will come from the private sector and it'll come when the incentives are right and and this is whether it's regulation based whether it's pricing based but i've did the one thing that struck me back in COP26 which i know a lot of people saw as a bit disappointing and not really advancing the thing but the thing that really clicked over was that was when the finance industry started paying attention to this and you see this differently now i'm owned by private equity firm you see this when every single investment has got to have a really solid sustainability agenda along with it now people are pulling out markets you know nobody's buying coal anymore all all of these things are happening at the private sector finance led value system because people are now pricing in the long-term impact of not being sustainable not decarbonising so in a sense it's already clicked now you can ask the question perfectly fairly why didn't we start this 20 years ago but you can only plant the tree today you can't plant the tree in the history so all you all what i think i would believe with is if you think about that example of covid and how fascinating thing we are now on that trajectory we've not been trying very hard to date i think the private sector and industry and particularly where the money is going which is where really drives the thing that you know we are definitely the money is going into this now so we will see rapid advance just very quickly i've been told to wrap up quick i think it needs to be public i'm private working together it needs to be absolutely joint actually the pandemic proved that if government legislation allows companies to develop vaccines quickly but but being safe then it can happen faster i think right now we are seeing a big shift and our customers are challenging companies as well and that's at the boardroom and shareholder level as well we're seeing more active shareholders getting out there i think that's a good thing i think we need more shareholders raising their voice and actually demanding more from the private sector because we can do more should do more and that's not at the expense of people or planet or profit i think all can close this together and but the government is not moving fast enough but the private sector solutions are moving fast but government has to come to the table as well but it definitely has to be joint thank you very much can we thank our speakers chair and deep gordon and finley and can i also thank you for attending particularly the people who have come from abroad it's really good to see you here i hope you've enjoyed it's been really i think it's been a really good session i'm off to take my tie off and tell my wife something that she knew already which is that i'm utterly pointless so thank you thank you and good night