Had some time and decided to poke in your sustainability blog. Some neat articles. The intro to this one reads like a WestJet press release

How much’yu gettin’ paid?

My inner grammar Nazi reminds you that WestJet demonstrates ‘exemplary’ service. Also, I got a good laugh out of the ‘Search Kurt Archer’ feature. Uhh… No thanks.

Believe it or not, WestJet’s VP of Finance (who reports directly to the CFO) is one of the members of the Bragg Creek local water co-op. I’ve met him a few times. No doubt he’d approve of your encomium.

As to your three ‘sustainability’ points, allow me to play the voyce of criticism. Healthy criticism.

1. This is a wonderful idea purely from a service standpoint. In terms of a sustainability standpoint, you have to make sure that the energy required in all stages of the ‘sustainable’ tableware doesn’t exceed that of recycling the plastic variety.

Remember, this includes the cost of creating the tableware; trucking clean dishes from a ‘cleaning centre’ to the planes, and from the planes to the cleaning centre after each use; the energy required to sanitize the dishes; and of course the energy required to construct and maintain the cleaning centre for the dishes. Depending on the scale of the operation, you might find only marginal (or even negative!) benefit to the ‘sustainable’ plan. If you took it to WestJet on this basis, you’d have to do a passable job of quantifying the energy it takes to run the sustainable service and compare that with the energy cost of recycling the plastics.

2. This isn’t a bad idea, either. (I’m not sure how it fits into the notion of sustainability, though.)

It’s difficult (and expensive) to have an up-to-date selection of magazines. As for novels, the public interest would be questionable, given that most novels can’t be read in the space of a single flight and people would be reluctant to start reading something that they couldn’t finish at their leisure.

The sad reality of our society, too, is that people are reading less and less. Just today, Reader’s Digest filed for Chapter 11–I never thought I’d see the day. Other mainstays like Time, Macleans, the NYT, etc., are also seeing viewership evaporate. Methinks the future is in ‘wired’ airlines, where people are free to browse the conveniences of the Internet, be they movies, books, or whathaveyou.

I’d agree with you, though. Give me a good novel and a four hour flight with which to enjoy it.

3. Solar flight is… ehm… a ways away. I doubt that it will ever be viable commercially, even as the efficiency of photovoltaics makes leaps and bounds. Still, I’ve invested quite heavily in solar due to my belief that it will come out on top of the ‘green energy’ heap. Some of the single-man solar-powered planes are conceptually neat. It remains to be seen whether they’re at all commercializable, or just a scientific pipe dream.

Using ‘greenhouse gas emissions’ as a standard for environmental impact is, IMHO, a _very_ bad idea. If not because it causes industries and governments to ignore more serious environmental problems, then because the means for dealing with carbon emissions (credits, offsets, etc.) are provably ineffective (i.e. can often exacerbate the problems) and enrich the ‘wrong kind of people’ in the meantime.

One of many good articles on the matter can be found at http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/press/government_monosony_distorts_climate_science_says_sppi.html.

A quick ‘anti-greening’ search reveals other articles more financial in nature, mainly due to Europe’s experience with ‘controlling emissions’ (here’s a hint: it didn’t work), and due to the fact that the whole ‘greening’ paradigm is an unprecedented cash cow for some of the barons of finance. As the above article points out, carbon credits will be the single more valuable commodity traded on international markets, without removing even a single gram of CO2 from the atmosphere.

And even _that_ conclusion is based on tenuous ‘anthropogenic’ climate change science, which, despite it’s lavish funding, is still highly questionable by the critical and (truly) scientific mind.

Just be careful what you promote. A lot of these ‘reduce your carbon footprint’ initiatives also tread into far darker policies, including eugenics (called ‘bioethics’ in our Orwellian society), mass abortion (called ‘family planning’), control of food supplies, centralization of government (called ‘internationalism’), censorship of scientific research (called ‘scientific consensus’) and other draconian elements.

Still, I’m convinced that you’re one of the good guys who will diligently research these claims, rather than relying on the ‘experts’ to do it for you. Remember, if you hear the claim: “You’re not an expert in the subject.”, research it twice as fast! The old “you’re not an expert” saw is meant to sterilize critical thought.

Good to see that you’re out there promoting your beliefs as well.

Best wishes, and best of luck to you,

Voyce