French Climate NGOs Denounce Air Show ‘Greenwashing,’ Call For Air Traffic Cut

LE BOURGET—A group of French environmental campaigning organizations says the Paris Air Show should stop greenwashing and calls for a reduction of air traffic to reduce carbon emissions, as the first day of the event got underway.

In a June 19 statement, 14 climate and environmental justice groups, including Greenpeace and Scientist Rebellion, call for the Paris Air Show to “stop offering false climate solutions—such as the promise of sustainable aviation fuels and technological solutions—which are mere greenwash and totally insufficient to reach essential emission reduction targets.”

The group insists on a reduction in air traffic, saying that without such measures, “we will not be able to sufficiently reduce the sector’s emissions, or noise and atmospheric pollution, within the required time frame.”

“The real question is no longer whether air traffic should be reduced, but how to do it in a way that is fair and consistent with the climate and health challenges,” the statement says, adding, “The disregard of the sector, like Airbus and Boeing who aim to double the number of planes in service by 2045, prevents any planning ahead, while each year’s delay increases the vulnerability of the sector’s employees.”

At a pre-Paris Air Show briefing, GIFAS, the organizer of the event, said it wanted the show to be an opportunity to highlight climate progress—including through the Paris Air Lab, which is set to be a green innovation focal point of the show—but also to reframe the dialogue surrounding the sector’s environmental footprint and to celebrate the industry after the coronavirus pandemic and in the context of rising anti-aviation sentiment.

“We’ve had enough of aviation-bashing,” Paris Air Show Chairman Patrick Daher said on June 7.

Daher said the public days of the show would take the form of a “huge festival” of aviation—with music, escape games and competitions designed to celebrate the sector. He also said the industry needs to demonstrate, via the air show, everything it is doing to attempt to reduce its environmental impact.

The environmental campaigners’ statement comes about a month after climate activists disrupted the EBACE business aviation show in Geneva, saying that private jets were responsible for a disproportionate amount of carbon dioxide. Protesters at the May event entered the static display and disturbed the show as well as traffic at Geneva Airport.

Lounes Dupeux, campaigner at Stay Grounded, says: “The Paris Air Show is the pinnacle of climate denial. Executives at the [show] are once again trying to greenwash us by focusing the conversation on technological solutions and alternative fuels. They cannot be trusted.”

Dupeux goes on to accuse air show executives of attempting “to distract us from the real solutions, like an end to subsidies for the aviation sector, the reduction of air traffic and establishing secure jobs for aviation workers to transition out of the industry.”

“These are easy solutions that would lay the tracks for a better, more fair world,” she says.