Alleviating greenhouse gas emissions caused by an international commercial air transport undertaking

This article argues that in light of a continual expansion of aviation industry and an ever-increasing demand for international air travel, on the one hand, and the aviation’s growing impact on climate, on the other hand, the complex problem of aviation emissions necessitates pressing responses by utilizing multiplicity of strategies requiring an array of multidisciplinary approaches. By drawing on the existing empirical studies and literature, the article focuses on the complementary role of actions taken at the collective and at the individual level. The article first considers the global regulatory approaches in the form of climate change-related treaties and the International Civil Aviation Organisation’s measures, as well as the initiative to curb emissions caused by international civil aviation under the European Union Emission Trading System, and then, highlighting the need to augment the international regulatory approach with individual responses, identifies the behavioral change, together with the concomitant inevitability of education, as the top priority line of attack on the international commercial air transportation greenhouse gas emissions. Given the degree of urgency attached to the issue of climate change alleviation, observations in this article of lessons-learned are timely and instructive.