As for climate change and oil use, all aviation globally is only about 7% of oil use and about 3% of carbon emissions. It’s not the main thing to worry about.
Coal fired electricity followed by oil fired land transport (mostly easily electrified cars) are together well over 50% of all emissions and are the easiest things to fix. Deforestation and agricultural emissions are also up there. All of these sources are way easier and cheaper to address than decarbonizing aviation.
Thankfully we don't have to stop at one thing. Or even limit ourselves to doing one thing at a time.
Climate change is its own problem. Physics doesn’t care what our gini coefficient is. A more equal society that emits too much carbon still has this problem.
A decarbonized society powered by renewable and nuclear energy could still have too much inequality.
A more equals society would have fewer people in poverty. It would have more active services for people who need them. All that represents a lower entropy state. Lower entropy states require more external energy input to maintain, not less.
Allowing vast numbers of people to rot in squalor while a few rich people live it up is a lower energy higher entropy state.
Individual rich people may use crazy amounts of energy but there are not many of them. Bezos’ jet consumes a tiny fraction of the power required to provide continuous modern health care to everyone, for example.
A much simpler one, that costs nothing, is simply if we did less aviation. If we had the political will, even just trying to get somewhere close to pricing pollution externalities of aviation (in addition to other pollution sources, to be clear), would immediately reduce demand and make other forms of transportation more competitive.
Of course we don’t have that political will, so it may be true that the only choice is to come up with expensive and esoteric technologies to decarbonize aviation. But I think it’s important to acknowledge that flying less was always an option we (collectively) had, but chose not to take.
It’s 3% of world carbon emissions. It’s tiny, it’s pivotal to the economy, and it’s hard to change. It’s the worst thing to fixate on, the one you’ll make the least progress toward.
What we should be fixating on is “end coal” because coal burning, largely for power generation, is both the largest single source and one of the easiest to replace. Yet that climate group is called “end oil” not “end coal.” Why?
If we actually think climate change is a problem we need to think like scientists and engineers and prioritize rationally. We also have to be willing to put politics aside and make a broad and wide appeal, arguing that fixing this is in everyone’s long term interest (because it is).
Only a small amount of aviation is pivotal by any definition, and that portion isn't very price sensitive, so paying for externalities wouldn't make much difference to it.
Even in the richest country in the world, only half of the population took even one plane trip in 2024, and the distribution among those who did, probably skews heavily toward a very small # of frequent fliers.
Aviation is super useful, no doubt. But like many difficult political problems, the benefits are concentrated on those who fly the most, or who consume most of the products that typically fly, and the costs are spread among those who fly the least, or not at all.
Anyway, I have never seen someone advocate to ignore coal in favour of focussing on aviation. But I have seen a lot of people advocate to ignore aviation in favour of focussing on anything but aviation.
As others have said, we can do more than one thing. Some of us can focus on coal, others on aviation. I am just a message board pundit, not involved in coal or aviation, nor advocacy around climate change on either. I am just skeptical of approaches that privilege one pollution source over another. Maybe politics means it's the best we can do, but that's not a very satisfying answer to some of us.
Since the retirement of the Concorde we've regrettably had to use fighter jets for some of these life-saving flights. Sure, rich people subsidized all of it to shave a few hours off their business flights, but given how much avgas Elon's jet uses, it is really more efficient if they half the people who would take a supersonic flight take small private jets instead?
Jets don’t consume avgas.
This sounds like it would check out until you realize that the Concorde operated on only two routes, and not on an ad hoc basis.
This is extremely convenient if you happen to need to get some critical medical supply, which happens to not exist in one of these world capitols, from New York to Paris or London and the timing lines up perfectly with a scheduled Concorde flight. How often do organs go transatlantic anyway? Are there tons of snakebite victims in Paris or London that can only be treated by antivenin stored at JFK?
In any other circumstance, you are almost certainly better off sending a medical jet directly from where the item is to where it needs to go. A business jet going straight from where the donor organ is, to where it needs to go is, in almost any circumstance, going to be faster than waiting for the next scheduled flight going supersonic across the Atlantic, then having to transfer to a completely different subsonic plane for the rest of its journey.
Also, the Concorde had other routes. I don't think those routes were even the first ones. I remember reading about Singapore and the Middle East, but according to this website: http://www.concordesst.com/history/destinations.html it even went to Barbados.
It looks like you can learn plenty more by googling or reading newspaper archives.
It mentions nothing about the Concorde being used for medical deliveries on charter, or at all. Nor have you substantiated using fighters for medical deliveries in its lieu, which was asserted. It also notoriously wasn’t viable for longer flights without refueling, which again, is another logistical and timing issue for medical flight.
The rub with Concorde, or any supersonic jet, is that they are not allowed to operate supersonic over land. That makes it an expensive, fuel hogging, very loud, plane with special runway needs.