Days before the latest climate summit is due to begin in Dubai, the first flight powered entirely by “sustainable aviation fuel” landed safely in New York.
The twin engines of this Boeing 787 Dreamliner ran on farm waste and used cooking oil, an alternative to the kerosene that is usually dug up, refined and burned to satisfy the wanderlust of a relatively wealthy minority of Earth’s people.
Sadly, the entire event was a stunt, say political economists Gareth Dale (Brunel University London) and Josh Moos (Leeds Beckett University). They point out that the market for cooking oil is poorly regulated, and so “sustainable fuels” can come from palm oil plantations which have devastated orangutan habitat in the tropics.
