Airlines must flock together on climate | Bangkok Post: opinion

AVIATION

The European Commission (EC) "stopped the clock" for inclusion of international aviation in its Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS).

That's good news. Europe deserves credit for raising climate change on the international air transport agenda. But the extra-territorial approach of the EU ETS had focused non-EU states' attention on blocking Europe's encroachment on their sovereignty rather than on reducing emissions.

Now, the space has been created for the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) to bring states to a political agreement on a global approach for market-based measures (MBMs) to help manage emissions. ICAO has already made significant progress on narrowing the technical options for MBMs. And everyone is gearing-up for an agreement at the ICAO Assembly in 2013.