Trade & Transport Policy in Inclement Skies - The Conflict between Sustainable Air Transportation and Neo-Classical Economics
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Transportation has been described the world's most serious environmental villain. Concerns over profligate consumption of non-renewable resources (i.e., fossil fuels), global warming, ozone depletion, and acid rain, well air and noise pollution, urban sprawl, congestion, and safety, warrant careful examination of the role of transport in making the planet less habitable. As one source put it, as a result of decades of careless development practices, our generation is now confronted with the reality of irreversible environmental damage.Among the most prominent of non-renewable resources being consumed at a vigorous rate are fossil fuels, particularly oil. During the twentieth century, world energy consumption increased more than twelve times, while per capita energy consumption increased 3.7 times. Fuel consumption by transport increases at the rate of 2.6% a year. The combustion of fossil fuels releases significant pollutants into the Earth's atmosphere; these include greenhouse gases, such carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen oxides [NOx], volatile organic compounds, and unburnt hydrocarbons. Greenhouse gases are those which are particularly effective in absorbing longer wavelength radiation beyond the visible light spectrum and trapping it in the atmosphere. Transportation accounts for forty-five percent of all volatile organic compound emissions.Though most of the problem of pollution is caused by the surface modes, particularly the automobile, increased concerns are being raised by air transportation-the fastest growing mode of transport and the only human enterprise to emit pollutants directly into the upper atmosphere. Noise and emissions are the most serious environmental problems posed by commercial aviation. Aircraft and the airports to and which they fly are their source. The fundamental question is how to accommodate commercial economic activity without jeopardizing the environment in which we live.This article examines the traditional means by which the adverse environmental consequences of air transport may be arrested and advocates consideration of non-traditional remedies. Within the traditional arsenal of prohibitory and remedial means examined are: U.S. legal and regulatory mechanisms; airport locational and environmental abatement alternatives; and technology and planning. Within the less traditional means of arresting environmental pollution and enhancing sustainability examined are: social norms; rational pricing; trade policy; and transport policy. A comprehensive solution to the problems of environmental degradation caused by air transport requires that all these areas be addressed.No single remedy will likely work, and several are inextricably intertwined; but much progress can be made if they are pursued in tandem. The overriding objective should be to make transport least offensive possible, so to achieve sustainability. But before addressing remedies to the problem of environmental degradation, this article first assesses the problem.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.008 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.007 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.014 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".