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Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity, James Hansen, 2009
Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity, James Hansen, 2009
Archival inkjet print
2017

An airline tickets was found inside this book by noted climate scientist and former head of NASA James Hansen—perhaps used by the book's former owner as a bookmark while reading Hansen's urgent warnings on an airplane.

A round-trip flight from New York to Europe or California creates a warming effect equivalent to 2 to 3 tons of carbon dioxide per person. For many urban-dwellers, flying is by far their largest contribution to planetary warming.

Flying has become a normalized and important part of many people's lifestyles, yet the need to reduce emissions is inescapable. A carbon tax would create a true cost model where people wealthy enough to fly also paid for the emissions they created, instead of externalizing these costs onto the biosphere and the developing world. A carbon tax on airline emissions and would also encourage telecommuting, accelerate the productions of more efficient airplanes and cause people to be more thoughtful about the flights they take.