FLYING GREEN by Christopher de Bellaigue, an award-winning author, historian, and journalist, provides important background and devotes a chapter each to aviation fuel, the promise of hydrogen, and flying electric. Presenting a variety of scenarios and possible solutions, de Bellaigue writes in a very accessible manner. His comments about "flight shame" and KLM's campaign asking people to "fly responsibly" prompted me to reflect on how emissions data are now often shown when choosing between specific flights. The numerous statistics de Bellaigue cites are amazing; here are a just a few examples:
- "Researchers have estimated that the 823 million international flights recorded in 2018 were taken by a mere 155 million people – just 2 percent of the world’s population."
- The global aviation sector's "total contribution of $2.7 trillion to the gross domestic product, and the 65.5 million jobs it supports, would be comparable to the United Kingdom's economic size and population."
- And, "a recent study ... identified giving up one transatlantic flight per year as one of four actions [one less child; plant-based diet; no car travel] we could take that would have the greatest impact on the environment."

FLYING GREEN is listed as one of the Financial Times' books to read in 2023. In addition to notes, there is a reference to other books published by Columbia Global Reports; like this one (111 pages), the publisher says they are "... short, but ambitious ... works of original thinking and on-site reporting from all over the world, on a wide range of topics. They offer new ways of looking at and understanding the major issues of our time." Given the Earth Day connection, I intend to revisit Miseducation ("How Climate Change Is Taught in America") by Katie Worth.

An informative survey of the current state of the "sustainable aviation" field, from more sustainable carbon-based fuels to hydrogen to eVTOL aircraft, which I found interesting since the most recent books I've read discussing climate change have either been a little pollyannaish in declaring aviation to be solvable by amorphous "regulations" or flatly dismissive of green aviation on the grounds that energy-density issues will render electric aircraft inadequate to the task. If I wanted anything more, it would be a larger discussion of alternatives to air travel for the environmentally-minded average person, either in a current sense or an exploration of what direction other industries might need to go in, such as shipping or lighter-than-air airships.

Thanks to NetGalley and Columbia Global Reports for the ARC.

As an aerospace engineer working in the sustainable aviation field, I was very intrigued with this book. I thought that the technologies that were chosen to be focused on in this book were a pivotal choice and helped provide a well rounded view of the innovation happening in the area. I did find the book itself rather pessimistic, though I understand some of it goes with the nature of the impacts of climate change. I felt like in the beginning the book was sort of all over the place, sharing random aviation and environmental stats, but by the end of the book I felt there was a clearer message.