In India, Noida International Airport will become the biggest in the country (70 million passengers), and Singapore has plans for a new Terminal 5 that will more than double the size of the airport.
There are other significant airport projects under way, or in discussion, in Ethiopia (Mega Airport City), the Philippines (Sangley Point), China (Dalian Jinzhou Bay), Saudi Arabia (King Salman International) and Vietnam (Long Thanh). Collectively these will carry many hundreds of millions of passengers per year.
Some might argue that it is only fair that these countries have their chance to reap the benefits of aviation, as Europe has for many decades. A similar argument has been used to justify the proliferation of coal plants in the developing world. Others may argue that the emergence of greener planes, 20 per cent more efficient than the ones they’re replacing, is a consideration. However, with passenger numbers set to boom over the next decade, this will likely outweigh any improvements in efficiency.
Stefan Gössling, a professor at Linnaeus University in Sweden who specialises in climate policy and aviation, points out that the United States remains the world’s biggest aviation polluter per capita.
“A lot of catching-up is going on in the world of aviation,” he says. “Per capita, North America [emitted] 520kg of CO2 from commercial air transport in 2018, Europe was half of that (250kg) and the Asia-Pacific region a fifth of Europe (57kg CO2).”
He adds: “You could argue that Europe is doing the right thing – not trying to catch up on the USA, and rather trying to slim down from their comparatively still very high levels of per-capita emissions.”
Gössling predicts that as climates become more extreme, within a decade politicians in India, China and the Middle East will start to align with European priorities, including approaches to aviation. If he is right, that’ll come just in time for the grand opening of all of those shiny new airports. But too late, perhaps, to sidestep the temperature tipping point after which scientists say there will be no return.