It always amuses me how quickly saving the environment goes from it doesn’t cost us much at all to well we have to pay now or else it’ll cost us even more later.

Examples of this sort of bait and switch are numerous, but the latest example has come out of the airline industry where for the longest time we’ve been told that we could offset the CO2 emissions from your airline ticket for just a couple of bucks. But all of a sudden, we’re being told that in just 25 years, we will be paying an average of $1,350 per ticket more than we are right now. And that’ll be just to cover the cost of net zero sustainable aviation fuel. But actually, I’m glad that the truth is finally being acknowledged across the media landscape because it’s become clear to me over the last 5 years, especially that most Aussies really don’t care about their freedom. But they do care about their holidays, which makes this a perfect issue for people like you and I to use to perhaps actually get the attention of these apathetic middle Australians who think foolishly that if they just ignore politics, then politics will ignore them.

In this video, I’m going to cover what sustainable aviation fuel is, why it’s supposed to be better, why it’s actually going to be worse for the environment, not just for your hip pocket, how it’s going to drive up costs, and how we can use this issue and the pain that it will cause in a place where Australians will actually feel the hurt, their holidays, to turn this into a turning point against net zero. But before we get to all of that, my name’s Topher Field. This is the Topher project and I help busy people like you to cut through the crap and make sense of the nonsense that surrounds us. I am 100% viewer supported. So if you appreciate what I do, then please help me to keep doing what I do by buying me a coffee via the button at topherfield.net. And if you like my no-nonsense videos, then you will love my no-nonsense books, my DVDs, and my merch, including a range of different merch designs. From my classic Good People Break Bad Laws design, which goes on the front, to the new Good People Break Bad Laws, which goes on the back, to my quote from history saying, “Don’t make me repeat myself.” To my personal favorite, too much 1984, not enough 1776. I’m not going to explain that one. If you know, you know. And of course, there’s the one that is most relevant to today’s video, Nyet Zero, which is my way of saying no to net zero. You’ll find all of these along with my two best-selling books about civil disobedience, plus my DVD. All available at goodpeoplebreakbadlaws.com. And everything you buy will help me to keep the Topher project going.

First, let’s answer the question. What is SAF or Sustainable Aviation Fuel?

Well, it’s just a wanky way of saying biofuels mixed in with used oil from the local fish and chip shop. Aviation fuel is actually pretty basic stuff. It’s kind of got more in common with diesel than it does with petrol. Now, I’m sure you’ve heard of a thing called a biofuel. This is basically fuels that are made directly from crops like corn or sugarcane in the case of bioethanol, but soy and sunflowers in the case of biodiesel. Now, some people have tried to argue that biofuels are the way to save the world from apocalyptic climate change being caused by plant food, uh, CO2, sorry. But they’ve run into a serious problem with that idea, the environment. See, biofuels are arguably a great idea if all you care about is CO2 emissions. But if you actually care about the environment, then biofuels fail the test instantly for a host of reasons that we’ll get to in a moment.

But this is a massive problem for SAF, sustainable aviation fuels, because mostly it’s just biofuels. It’s just liquid soybeans and sunflowers, which sounds amazing and oh so environmentally friendly. Until you realize the scale of industrial monocropping required to supply an industry as big as the aviation industry with all of the attendant use of fertilizers, which are nitrogen, which is made out of natural gas, by the way, no, I’m not making this up. The biofuels needed so that planes can run without fossil fuels, require fossil fuels to make the fertilizer. And did I mention the amount of pesticides needed and all of the energy, including fossil fuel energy needed to plow, sew, harvest, and process these biofuels? But all of that’s just the environmental cost of biofuels.

The human cost of biofuels is absolutely outrageous. And using fertile farmland to grow fuel instead of food is literally a crime against humanity in my view. Globally, the farmed area of the Earth is actually decreasing thanks to productivity gains that mean we’re making more food with less land, which is great news. It means that we are no longer having to clear more forests or cultivate more wilderness just to grow our foods and feed our population. But it means that we’re feeding our population using only the land that we’ve already got. Which means that every hectare of land that we then use to grow fuel is a hectare that we’re not using to feed people. Which means that food prices become higher than they could otherwise have been. Now big deal, you might think, but global food prices are a very big deal for people who are living in poverty.

The Covid shutdowns gave us an object lesson in the brutal realities that genuinely poor people face as the interruptions to global supply chains during Covid pushed nearly 100 million people back into extreme poverty and caused at a minimum millions of premature deaths amongst those most vulnerable people on the planet. It is the height of out of touch privilege for any westerner to be advocating for more land to be converted away from food production and in to fuel production so that that rich westerner can feel better about going on a long haul flight while other people starve. Sustainable aviation fuels are biofuels plus recycled waste oils such as car oils, cooking oils, and more. And yeah, I have no problem with recycling used oil, but remanufacturing oil to make it safe for reliable aviation use, well, that’s not cheap. You might get the oils for free. You might even be paid to dispose of those used oils for all I care, but the plants and the processes needed to turn that stuff into a properly quality controlled end product that meets the needs and standards of the aviation industry. That is most definitely not free.

And that’s where the whole sustainable aviation fuel thing goes very, very wrong. According to industry insiders, they need to build 7,000 new remanufacturing plants in the next 25 years to be able to supply the needs of the aviation industry. And the resulting fuel that comes out of these plants, well, it is way more expensive than jet fuel is right now. And here’s the kicker. Even allowing for economies of scale as the industry scales up, it will never be cheaper than jet fuel being created with raw materials that have just been brought out of the ground. And that fact that it will never be cheaper, well, that was made abundantly clear by the experts speaking at the International Air Transport Association World Sustainability Symposium. Try saying that 10 times quickly. They’re not even trying to pretend that this sustainable aviation fuel will ever be cheaper than what we’re paying right now. They are the ones who are saying it’s going to jack up the cost of an average airfare by 1,350 bucks.

Why will it cost so much? Well, because this sustainable aviation fuel is certainly not financially sustainable.

Right now, only 2 million tons are being produced every year because no one wants to buy the stuff except for occasional publicity stunts. But 500 million tons of the stuff will be needed. That’s where the 7,000 new plants figure comes from. That’s what it will take to produce that much at tremendous cost. But this is where the bait and switch comes in. Because for well over a decade now, we’ve been given the opportunity to offset our carbon emissions when we fly at a cost in 2023 of 1.8 cents per kilogram of CO2 from an Australian domestic carrier. Now, that typically comes in at a few dollars for your average domestic flight and perhaps a little over $100 for long haul international flights.

And gullible travelers were told that this was enough. Job done. Your CO2 is offset and now you don’t have to feel guilty about traveling through the sky in an aluminum sausage at 850 km an hour. You paid your indulgence fees to the Church of Climatology and now you don’t have to go to confession. And yes, climate change is most definitely a new religion. Make no mistake about that. But all of a sudden, they’re changing the rules. We’re being told now that actually it’s going to cost an average of more than $1,000 per flight to offset those same CO2 emissions and achieve net zero rather than just the couple of bucks that we used to pay.

Well, either that means that this sustainable aviation fuel is a terrible, horrible, stupid, inefficient, devilishly expensive, no good idea that costs at least 10 times what other options cost to achieve the same carbon neutral result. That’s assuming that we accept the premise that CO2 needs to be offset in the first place. Or it means that we’ve been lied to this whole time and these carbon offsets that gullible people have been buying haven’t actually been doing the job they said they did in the first place. What’s amazing to see is how brazing the advocates brazen the advocates of this silliness are when it comes to hitting you in your hip pocket. IATA chief economist Marie Owens Thompson said it was hard to know when airfares would start reflecting the push toward more sustainable travel, but quote, “The sooner the better.”

When are we going to see it? I can’t really say when, but I hope soon because if soon, it means that we will get fuel to buy and that will be great. And we also just must. Dr. Owens Thompson said it will also mean the crippling costs can be spread over 25 years rather than inflicted on the traveling public in a shorter space of time. That is some rolled gold BS if ever I read some. The trick here is the assumption that as Marie says we just must. So, if we’re going to do it by 2050 regardless because we just must, then let’s spread that pain out over the full 25 years. But the premise is wrong. We don’t just must at all. And increasingly, the world is waking up to the fact that we don’t just must. And in fact, the cost of such nonsense in terms of the financial burden, but also the devastation to the environment. And also in the case of these sustainable aviation fuels and their reliance on biofuels, the human cost in lives lost simply isn’t acceptable.

So what’s the solution? Well, if you’re a bought and paid for shill for the aviation industry, the solution is obvious.

Make taxpayers fund it so that it doesn’t raise ticket prices by so much so it doesn’t hurt the industry that pays you by as much quote should governments be looking at subsidizing SAF yes, absolutely that is 100% what everybody should do then the burden falls on the taxpayer she said well that’s exactly what Albanese is doing with the real costs of the net zero transition in Australia he’s hiding much of the cost in general revenue, general taxation. These subsidies for the household battery roll out are a prime example. Those costs, the subsidies, the taxpayer funded handouts for those batteries, well, they don’t go on to power bills. He knows that we would never tolerate that. So, he hides the cost in the national debt instead.

The airline industry’s pet economist thinks that the solution is for the airline industry to do exactly the same thing to hide the cost of SAF in general taxpayer funding rather than in the ticket price. But notice the example that she uses. However, we the world as a whole subsidized the creation of the two new energy markets that were wind and solar. Why did the world collectively think that it was right to use taxpayers money to support those energy markets, but somehow thinks that it’s not right to do that in this energy market? That’s not the win that she clearly thinks it is. Maybe she’s doing it easy on her highly paid shill salary. But for the rest of us who are living in the real world, the subsidized creation of the wind and solar energy markets has been a disaster that we are paying for in very real ways every single day. And the airline industry is very happy to tell us that we should have to pay all over again.

The sustainable aviation fuels idea is just another taxpayer funded boondoggle, a new station for the climate gravy train to stop at. And such is the lack of self-awareness that these new grifters are literally advocating for their grift on the basis that the last lot of grifters grifted really well off taxpayers. But sadly, none of that’s actually news. It’s kind of to be expected in today’s upside down crazy world. The real news here is that this is an opportunity to reach the disinterested average Aussies who until now have been the go along to get along, she’ll be right types. When you tell them that that holiday to Japan is going to cost you double what it used to because all of a sudden the carbon offsets that you used to naively buy, well, they’re just not good enough anymore.

Well, then maybe, just maybe, those average Joe’s and James will begin to comprehend that these climate zealots will never stop. That every time you give them an inch, they will take a mile and then they’ll come back for more. This is a wakeup call. And yes, I agree. No wakeup call should have been necessary. We’ve had plenty of them already. But you and I both know that there’s a lot of people out there who just haven’t been paying attention. Perhaps another $1,350 on an average airfare is the price we’re going to have to pay to get their full and undivided attention and as a result to get the support we need to kill this climate boondoggle once and for all.

In the meantime, we need to support the politicians in Australia who are already pointing out that the emperor has no clothes.

Because, as I’ve covered previously and will be releasing another video on shortly, I believe that the Liberal National Party are closer to abandoning net zero than they appear. And stories like this one will help us to apply pressure to ensure that they do abandon net zero and they give us a real choice at the next federal election. My name is Topher Field. This is the Topher Project and I help busy people like you to cut through the crap and make sense of the nonsense that surrounds us. If you’ve learned something in this video, then I’d really appreciate it if you’d help me to keep the Topher project going by buying me a coffee via the button at topherfield.net. And if you like my videos, then you will love my books on government power, civil disobedience, and human rights, along with my DVD and my t-shirts and merch, all of which you will find at goodpeoplebreakbadlaws.com.

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