来源：《卫报》
原文刊登日期：2022年3月6日
Between March 2020 and September 2021, airlines flew 15,000 near-empty or empty planes – “ghost flights” – from UK airports to keep hold of their landing and takeoff slots. This absurd and shameful behaviour in the face of a climate emergency cannot continue. A Boeing 737-800 – the dominant aircraft on short-haul routes – emits about 18 tonnes of carbon dioxide on a 1,500km flight.
在2020年3月至2021年9月期间，航空公司从英国机场起飞了1.5万架几乎空着或完全空着的飞机——被称为“幽灵航班”，以保住航空公司的降落和起飞时隙。面对气候紧急情况，这种荒谬和可耻的行为不能继续下去。一架波音737-800——短程航线上的主要机型——在1500公里的飞行中排放约18吨二氧化碳。
In normal times, airlines could keep their slots from the previous season as long as they used them 80% of the time. This was reduced to zero when Covid struck, but has gradually increased. Slots run on a “use it or lose it” basis. Because demand is still well below supply of flights, empty planes are being flown to keep slots. Greenpeace says that more than 100,000 ghost flights will have been seen over European skies this winter.
在正常情况下，航空公司可以保住上一季的起降时隙，只要他们对这些时隙的使用率达到80%。新冠疫情爆发时，这一数字降至零，但现在已经逐渐升高。起降时隙的分配基于“不使用就失去”。由于出行需求仍然远远低于航班的供应，为了保住起降时隙，空载航班正在飞来飞去。绿色和平组织表示，今年冬天，欧洲上空将出现超过10万架次幽灵航班。
Airlines’ ghost flights are needed to keep hold of slots because carriers care about financial, rather than the Earth’s, assets. IAG, the parent company of British Airways, valued its slots at three major hubs of London, Madrid and Dublin at €1.6bn in 2018. The Scandinavian carrier SAS sold two slot pairs at Heathrow a year earlier to American Airlines for $75m. And in 2015, Virgin Atlantic borrowed £220m against its slots at Heathrow. This is a symptom of a much bigger problem: in highly financialised societies, the worth of companies listed on stock markets relies on assets, earnings and profits.
航空公司需要“幽灵航班”来保住起降时隙，因为航空公司关心的是金融资产，而不是地球的资产。2018年，英国航空的母公司国际航空集团(IAG)对伦敦、马德里和都柏林这三个主要枢纽的起降时隙估值为16亿欧元。此前一年，北欧航空公司SAS以7500万美元的价格向美国航空公司出售了两个希思罗机场的起降时隙。2015年，维珍航空以希思罗机场的起降时隙为抵押，借入了2.2亿英镑。这是一个更大问题的症状：在高度金融化的社会，上市公司的价值依赖于资产、营收和利润。
The way slots are allocated will not change unless politicians grasp that increasing wellbeing is more important than the growth in the value of transactions. Ghost flights contribute to GDP growth in a similar way that an oil spill does. Both devastate the environment, but can generate business.
除非政客们明白，提高福利比交易价值的增长更重要，否则分配起降时隙的方式不会改变。幽灵航班对GDP增长的贡献与石油泄漏类似。两者都破坏环境，但可以创造商业。
The orthodox view is that economies should expand by 2% a year to increase national welfare. Yet this does not take into account the fact that economic activity begins with the extraction of natural resources; that it does not necessarily increase human enjoyment; that it imposes environmental and social costs; and that it can be damaging in terms of inequality. Treating GDP growth as an end in itself risks, as the UN suggests, growth that does more harm than good.
传统观点认为，为了增加国民福利，经济应该以每年2%的速度增长。然而，这并没有考虑到这样一个事实：经济活动始于自然资源的开采；它并不一定会增加人类的享受；但会带来环境和社会成本；就不平等而言，这是破坏性的。正如联合国所指出的那样，将GDP增长视为一种目标本身就是一种风险，这种增长弊大于利。
Running empty flights to ensure that the runways are busy at the appointed time represents a very high cost to the natural world. There is a need to replace the economic and financial systems that fail to account for the benefits that humanity derives from nature, and to provide incentives to manage nature wisely and maintain its value.
为了确保跑道在指定时间繁忙而让飞机空载飞行，这对自然界来说是一种非常昂贵的代价。有必要取代那些无法解释人类从自然中获得的利益的经济和金融体系，并提供激励措施，明智地管理自然并维护其价值。
Last year, a study for the University of Leeds found that for the last three decades, no country has met the basic needs of its residents without overconsuming natural resources. If current trends continue, no country will do so over the next 30 years either, perpetuating human deprivation and worsening ecological breakdown. Ghost flights reveal that what needs fixing is more than the broken system for allocating airport slots.
去年，利兹大学的一项研究发现，在过去30年里，没有一个国家能在不过度消耗自然资源的情况下满足居民的基本需求。如果目前的趋势继续下去，未来30年也不会有任何国家能做到，这将使人类的匮乏永续下去，并使生态崩溃恶化。幽灵航班揭示出，需要修复的不仅仅是机场时隙分配系统的问题。