I didn't think I could put this in the Preservation side, so here goes. California has stiff legislation requiring automobiles, trucks, and locomotives to eventually achieve zero emissions. What about the elephant in the room-aviation? Is that mode of transportation getting a pass?

As I think I understand it, the feds regulate interstate aircraft emissions. However, CARB is working on intrastate emissions. They ain't gettin' no pass.


https://theicct.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/ca-aviation-decarbonization-jan23.pdf

The only carbon "they" are worried about is you.

Aircraft are the one emissions producing machine where reliability and safety trump everything else. Although recent news stories might make you think otherwise. They are working on electric airplanes, but the battery technology, and mostly capacity, is nowhere near close for anything above a 4 place GA aircraft. It could change though.

Even in California there are rules about who regulates what… so the Department of Motor Vehicles handles cars and trucks, Air quality Management Districts handle “stationary smoke stacks”, the Coast Guard regulates emissions from ships. I assume that the FAA has responsibility for aircraft but with some oversight by local authorities… at least that was how noise regulations worked.

I did have an experience when we were firing up an eight ton Porter on coal… it was cold and producing quite a cloud of yellow grey smoke… seen by an Air Quality Management District employee who left the nearby freeway at high speed… and laughed when he saw the source… for he could only regulate stationary smokestacks and this one was clearly mobile… In conversation, he did ask about how many tons of coal we consumed… when that total was less than two tons a year he noted were not something for his agency to worry about. Similarly on site we had a blacksmith who used coal… again, his consumption was significantly less than their trigger for concern.