A2 · Elementary
9 min
climateaviationenergymiddle eastenvironment
The Empty Sky: Planes and the Climate
El Cielo Vacío: Los Aviones y el Clima
Dubai International Airport reports a 66% drop in passenger traffic in March 2026, a direct consequence of the Iran war. Fletcher and Octavio explore what this empty sky reveals about aviation, the climate, and the true environmental cost of flying.
El aeropuerto de Dubái reporta una caída del 66% en el tráfico de pasajeros en marzo de 2026, consecuencia directa de la guerra en Irán. Fletcher y Octavio exploran qué revela este cielo vacío sobre la aviación, el clima y el costo ambiental de volar.
8 essential A2-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| el avión | the plane / the aircraft | El avión produce mucho CO2. |
| el clima | the climate | El clima cambia mucho hoy. |
| hay | there is / there are | No hay aviones en el aeropuerto. |
| el aeropuerto | the airport | El aeropuerto de Dubái es muy grande. |
| el combustible | fuel | El avión necesita mucho combustible. |
| la contaminación | pollution | Menos aviones, menos contaminación. |
| caro | expensive | El vuelo es muy caro ahora. |
| el pasajero | the passenger | El aeropuerto tiene muchos pasajeros. |
Dubai International Airport lost two thirds of its passengers in a single month.
Not a slow decline, not a gradual restructuring.
Two thirds.
Gone.
And the reason is the war next door.
Sí.
Yes.
Dubái es un aeropuerto muy grande.
Dubai is a very large airport.
Muchos aviones pasan por allí.
Many planes pass through there.
It's not just big.
Dubai International is, depending on the year, the busiest international airport on the planet.
More passengers than Heathrow.
More than Frankfurt.
It sits at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa.
Es verdad.
That's true.
Muchas personas viajan de Europa a Asia.
Many people travel from Europe to Asia.
Pasan por Dubái.
They pass through Dubai.
Right.
And now that corridor is broken.
The airspace over Iran is closed, the region is unstable, and airlines are rerouting or canceling entirely.
Which raises something I keep thinking about: what happens to the climate when the planes stop?
Los aviones producen mucho CO2.
Planes produce a lot of CO2.
Eso es malo para el clima.
That is bad for the climate.
They do.
Aviation accounts for roughly 2 to 3 percent of global CO2 emissions.
That sounds small until you realize the whole shipping industry is about the same.
But here's the part that surprised me when I first looked into it: CO2 is actually not the worst thing planes emit.
¿No es el CO2?
It's not CO2?
¿Qué es peor?
What is worse?
Eso es mucho.
That is a lot.
No sé eso antes.
I did not know that before.
Most people don't.
And it changes the calculation entirely, because it means aviation's real climate footprint is probably two or three times larger than the CO2 number alone suggests.
When you account for everything, aviation might be responsible for around 5 percent of human-caused warming.
Cinco por ciento.
Five percent.
Es mucho para los aviones.
That is a lot for planes.
Especially because only about 4 percent of the world's population has ever flown.
Ever.
The climate impact of aviation is enormous relative to the number of people actually doing it.
So when 66 percent of Dubai's flights disappear, that is, in some very strange and unintended way, also a climate story.
Sí, pero la guerra no es buena.
Yes, but the war is not good.
No es una solución.
It is not a solution.
No, absolutely not.
Nobody is celebrating that.
But the parallel is worth examining, because we've actually seen this before.
March 2020.
The pandemic grounds aviation almost completely, and within weeks, researchers start measuring something unexpected in the atmosphere.
Menos contaminación.
Less pollution.
El aire es más limpio.
The air is cleaner.
The air was cleaner, yes.
But here's the twist: for climate specifically, the disappearance of contrails actually caused a tiny, measurable warming spike in some regions.
Because contrails don't just trap heat going up.
They also reflect sunlight back into space.
Take them away and for a short period, more sun reaches the surface.
Espera.
Wait.
¿Menos aviones es peor para el clima?
Fewer planes is worse for the climate?
In the very short term, in some places, possibly.
It's one of the most disorienting findings in climate science.
The atmosphere is complicated.
Contrails are complicated.
And it tells you something important: you can't just stop flying overnight and expect everything to improve immediately.
The system has layers.
El clima es muy difícil.
The climate is very difficult.
Muchas cosas cambian juntas.
Many things change together.
Exactly right.
And Dubai is actually a fascinating place to anchor this conversation, because the UAE hosted COP28 in 2023.
The global climate summit.
In a country that produces about three million barrels of oil a day.
The optics were, let's say, complicated.
Los Emiratos tienen mucho petróleo.
The Emirates have a lot of oil.
Y también hablan del clima.
And they also talk about the climate.
They do both, loudly and without apparent embarrassment.
The president of COP28 was the CEO of Abu Dhabi's national oil company.
That's like running a tobacco conference and putting a cigarette executive in charge.
Critics were furious.
But the UAE's argument was: we're the ones who have to manage the transition, so we have to be in the room.
Pues sí.
Well, yes.
O quizás solo quieren más tiempo.
Or perhaps they just want more time.
That is the question, isn't it.
And I don't think it has a clean answer.
But what COP28 did produce, which surprised a lot of people, was the first climate agreement that explicitly named fossil fuels as something the world needed to transition away from.
That had never happened before in thirty years of climate negotiations.
Treinta años.
Thirty years.
Es mucho tiempo para hablar.
That is a long time to talk.
A very long time to talk.
The first IPCC report came out in 1990.
My daughter was three years old.
She's got kids of her own now.
And we're still negotiating the language.
Meanwhile the planes keep flying.
Or, this month, they don't.
Entonces, ¿qué hacemos con los aviones?
So, what do we do about planes?
That's the hard part.
Cars can run on electricity.
Trucks, increasingly, can too.
But a commercial aircraft carrying 300 people across twelve time zones needs an extraordinary amount of energy.
Batteries today weigh too much and carry too little.
The physics are brutal.
Los aviones eléctricos existen.
Electric planes exist.
Pero son pequeños.
But they are small.
Small and short-range.
There are electric aircraft flying today, but they carry maybe ten or twelve passengers for perhaps two hundred kilometers.
For island hops or short commuter routes, that works.
For Dubai to London, you're nowhere near.
The technology gap is enormous.
¿Y el combustible sostenible?
And sustainable fuel?
¿Eso ayuda?
Does that help?
Sustainable Aviation Fuel, SAF.
This is probably the most realistic near-term option.
You make it from things like cooking oil waste, agricultural residues, even captured CO2.
It can run in existing engines without modification.
The problem?
It currently costs three to five times more than conventional jet fuel and there isn't nearly enough of it.
Es caro.
It is expensive.
Entonces el precio del vuelo sube.
So the price of the flight goes up.
Yes.
And that brings in the equity question, which I think is the part that rarely gets discussed honestly.
Flying is already unequal.
Four percent of humanity has ever boarded a plane.
But if you make it significantly more expensive to decarbonize it, you potentially lock out the next generation of travelers from developing countries who are just starting to fly.
Claro.
Of course.
Europa ya vuela mucho.
Europe already flies a lot.
África, no tanto.
Africa, not so much.
Africa has about 1.4 billion people and generates about 2 percent of global aviation emissions.
Europe has roughly 450 million people and generates around a third.
So when wealthy countries say we need to make flying expensive to save the planet, there's a real conversation to be had about who bears that cost.
Es justo.
That is fair.
Los ricos viajan más.
Rich people travel more.
Es su problema también.
It is their problem too.
Largely, yes.
And some researchers have pushed for what they call a frequent flyer levy.
The idea is that your first flight a year is taxed normally, but by the third or fourth flight you're paying significantly more.
The argument is that a tiny fraction of passengers take the vast majority of flights.
Target those people, not occasional travelers.
Yo viajo mucho.
I travel a lot.
Eso es un problema para mí.
That is a problem for me.
You and every journalist I've ever met.
I flew something like 200 days a year for most of my career.
Buenos Aires, Jakarta, Beirut.
I didn't think twice.
Now I think about it all the time.
Funny how that works.
El mundo cambia.
The world changes.
Nosotros cambiamos también.
We change too.
Look, the Dubai number is striking not because an empty airport is a climate solution, it absolutely isn't, but because it's a window.
When the planes stop, even briefly, even for terrible reasons, you can see the scale of what aviation means.
For the atmosphere, for global connectivity, for trade.
It's like a power cut that reminds you everything runs on electricity.
Sí.
Yes.
Cuando no hay algo, lo ves mejor.
When something is not there, you see it better.
That's actually a beautifully put way of saying it.
Absence makes things visible.
And I think that applies to the whole climate debate.
We don't appreciate what the atmosphere does until it starts failing to do it.
Bueno.
Right.
Oye, hay algo que quiero preguntar.
Hey, there is something I want to ask.
Go ahead.
Yo digo 'cuando no hay algo, lo ves mejor.' ¿Eso tiene sentido en inglés?
I say 'when something is not there, you see it better.' Does that make sense in English?
It does, and it reminded me of something.
You said 'hay' there.
'No hay.' We've used it a dozen times this episode and I've always just accepted it, but I actually don't know what it is grammatically.
It's not a regular verb.
No.
No.
'Hay' es especial.
'Hay' is special.
Es del verbo 'haber.' Significa 'existe' o 'existe algo.'
It comes from the verb 'haber.' It means 'there is' or 'there are.'
So 'hay un problema' is 'there is a problem,' and 'no hay solución' is 'there is no solution.' Just the one word does both singular and plural.
Exacto.
Exactly.
'Hay un avión.' 'Hay muchos aviones.' Es igual.
'There is one plane.' 'There are many planes.' It is the same.
English makes you choose: 'there is' or 'there are.' Spanish just says 'hay' and moves on.
Honestly, that seems like a better system.
Fewer chances to get it wrong.
Sí.
Yes.
El español es más fácil, Fletcher.
Spanish is easier, Fletcher.
Ya lo sé.
I already know that.