FLYING GREEN

Everyone loves to travel, and the industry's room for growth seems humongous—four-fifths of the world hasn't flown; 93 percent of Chinese people don't have a passport—except that flying will soon be responsible for 19 percent of global emissions. Some people have even decided never to fly.

Last year, the world's airlines pledged to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, and whether that actually happens or not, over the coming decades aviation will experience more innovation than it has since the jet engine in the 1940s, transforming the way planes are powered and the way they look. Christopher de Bellaigue goes to the frontiers of the new technologies, from a startup in Iceland that shows what it takes to truly capture carbon, a California firm using hydrogen tanks to power their planes, to an airship called the Flying Whale. A new generation of travelers are eager to see innovation that will alleviate their guilt about flying, and they want to know where the industry is, how seriously they're taking climate change, and what the future looks like. This is the story of the search for a way to fly green.

Christopher de Bellaigue is the author of several books. A broadcaster for the BBC, he is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker, Granta, Harper's, The Guardian, The Economist and The New York Review of Books.