But just as people across the globe are preparing for takeoff, environmental pressure groups are working to keep them grounded. On January 20, the Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity, and Friends of the Earth filed a joint lawsuit in the U.S. Court of Appeals against the Environmental Protection Agency, alleging that the EPA is abetting pollution from airplanes through lax regulation. The suit comes in the wake of EPA rulemakings in 2021 and 2022 that bring the United States into compliance with standards adopted by the International Civil Aviation Organization, a U.N. body. While the subject matter of the most recent EPA airplane rules, and the lawsuit filed against the agency, is local air pollution, the same legacy environmental groups filed suit against 2021 rules to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as well, arguing that the limits don’t go far enough.

The unremitting opposition these environmentalists show toward air travel betrays an ugly truth: they want all of us to stay grounded. Indeed, in 2018, former Sierra Club president Carl Pope admitted as much, lamenting in the New York Times that supersonic aircraft could soon usher in an era of greater human mobility. This troubling proclivity is not limited to North America.

[The COVID lockdowns have set an unfortunate precedent for climatistas. Declarations of climate emergencies will allow their allies in government to impose by diktat what would be overwhelmingly opposed by self-governing populations. And they know it. — Ed]