Air New Zealand’s latest sustainability report is a timely reality check.

It graphically illustrates how all of that dewy-eyed idealism manifest in Friday’s climate change strike belies the reality, of how we choose to lead our lives. Their demands for instant, radical change is pure Narnia.

The national carrier has won global accolades for its sustainability credentials.

But even an airline that lives and breaths the ethos can’t defy reality. Their carbon emissions are up five per cent. And for the foreseeable future fossil fuel will continue powering their fleet.

But rather getting all hot and bothered over a five per cent emission increase, we should remind ourselves about the brilliance and potential of technology to transform our world and conquer challenges.

The jet aircraft rolling out of Boeing factory today are eighty per cent more fuel efficient than the jet planes of the nineteen sixties. That’s a staggering achievement. And Boeing and Airbus continue their quest for even greater efficiencies.

But as Air New Zealand themselves concede, no major carbon-busting breakthroughs are now expected before aviation biofuels, hydrogen or and electric aircraft become a viable, affordable commercial reality. That is at least ten years away.

Currently, biofuels are three times the cost of jet-fuel. Some carriers add a blend of biofuel to their jet fuel mix. Qantas has dabbled with biogas derived from Ethiopian mustard seeds. But at present, it doesn’t stack up as a financially viable proposition.

That is the brutal reality. Do we junk commercial aviation, do we junk our forty billion tourism industry, in rabid fevered pursuit of carbon-zero purity? Only if you’re an economic vandal.

The aviation industry is responsible for two point five per cent of global carbon emissions. It’s not exactly monstrous. But even if you do feel guilty about flying, very few of us actually do anything about it. As Air New Zealand have revealed, fewer than five per cent of Kiwi travellers offset their emissions. Greta Thoonburg may like to think flight shame is sweeping the world and changing behaviour. Reality says otherwise.