How I got involved in contrails management – and why I believe it’s one of the biggest opportunities in climate
✈ In 2022, by coincidence, I was introduced to a group of engineers needing help communicating what they were doing with something called “contrails mitigation.” They told me how those long white clouds behind airplanes can sometimes linger in the air for hours and spread out to become high-altitude ice clouds that trap heat on Earth. They also talked about the relatively easy fix they were working on: They would identify where the weather is perfect for contrails and then slightly reroute the flights that were supposed to go through that weather to avoid climate warming.
I couldn’t believe what I was told 😲: These often beautiful sky streaks are responsible for 1-2% of climate change. Why hadn’t I heard about this before? Why couldn’t I find a ton of information about this online?
The group hired me on a three-month contract to develop website content and communications strategies. This was my chance to dive deeply into the contrail problem and its solutions. I began to realize that contrails mitigation (also called contrails management) is likely the biggest opportunity in climate that almost no one has heard about.
I did the job, the contract ended, and I went on to other things. Still, it was hard to let go of the contrail world. For years, I had been looking for my purpose in work.
During the pandemic, with lots of time on my hands, I began to think about how I could contribute to the climate agenda and – naively! – hand over the planet to my kids in a better state than I found it. I started reading books, enrolled in exciting online educations (UC Berkeley Extension, Terra.do, and more), listened to podcasts, went to (virtual) meetups and conferences, asked for personal introductions to people who had already accomplished something significant in climate, and explored verticals like cement and food.
🎉 But nothing had excited me more than contrails mitigation did.
This was an easy, cheap, and available climate solution – and those are extremely rare. We all know the planet needs rapid action to achieve the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees C or well below 2.0 degrees C.
But climate solutions are usually complicated and risky, take decades to implement at scale, require billions of dollars in investments, or all of the above. However, contrails management had none of those drawbacks. Furthermore, here was a climate solution in dire need of my main skill: Communication.
My background is in journalism and media management. After finishing journalism school in Denmark a few decades ago, I got my first job as a newspaper reporter before switching to television 🎥. It was a great playground. I tried everything from working on some of the first reality shows to attempting to reinvent the local school system in a prime-time documentary series. Later, I founded my own TV production company, which produced shows for all Danish broadcasters. When I sold it, I was done with TV, but not done wanting to influence people by telling engaging stories.
The stories of the contrail solutions that brilliant engineers and scientists are working on deserve to reach a much bigger audience. I now know many of the people and their ideas. They really have their hearts in the right place and want to help the aviation industry tackle this problem in an easy and cost-effective way. They want the best for the planet and for you and me. They do deeply meaningful work. Many of their scientific findings can be “translated” into real-life solutions that benefit us all, but very few people know about these opportunities. Maybe I could help. This felt important and meaningful to me. I had found my purpose.
So, I decided to go all in. Make it my full-time work. In the spring of 2023, the non-profit Blue Lines was born. With the help of old friends and new, engaged climate heroes, the website blue-lines.org was launched in August 2023.
Blue Lines is 100% self-funded for now. Still, in the future, we aim to find donors who want to see the easy, cheap, and available climate solution of contrail management implemented worldwide at scale as soon as possible. The opportunity is here to quickly eliminate climate warming that is at least equivalent to the warming that Canada is responsible for.
We are still working on our mission and vision statements, but so far, this is it:
Blue Lines’ mission is to help people understand the significant climate impact of contrails and the easy, cheap, and available solution that needs to be implemented to manage contrails and instantly eliminate 1-2% of global warming.
We envision a near future where everyone in the aviation industry will easily manage contrails to lower the global temperature and slow climate change. 🌎
What do you think? Wouldn’t you want that, too?
If you want to contribute, become a part of the climate movement, and work on one of the most overlooked but promising climate solutions out there, please go to our task board, which we try to update regularly with opportunities for getting involved.
Thanks so much for reading this far and for your support. Don’t hesitate to share this post with people you think might be interested. It means a lot to us to get in touch with a broader audience – and it is important for broadening the knowledge of the contrail problem and easy solution.
Joachim Majholm, founder of Blue Lines.
You might be left with a couple of questions, which I will try to answer:
Q: If this climate solution is so amazing, why haven’t any airlines embraced contrails mitigation yet?
A: Here’s my attempt at explaining why airlines haven’t adopted contrail mitigation yet, and here are seven reasons why airlines should implement contrail mitigation ASAP.
Q: I love flying, and now you tell me the climate impact is much worse than I thought. Is flying going to be more expensive because of contrails?
A: Currently, aviation impacts the climate much more than most airlines are admitting (though some are helping scientists work on the problem). But the solution to this “new” climate problem of contrails is easy, cheap, and available. Implementing contrail management in an airline’s operation should only cost a few cents per passenger but could drastically reduce that airline’s climate impact.
Q: Why haven’t big established media outlets reported about this?
A: Well, they have, but not much. At Blue Lines, we have collected a few media highlights from the likes of BBC, CNN, and the New York Times – mostly to show you that this is real!
Q: What can I do to help?
A: Thanks for asking. Please share our posts, website, and agenda. Get people interested. And if you want to go further, check Blue Lines’ task board. We always need local ambassadors (you can become one!), help with research, or if you have ideas for impactful action, locally or worldwide, please contact us here.