From her educational farm in Boisset in Haute-Loire, Fanny Agostini celebrates food, health and agriculture.

This Monday, she returns to CO2 emissions according to their usefulness.

Even if consuming rice has more of an impact on the environment than taking a plane, it nourishes us and therefore has a greater utility.

Eating rice would have more of an impact on the climate than flying. 

Comparison risky at first glance and well not.

Fanny Agostini dares to compare rice and planes.

To put things in perspective, we must understand that the cultivation of rice in the world represents 4% of greenhouse gas emissions.

Rice fields are areas of stagnant water that release a lot of methane.

If we compare these emissions linked to rice cultivation against that of air traffic, we understand that air transport weighs 1% less, ie 3% of global emissions.

Ultimately, eating rice has a greater impact on global warming than all our air travel. 

What should we understand? 

That we have to distinguish between greenhouse gas emissions and those that are not.

The researcher and member of the IPCC, François Gemenne, has a very interesting approach on this subject.

According to him, it is important to sort out greenhouse gas emissions according to their social utility.

Rice will be used to feed millions of people, so it is difficult to do without it while for other sectors such as aviation, there, emissions are negotiable.

According to François Gemenne, we must think sector by sector.

As for our mobility by plane, here too we have to make a ranking.

We can understand that there is a big difference in terms of social utility between someone who takes the plane 20 times a year to go for a weekend sometimes in New York, sometimes in Venice and the student who is flying for the first time in his life to go to an Erasmus program in a European country and learn a new language. 

It is necessary to regulate our movements according to their social utility but also to tend towards more equity. 

For him, it is also very important to bear in mind that the plane is today only reserved for a minority of humanity.

Only 15% of humans fly.

At the same time, our mobility must shift to clean technologies.

But it cannot be done all at once.

Airlines, for example, are not going to change all of their fleets overnight.

When an aircraft is built it is for a period of 20 to 30 years.

It will take a little time for clean energies like hydrogen to become widespread.

The mistake we should not fall into is that clean mobility is initially too expensive for the less well-off to have access to.

The challenge for tomorrow is to prevent the fact of not polluting becoming a privilege of the rich and making those who do not have the means to feel even more guilty.