People always want what makes their lives immediately easier. When it comes to maximizing your current, instant happiness, it’s quite easy to disregard the long-term impacts of your decisions.

That’s why available technology such as supersonic planes that are reportedly coming back according to Sabina Popescu’s blog into the mainstream air-travel service may cause more harm than good. The planes, which are extremely fast and heavily reduce travel time, have been under construction to mitigate the noise pollution they caused in the past. Instead, they wish to offer high speed travel without all the previous drawbacks.

http://www.cnn.com/travel/article/boom-supersonic-plane-virgin-space-company/index.html

One of the shortcomings of a supersonic plane that is not being avidly talked about is the environmental impact such a plane would have. Regular-speed air travel is already quite detrimental, so can you imagine a plane with double the power?

MIT’s Laboratory for Aviation and the Environment (LAE) has been tasked with conducting such research about the environmental implications of supersonic planes:

“Areas of scientific and technical investigation will include the potential for ozone depletion from high altitude emissions, the effects of any ozone depletion on human ultraviolet radiation exposure – which increases risk of skin cancer – and the impact of supersonic flights on the climate, including effects on high altitude condensation trails.”

-LAE Website, 2014

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-3512232/Boom-time-incredible-planes-bring-new-era-supersonic-travel-one-reaching-speed-12-000mph.html

If the results of LAE’s research is found to be negative, I truly hope airplane manufacturers do not continue with the supersonic plane production and subsequent use. Stakeholder theory suggests that the environment is also a factor we must consider in our decisions. The aforementioned health and environmental issues potentially involved are quite serious and permanent, and I feel it would be unwise to overlook them for the sake of efficiency and short-term satisfaction.

It is our duty as consumers to understand the impacts of modern-day innovations before being in favor of them, as often the more serious drawbacks are not what is advertised in news articles and other media outlets. While we all enjoy efficiency, we must place more value on global issues than on individual personal pleasure.

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