A U.N. panel on Monday proposed long-sought greenhouse gas emissions standards for airliners and cargo planes beginning in 2020 for new aircraft designs and three years later for designs already in production, accoding to AP. The International Civil Aviation Organization said the agreement reached by 170 international experts sets a cutoff date of 2028 for the manufacture of planes that don't comply with the standards. The standard must still be adopted by the agency's 36-nation governing council. Environmental groups quickly condemned the new standards, which they said were not stringent enough to meaningfully reduce pollution or slow climate change. Last June, the Obama administration proposed regulating aircraft emissions, saying they are a threat to human health because they contain pollutants that help cause global warming. But a final U.S. decision on adoption of international standards is likely to be left to the next presidential administration. Aviation accounts for about 5 percent of global greenhouse emissions, according to environmentalists. ICAO says it's actually less than 2 percent. The proposed standard covers the full range of sizes and types of aircraft used in international aviation today, but reserves the strictest standards for planes weighing over 60 tons, ICAO said. The larger planes are responsible for about 90 percent of international aviation emissions.
