Air Travel, and the Guilt of those Frequent Flyer Miles --- Earth Day 2010, A New Pledge to Stop It!??##$$%%

Yeah, leave it to the British to calculate the guilt, in the unholy allegiance of flying and experiencing multiculturalism and eco-tourism. But it's so true, that this happy flying mania, or as George Monbiot calls it, Love Miles, is helping to kill the planet. It's one of the big problems today in the so-called green community -- flying and the right to unlimited travel is a sacred cow in the USA, even amongst environmentalists, and especially those middle of the road "sustainability" experts who are tooling around the country going to one after another sustainability symposium. This growth in airline runway building, more urban cores destroyed by noise, more junk being purchases on the web and flown around instantly delivered to our doorsteps, just more and more of those jets in the air, the effects are absolutely clear. Unsustainable. In England, even travel agencies, those that have a rougher clientele (Rough Guide to Climate Change as in the outfit producing the series, Rough Guides), are now discouraging all the air miles to get to remote or exotic places.

Hmm....

"The arguments against flying are compelling. One return flight to Florida produces the equivalent carbon dioxide to a year's motoring. A return flight to Australia equals the emissions of three average cars for a year. Fly from London to Edinburgh for the weekend and you produce 193kg of CO2, eight times the 23.8kg you produce by taking the train. Moreover, the pollution is released at an altitude where its effect on climate change is more than double that on the ground.

According to the IPCC aviation accounts for 3.5% of total emissions, the shipping industry accounts for 4.5% and the cement industry for 5%.

• Aircraft release more then 600 million tonnes of CO2 per year


• Aviation generates nearly as much CO2 as that from all of African human activities


• It is expected that aviation travel will continue to grow significantly


• Aircraft release most of their harmful emissions in take off


• At higher altitude the emissions have a greater effect


• Aircraft travel is largely consumer driven and therefore raising the price of travel and encouraging sustainable local vacations is an easier way to cut emissions than tackling other industries


• Research undertaken for the ‘Right Price for Air Travel’ campaign reveals that the European aviation sector receives about £30 billion of subsidies annually, both directly through payments for expansions and surface access and indirectly through exemptions on aviation fuel tax and VAT.


• Currently airlines pay no duty or VAT on aviation fuel, no VAT on airline tickets and no VAT on new aircraft. Duty free sales, a tax payer subsidy, also provide up to 50% of airport revenue although all EU flights are now exempt from duty free sales.


• In the UK airlines would have to pay at least £5 billion a year if they were taxed at the same rate as motorists. This amounts to more than £200 per household in the UK. Effectively we all subsidise the aviation industry to pollute regardless of whether we fly or not
  
  More frightening is the boom in the number of people flying, fuelled by cheap flights with carriers such as Ryanair and Easyjet. In 1970, British airports were used by 32 million people. In 2004, the figure was 216 million. In 2030, according to government forecasts, it will be around 500 million. The trouble is that the people most likely to be aware of these figures, are the ones who probably enjoy popping over to Europe for a weekend. It makes for a large amount of guilt, and a lot of denial."

And the USA's expansion in the number of flights, the number of runways, or full airport expansion projects, is expected to increase by 20 to 30 percent in the next 20 years. Sustainable? Absolutely not.

Check out these attitudes about flying, thanks to Greenpeace (a UK poll, so please take it with a grain of fish and chips):

• Many independent scientists also believe that pollution from aircraft is a serious contributor to climate change. Given that, which of the following do you agree with?
  
  Air travel is now too cheap --------32%
  There should be a tax on fuel for air travel -------52%
  Air travel should be rationed by government------- 21%
  No more airports should be built -------41%
  We should limit our air travel voluntarily------- 59%
  There should be a pollution warning on air tickets ------61%
  Don’t know----- 2%
  None of these ------12%