Air travel - environmental evil?

By James Stone


Tony Blair recently got into a spot of bother with environmental campaigners when he refused to stop making long-haul flights across the Atlantic of the sake of the environment, saying that worries over climate change shouldn't be allowed to spoil people's fun (and presumably his holidays in Miami in particular), and that flying can't really be blamed for all of the world's climate change/global warming ills. Environmentalists responded that Mr Blair needed to set an example to others that individuals needed to be more responsible for their impact on global warming. So why is air travel - now a central part of travelling - suddenly public enemy number one?

The fact of the matter is that airplanes produce quite a lot of carbon dioxide (CO2) as they burn up fuel. This carbon dioxide hangs around in the atmosphere, warming up the earth and resulting in climate change. The second problem is that air travel is getting cheaper and therefore more popular. Gone are the days when travelling on an airplane was the preserve of the super-rich, with low-cost airlines and package deals making the fastest and most convenient form of long-distance travel open to pretty much everyone. What this means is that the number of flights being made every day is increasing all the time, and airports are having to increase in size to accommodate this increased demand. So the amount of CO2 being put into the atmosphere is going up all the time - in fact, air travel is the fastest-growing producer of greenhouse emissions.

Environmentalist say that all this means we need to look seriously at how much we fly, and take action to cut the number of flights being made. If we're going to take global warming seriously, we simply can't allow the air travel industry to keep growing at its current rate. The problem, though, is that we're simply getting too used to travelling by air, and the opportunities that this gives us. The idea that everyone will simply accept that they can never go back to their favourite far-flung exotic location doesn't seem realistic somehow. Another argument is that although air travel does contribute CO2 to the atmosphere, this isn't really all that much in the grander scheme of things. In fact it's estimated that air planes contribute less than five per cent of all carbon emissions - significantly less than the other big polluters such as power stations (still burning fossil fuels despite the advances made in renewable energy and nuclear power) and our cars.

So what other realistic solutions are there? If you want to keep jetting off abroad for your holidays, but want to do your bit in preserving the planet too, then maybe you can save your environmental blushes by offsetting your carbon emissions. This basically entails giving some money to environmental charities that will plant a few trees for you - the idea being that they'll use up the CO2 that you created through flying. That's what Tony Blair did, anyway.

Perhaps offsetting your carbon emissions is the way to go, after all you can book cheap flights on UK Net Guide's Flight Search!