New 'green' attack on airlines

The whole huffing-and-puffing saga of climbing cheap flights and their effect on global warming is shot through with contradictions. And this time it is not only the government that is blessed with these qualities, as Dr Brenda Boardman, leader of the Predict and Survive report, suggests. The ‘hit them in the pocket’ approach is becoming so commonplace as to be meaningless. Ask any air traveller if they can account for all the penalty costs that make up the fare on their ticket and it’s a fair bet that 95% of them will fail the test. Why should any other ‘penalty’, even if it comes with ‘SURVIVAL’ emblazoned across it, rate any better. That, at least, was the lesson of the smoking -V- not to smoke argument. After all ‘death’ was spelled out in large letters on cigarette packets for many years with only marginal effect on die-hard smokers, and that notwithstanding the spiralling cost of smoking. No the answer is debate and argument. Bold, stark, irrefutable argument and its got to come from the decision-makers around the planet. Nothing less than a massive media campaign spelling out the consequences of adding to the stock of CO2 that is rapidly enveloping our planet. In that mix, of course, will feature the ubiquitous ‘low cost’ air carriers – along will all the other carbon multipliers. Let’s hear their arguments too, those that stand up and those that fall. In the end, of course, as we all start to fall off our perches, what good will the world’s fleet of aircraft be, cheap or otherwise, if there’s nobody to fill them. Clive Lewis