Perhaps we have problems with air travel today. Electric cars and solar powered flight are good operational ideas that have been around for a long time. We could develop them, I suppose.

Thanks,

Steve

Travel: the new tobacco

The founder of Rough Guides now believes that our addiction to ‘binge flying’ is killing the planet

http://travel.guardian.co.uk/article/2007/may/06/travelnews.climatechange?print

Mark Ellingham, founder of the Rough Guides and the man who encouraged a generation of travellers to pack a rucksack and explore the world, has compared the damage done by tourism to the impact of the tobacco industry.

Ellingham now says travelling is so environmentally destructive that there is no such thing as a genuinely ethical holiday. He wants the industry to educate travellers about the damage their holidays do to the environment. The development he regrets most is the public’s appetite for what he calls ‘binge-flying’.

‘The tobacco industry fouled up the world while denying [it] as much as possible for as long as they could,’ said Ellingham. ‘If the travel industry rosily goes ahead as it is doing, ignoring the effect that carbon emissions from flying are having on climate change, we are putting ourselves in a very similar position to the tobacco industry’……………………………….

Amelia Hill, social affairs correspondent,
The Observer
Sunday May 6 2007