Genre: Opinion/Argumentation

Mark Ellingham has made a sizeable fortune from the creation of the Rough Guides to almost everywhere. He is shortlisted for the Royal Society's prize for science writing, for his book The Rough Guide to Climate Change. Now, in a conversion that would command the admiration of St Paul, he declares that "binge flying" constitutes a huge threat to the global environment. "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." He readily admits the irony that he, of all people, should articulate such a warning. He appeals for moderation, for setting some limits on our insatiable appetite for travel: "We now live in a society where, if people have nothing to do on a Saturday night, they go to Budapest for 48 hours. We fly anywhere at the slightest opportunity, 10 times and upwards a year. This needs to be addressed with the greatest urgency." Environmentalists would say that Ellingham is stating the obvious, adding of course that it is pretty rich coming from him. I am full of admiration for his frankness, however. Almost all of us are hypocrites about climate change. We know that it is real, and desperately serious. Yet we are in a shocking muddle about how to relate our personal behaviour to the phenomenon. For those who inhabit the developed world, opportunities for travel represent the most significant new personal freedom of the past half-century. Even as recently as the 1960s, hitch-hiking to Greece and Turkey was a big deal for the adventurous young middle class. Africa and Asia were high-ticket destinations, South America and Australia almost off the map. Today, it is possible to fly almost anywhere for a few hundred pounds, and we all do. Every arriving jet at Nairobi or Ho Chi Minh City or Buenos Aires disgorges its crowds of package tourists and backpackers. Short breaks, which mean intensive plane use, are booming. Short-break destinations include Capetown and Dubai. Common sense tells us that all this is environmentally disastrous. Yet common sense also tells us that tourism is doing great things for the economies of poor societies all over the world. Carbon emissions soar as a result of flying flowers and vegetables to Europe and America from Africa and Mexico. Yet if that traffic stopped, millions of needy people in the growers' trade would suffer. All this leaves many of us as confused as Ellingham. Relatively speaking, the travel boom has hardly started. In the decades ahead, many more millions will possess the means and the desire to fly further and more often. The Chinese, for instance, have only just begun to discover the joys of holidaying abroad. Suggesting to people who live in newly emergent economies that they should forgo travel is comparable with the modern western enthusiasm for saving Africa's great animals, after slaughtering them wholesale for a century or two. Even in the west, it is dangerous politics for a government to seek to check the electorate's passion to fly, just as few democratic nations dare meddle with the freedom to drive. All credible curbs must be based on pricing. Yet if it becomes harder for the poor to travel while the rich stay airborne, this does not sound good on the hustings. The best and simplest way forward would be to tax aviation fuel, to end the crazy anomaly whereby moving a plane is cheap, while driving a car is expensive almost everywhere in the world save Iran and the US. But it is almost impossible to reach an international agreement on taxing aviation fuel that would stick. No government will act unilaterally, with the prospect of watching its aviation industry migrate elsewhere. Ellingham suggests a 100 "green tax" on tickets for all flights to Europe and Africa, 250 to more remote destinations. The first benefit of this would be to deter short-haul flying within the UK. It is absurd that it costs far more to take a train to Newcastle or Edinburgh than to catch a plane there. Lots of us, including me, love trains and are only deterred from using them by the cost. Some destination countries would benefit from discouraging low-budget travellers, because the environmental costs which their visits impose outweigh the cash that they spend. The Samburu National Park in Kenya is currently threatened by the building of two 500-bed hotels. Samburu is a small area, famous for its elephants. Tourists in such numbers will overwhelm its fragile ecosystem. Any rational long-term view of Samburu's interests would come down against the new hotels, and in favour of extracting more money from fewer tourists. The projects will go ahead only because a handful of people will profit handsomely from their construction. The low-budget traveller creates dilemmas for destinations all over the world. The mayor of Venice, Massimo Cacciari, wants a levy of _1 a head imposed on the 20 million tourists who come to the city each year, to help with the huge municipal costs they impose. Venice is currently struggling to enforce the ban on picnicking in St Mark's Square, and on walking the streets bare-chested or in bikini tops. If this sounds pompous, the citizens of Venice reply that, at present, a great host of visitors spend next to nothing and conduct themselves in a manner that diminishes the grace and beauty they come to see. Other Italian cities, including Rome and Florence, are drawing up codes of conduct to restrain boorish behaviour by tourists. Here, it is easy for a good democrat to explode: "Do you want to restrict the wonders of the world to rich bastards?" But it is an obvious truth that the more people who visit a given place, the greater damage they inflict upon it. Ellingham again: "Balancing all the positives and negatives, I'm not convinced there is such a thing as a 'responsible' or 'ethical' holiday." The bad news for the environment is that it is impossible to believe that the global travel boom will stop. Whatever is done in Britain, or in the western world at large, amid our consciousness of climate change, many other nations which have only just begun to experience prosperity have no intention of depriving their citizens of its privileges. As with other responses to climate change, however, this is no reason for us to do nothing. Even if the British government is obliged to act unilaterally, it must be right to impose higher costs on air travel through taxation. Indeed, it would be irresponsible not to do so. Ellingham urges us all to impose some discipline on our own travel, refusing to succumb to "binge flying". Only a minority of thoughtful people, the same kind who buy organic products, are likely to heed him. Most of us change our bad habits only when we are made to do so. We will fly less only when it hurts our pockets too much to fly more. Ellingham is surely right that this must be made to happen, and all credit to him for saying so. About this article Max Hastings: Binge-flying culture is just beginning. The only way to stop it is a severe tax This article appeared on p24 of the Main section section of the Guardian on Sunday 6 May 2007 . It was published on guardian.co.uk at 19.04 EDT on Sunday 6 May 2007 . It was last modified at 19.04 EST on Friday 11 January 2008 . It was first published at 19.18 EDT on Sunday 6 May 2007 . Here, it is easy for a good democrat to explode: "Do you want to restrict the wonders of the world to rich bastards?" . . . The problem with this attitude is that the world belongs to everybody. It belongs to the poor farmer living in the third world as much as it does to the "it's my right" brigade who give scant consideration to the notion that their right for a cheap flight to Budapest for the weekend may have potentially life threatening consequences to somebody else struggling to eek out an existence in a country they have never even heard of. Of cours one may wonder if the "it's my right brigade" who demand cheap air travel may not be the most socially responsible of people and may not fully appreciate the local cultures and customs of the destinations they travel to. How many spend their days on the beach and their nights in the bar instead of discovering the local culture. How many of them for that matter have bothered to discover the diverse culture of their very own country? Of course freedom of movement should not be restricted but not should it be taken for granted that it must come at an unsustainably low price. I think David Cameron's idea of a sliding scale of taxation on air travel that does not penalise the less well off is very sensible. I would say that he should go further and make it more expensive for the most frequent fliers as his proposed levys are rather punitive at present. I am always wary of solutions that involve tax as they invariably favour the rich over the poor. Travel does broaden the mind, provided it is approached with an open and enquiring mind. However there is little if any correlation between wealth and an open and enquiring mind. (Some would even claim any correlation is negative.) I favour everyone getting an allocation of carbon credits to spend how they wish. It will then be up to individuals to decide how they want to 'spend' their carbon, flying, driving or heating their home. Those who exceed their quota will then have to purchase from those who are in surplus, the elderly perhaps giving them a useful source of income. There is an issue with companies. Although I limit my own flying I am expected to fly for my work and whereas I do wriggle out of some flights there are instances where this is impossible. I am amazed at some of my colleagues who will undertake flights for dubious reasons just to get their air-miles up and obtain the coveted airline 'gold card' with access to the lounge. Making 'frequent flyer' and air-mile programs illegal would be a simple start to controlling flying. So Max Hastings wants to break up communications between the far-flung members of my family? Home wrecker! Money should go into developing alternative fuels for aviation, but do not punish those of us who broaden our minds with travel. "Carbon emissions soar as a result of flying flowers and vegetables to Europe and America from Africa and Mexico." Indeed, *travel-related* emissions increase, but overall carbon emissions are reduced by sourcing flowers from Kenya instead of European growers. The same argument is true of sourcing produce for the UK from other remote countries. For example: lamb grown in NZ is still more environmentally friendly in terms of carbon emissions than lamb grown in the UK, despite the extra emissions required for travel. I am all for user-pays, but the food air-miles debate is exploited by local producers to the detriment of the environment, as well as at the expense of their international competitors. I agree totally that the amount of flying people do needs to be cut but, I have a real dilemma: I live in China; my family live in England. I want to stop flying altogether, but that means moving back to England or not seeing my family (I take two trips a year for a Christmas visit and a summer visit). But I don't want to move back to England yet for lots of reasons: I'm in a serious relationship with a Chinese girl; I'm learning Chinese; I have work commitments in China. What should I do? I think there needs to be some discussion about why the media, environmentalists and governments have made flying the bad guy in climate change, while statistics seem to suggest that it is not nearly as damaging as coal-fired power stations, which just about every country uses. Obviously, from a journalist's point of view stories about the dire need to fit carbon emission-reducing filters to all coal-fired power stations are not nearly as attention-grabbing as stories about hard-pressed consumers having their little luxuries threatened. There seems to be some apathy on the part of developed nations to work with developing nations to cut emissions by providing the necessary technology. Why is this? If the world is so threatened by climate change, then surely, we should be giving this technology away free of charge for the greater good of all humanity? Let me say that again. Every 1 km you travel, puts an A4 sized piece of the earth's surface, under greenhouse, permanently as far as you are concerned. No decrease within your lifetime, your kids lifetime, or your great grandchildrens lifetime. Let me put it this way. Imagine your computer monitor turned screen-up. Think of the column of air standing over that. Right up, through our atmosphere. 2 km flying, doubles CO2 in that column of air. It doubles it, all the way from the earths surface, to outer space. It stays doubled, goes on trapping heat, for or thousands of years. Your choice as always. But from today, when you choose, you do so knowing the consequences. - who is one of the few people to have the cojones to think these things through - that includes a chapter of questions he's asked when he gives talks. Most of the answers are: "Tough. Get used to it." eg. "What about the olympics? Will they have to be abandoned?" and "My family live the other side of the planet." His conclusion is, more or less, work out where you want to be and stay there. Meanwhile, hope that enough global infrastructure survives to maintain email, phones, etc. AndyV has a good idea. Issue each citizen "vouchers", equally divided, for all products and services, that the governments wish to control. By this means then, those that wish to, say travel, will need vouchers for the miles required. This will establish a market for every citizen to sell, buy, or even speculate on vouchers. Every one wins. Stay at home and make money. Ride a bycicle, sell your gasoline vouchers, and make money. This could even work. During WW2 in the US, food and gas were rationed and you could sell your ration coupons, or trade for something. Think about it. Is their a politician with enough backbone to propose this? Probably not, unless he gets an extra allotment because of his critical, and important job. In spite of the fact that he has effectively promoted cheap travel over the years and made some money doing it, is it true that flying contributes significantly to the global warming problem? If so is it worth addressing? Shall we just let the market try to solve it by the price mechanism via a tax or via credits that can be sold - the same mechanisms that got us here in the first place? Or maybe we really don't believe all those climate scientists; I mean afterall they really are only scientists on somebodies payroll. Surely they are telling us a tall tale. Don't we all want to see the last living Rhino in Africa and the Taj Mahal? Of course it was far better back in the good old days when the only way that common people got to fly anywhere was when they were wearing a tin hat and holding a Lee Enfield. You wanna be fair? Give everyone a certain allocation of air tickets per year - no exceptions, no "but my job is so important", no selling on your allocation to the rich. But, of course, such a scheme is ridiculous, unworkable. How about putting class warfare to one side, and just consider the environmental issue? The planet doesn't care how carbon dioxide gets into it, or who put it there, or how rich that person is. So, how about just put in a tax on carbon, and leave it at that? If rich people can afford the carbon tax to fly half way around the world, well, rich people can afford a lot of things poor people can't. That's the simple consequence of some people having more money than others. In have nothing I particularly want to say about the issue. Rather I would like to ask aloud why it is that after an intelligent and reasoned article, readers see the necessity to respond in such an insulting manner. Would not adopting a more civilised debating style be a great help in trying to reach the truth about the issues under consideration? I must say that were I a writer, I would refuse to submit myself to this humiliating public pillorying that Comment Is Free has in many cases turned out to be. The answer is NOT for everyone to sit at home where they were born. Travel does broaden the mind, it is s shame to live 70 years in a beautiful world and only see one corner (and doubly unfair on those of us born in a relatively boring corner like Britain with no fjords, glaciers, volcanoes etc). But we have to think about how we do it. Mix passenger and freight more; travel as passengers on cargo ships which have to go that way anyhow (and are far more fun than cruise palaces). Trains should be mixed too. And, of course, we could do the most useful thing of all and ban private cars. Did Hastings mention that? "However, we don't really have time to spend years faffing about before getting something going." I agree. There needs to be some pretty firm action now, we can tidy it up later. Certainly NOT expanding airport capacity would be a step in the right direction. It was reported (yesterday I think) that upgrading the M1 was going to cost UKL 21 million a mile, or over UKL 5 billion for the lot. How much would it cost to build a 'shinkansen' style railway from London to Leeds, or even just upgrading the existing line so that trains can run more frequently than one every hour or so? In Japan, shinkansen run between Tokyo and Kyoto every 15 minutes! All these flat charges, sales taxes etc. are, purely coincidentally, a very good way of reducing income tax as well. I remember that one of the first things that Thatcher did when she came to power was crank up VAT so she could cut income tax, a shift that favoured the wealthy. Now Labour politicians are doing the same thing with all these new charges, but they are selling them as something to save the planet rather than to benefit the wealthy. Clever. @Maxhastings "Today, it is possible to fly almost anywhere for a few hundred pounds, and we all do" Except many people don't. Often for the very simple reason that they don't like flying. Sweeping generalizations don't help. It is quite easy to make changes and many people do. Pretending that nobody changes their behavior is just another false excuse for selfish behavior. @Kimpatsu "do not punish those of us who broaden our minds with travel." You won't be punished for being broad minded. You will be punished for being selfish, unimaginative, narrow minded and pretentious. How can you be anything but narrow minded, if you think that flying is the only way of broadening your mind? There are plenty way of broadening your mind without flying. Try reading a book, or how about traveling within the UK. Traveling within 60 miles of London and you will find many different cultures and attitudes if you look. If you claim you have to fly to broaden your mind I suspect that your mind is so inflexible, that trying to broaden it is a pointless exercise. A holiday is much as state of mind as anything else. If when you travel you take the same narrow consumerist point of view as you do at home, you will learn nothing. I have never flown, or been abroad, and do not want to. I have always cared about the welfare of those in the third world and have always voted for the party which says it will increase aid to third world countries. I have always contributed to charities which help said poor countries. Indeed, most of my clothes come from charity shops. I know lots of people who have travelled abroad extensively. Some are enlightened and care about those in dire poverty. Some others are right-wing and utterly careless about the welfare of those in the countries they visit. Travel broadens the mind? The conversations are usually about who has the darkest tan. The greatest danger of binge flying is the spread of disease. The world is not about to burst into flames and the hysteria generated by the global warming scam is misdirected. SARS has already been forgotten but it was not birds that spread that one. I believe this article is an utter rubbish, because the effects of binge-flying are seriously exaggerated and there should be some better solutions to climate change problems than preventing people from flying by tax. All this doom and gloom of warming planet is not that straightforwrd as it looks at first glance. Actually, scientists themselves can not fully agree on what's going on, while journalists just pick up a "hot topic" and keep on ranting for ever on issues that are far more complex than a couple of headlines. What about journalists' binge writing on climate change? Should that be stopped? Or should probably some reasonable tax on articles on climate change be imposed, just to benefit the real problem? I honestly think that travelling is wonderful and it's fantastic that so many people nowadays have an opportinity to travel fast & relatively cheap. What about bio-fuel? @just about everyone above: . Yes, you can broaden your mind in a multitude of ways other than flying somewhere. . Yes, you can fly somewhere to 'experience another culture' only to spend all of your time avoiding the local culture (other than perhaps eating in a local restaurant once during the week). . Yes, here in the UK there are hundreds of fascinating destinations that could unlock your mind to the potential of people and scenery which are different than your own road. . Yes, a swingeing tax on flying would stop people who really couldn't afford that much more on their weekend fly-by to Bulgaria, and it wouldn't stop those people who have disposable income wildly out of proportion to your own. . Yes, coal-fired power plants do WAY more damage to the environment than a single flight. . Yes, we live so far from our loved ones that we DESERVE to fly to see them several times per year. How is a hug from your favourite niece the same as interacting with her via a webcam? . Yes, we [the affluent Western world] have learned that it is our right to spend our money however we want; and YES, our tourist pounds/dollars/euros contribute to the local economy beneficially. But ... YES we do need to think about the overall benefit to the local economy which includes the rubbish we leave, the hand-made souvenirs we don't buy, the local restaurants we shun (because we're in a Mark Warner-esque 'all-inclusive' resort which defines our contribution to the local economy as, hey, we paid for a lot of hotel cleaners to have a 'good' job in this resort). . Yes, our entire model of living has to be changed to accommodate climate change. . That last is the most important, and the one which seems to vex the most people. 'Why should WE change?' 'Look at those coal-fired power plants, compared to our jaunt to Dubai, how is MY flight so terrible in the big scheme of things?' . The main issue is, we simply MUST change our lives. Waiting for 'other people' to change their lives first is a cop-out; assuming that the broadening of YOUR mind through travel is more important than saving the planet illustrates false logic. . Emerging economies appear to want to copy our 'western' attitude toward unnecessary long-distance travel. Why not take the lead in showing that this is truly an UNNECESSARY luxury - unlike heating your own home in the depths of winter - is it so impossible to imagine - and to act upon? Lot of harrumphing going on here that misses the point. The problem isn't travel. The problem is flying. Trains and boats get you places, as do coaches. Or is a coach not 'glamorous' enough? It's not all that many years since most people I knew would hitch to Greece or Spain or Morocco or India, taking time and meeting people en route. A tad too time-consuming and not made easy for the consumerist middleclasses? "I can't take that much time off work, I've got a mortgage you know"? There's a lot of things to be called into question about global tourism. Another poster has already wondered about the number of people who don't get any further than the pool and bar at their destination. Travel supposedly broadens the mind. I think sadly that rather depends on whose minds you're talking about. Max, you are confusing two issues. On the one hand you are saying we should not fly everywhere at the drop of a hat so we don't pollute the atmosphere which I guess many would agree with. On the other you don't want the rest of us to go to some of these places anyway because we, hoi polloi, will harm the fragile local infrastucture with our coarse tourist ways. So even if Ryanair did introduce non-polluting air travel (say, a Europe-wide air-ship service), you would still object to the rest of us trampling over the same places you have visited and loved. Do you and Mark Ellingham think the rest of us should now get our travel kicks by staying at home and reading Rough Guides or your own articles from abroad? Don't you feel that notion might be seen as a touch too elitist? "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." Spot on! The deplorable (murderous, but not criminal, because legal) behaviour of the tobacco industry is not exceptional, but normal business practice: most companies and individuals place their own economic interests first, above everything else, even above human life and well-being. Although the horrific consequences are rationalized away and denied, of course, which is one of the main, unacknowledged, uses we put our oversized "prime-ape" brains to. Because our economy and way of life are so deeply rooted in our animal nature and behaviour (unsurprisingly, in view of our origins) we cannot help but give priority to economics (the household of man in the artificial, "socio-economic environment"), rather than to ecology (the household of our planet in the natural environment), despite it being obvious (were we not blinded by familiarity and dependency) that human survival urgently demands the opposite. Flight taxes could save the planet. One hundred pounds on each flight would not only reduce the number of flights but pay for all the renewable energy generation and reforestation that the planet needs. AileniNoyle "The greatest danger of binge flying is the spread of disease." Given that the root cause of the damage to global ecosystems is an abundant oversupply of humans, any form of transportation which distributes the diseases that may more or less humanely cull humans in huge numbers should be encouraged. It seems to me that if the government was the slightest bit serious about limiting air travel it wouldn't be permitting the huge expansion of airports (Heathrow terminal 5 for example), or signing open skies agreements to reduce the cost of air travel (such as the recent agreement with the US). The idea that the public policy is anything other than to facilitate a huge expansion in air travel is clearly absurd. Any proposals about increasing taxes for air travel therefore can clearly be seen as a way of raising increased revenue from air travel as opposed to attempting to reduce it. "Drax power station alone emits almost exactly twice as much carbon as all UK aviation. Perhaps we should impose a swingeing tax on electricity?" There already is, it is called the climate change levy and is applied to most business users, currently it stands at 0.43p per kWh of electricity (or 0.19p per kWh of gas), so hardly 'swingeing' in the time of the 8-10p unit. CCL works out at 1p per kg of CO2 or (very) opproximately about the current cost of carbon offsetting the same amount if you were to go to a body like 'Climate Care'. This only looks like a dilemma at first sight. The "democratic" right of poorer people to fly to distant destinations is totally abstract. Most of those customers do not seek cultural enrichment, but cheap booze, sun, sex and shopping bargains. They are actually a pest and of limited economic value to the receiving places. I cannot find anything wrong with limiting their access to global air travel. After all, being less well off traditionally comes with certain disadvantages. DickS: I agree with your analysis that he is mixing two issues that with reducing flying and preventing the hoi polloi travelling and ruining destinations.. In terms of a flying tax to the levels discussed in this article i cannot imagine that that would be possible to persuade an electorate to vote for it - after all even in this country the level of your carbon emissions are directly related to wealth - so i cannot see that preventing the less-wealthy from travelling is goint to be possible. I would therefore favour a carbon trading scheme as suggested - it doesnt suggest that travel is the only cause of global warming and it gives incentives not to travel - people can sell their allowance so would be much easier to persuade an electorate (a carrot / stick approach being better than a stick one) Also a lot of flying is done by the rich - business travel is much less efficient too. if you are going to have flying it would be better to have as many people in the plane as possible. Also a lot of business trips could be done by video conferencing etc. So how about banning first class / business class? This would at least ensure that the pain of less travel is spread more evenly with rich and poor! In terms of whether travel broadens minds - i would agree yes to a certain extent. Two examples - one of course the money raised for the tsunami i believe would not have been as great but for the tourism to that region. You could say that people can communicate via the internet but that is so much less direct and people are unlikely to do that without travelling to that place first. The second is with regard to people choosing to work abroad in development posts. Certainly in medicine there is good evidence that people only do this if they have travelled to a region first (one of the advantages of elective where people work for 3 months abroad) again it is the emotional attachment generated that is important As an environmentally-concerned individual, I face the dilemma of being married to a Singaporean with all the family-related annual travel consequences that creates (no flights for several years now, but wife and kids do deserve to see their folks soon). Sadly, time and money preclude the options of other alternatives, unless I can get sponsored on a slow travel blog by some green-minded newspaper. However, unless you are a mate of the editor that may be a dodgy sell, as people may tire of 'I'm spending a year having a hoot doing no work... and getting paid for it' efforts by now. It does rather seem the travel issue is getting more and more polarised, if you'll forgive the pun... bearing in mind what follows. Today I watched BBC Breakfast News with what seemed like an excellent initiative to encourage kids to come up with some ideas (a few which that were perhaps less televisual not getting the credit they deserved, IMHO. Chewing gum will sort climate change?) to tackle global warming. The prize? A trip to see the polar regions before they disappear because, one presumes, of people going to see them before they disappear. And the runner up prizes were... travel! There is quite an interesting industry being created in saving, and promoting the saving of this planet. Shame it seems there is little actual desire or effort to actually get around to actually doing it in favour of hype, spin and a quick slot on the TV. Brux's idea that poorer travellers are only interested in "cheap booze, sun, sex and shopping bargains" may be true of some, but not all. I'm a graduate on a low income (irregular contract work in the heritage sector, currently unemployed). I can only afford to visit places of historic interest related to my research and writing, thanks to cheap European flights, about once every 2 or 3 years even at current costs. I would like to go more often, but simply cannot afford it. At the same time, I am not and never have been a car owner/driver, for environmental and cost reasons. I always use public transport. How about encouraging more people to do the same? The western governments hypocrisy when it comes to airline travel, subverting all their good talk about the environment, begs the question of why they are really jumping so enthusiastically onto the green bandwagon. Clearly they are less alarmed about global warming than they make out, or they could not possibly have signed the open skies agreement, promoting the biggest polluters of all to continue flying in the upper atmosphere belching tons of greenhouse gases directly into the most damaging area. What is really hiding behind environmentalism and the man made global warming theory? Number of passengers will drop by about 5% in the first year and then, after 2-3 years, recover to current levels - due to increasing incomes etc. As a consequence of the GBP100 (which will be used for what?), people will spend less on holiday. This doesn't matter a great deal if you fly to France - but what about developing country destinations which really need the money that travellers bring? Climate change will happen - agreed - and there is little we can do about it - so the point is to get ready - and we won't get poor countries ready by slapping guilt taxes on flyers. BriscoRant: Can you show the figures/assumptions used to arrive at that explanation? It's a very nice way of describing it, I would just like to check the truth before I use it myself. Ok, so lets make petrol ?5 a litre to drive everyone off the roads and hike gas and electricity by 500% to stop us all using it. Great. Two points: So aviation is a frivolous disposable method of travel? I travel regularly to Poland and the flight is a full of commuters travelling to work, not tourists. The alternative is a 24hr+ coach trip (same price) or 18hrs by car and 25 gallons of petrol each way. Very eco-friendly. By train is hopeless and takes even longer and at vast expense. The 'get a job locally and cycle to work' argument won't wash. The UK is now a country of commuters through necessity, not choice (due to house pricing and shortages, lack of career continuity), so preaching to others is hypocritical, even if it's cross-border travel. Ryanair et al have just made it possible to commute further in an economical manner. As I here, and John Guillibaud elsewhere, pointed out, ( http://news.independent.co.uk/environmen\\... and the Sunday Times 2 weeks ago) a bit less breeding would solve almost everything in a generation. The world was a much dirtier and polluting place 100 years ago - it's just that there were a lot less people doing it that made the impact less important. By all means legislate to encourage the development of cleaner and more efficient aviation ... which will have to happen anyway with the reducing supply of fossil fuels, but pricing people out of transportation is not the answer. All anyone's saying here is that those who fly should be made to pay the true cost of their flight, and that includes the future cost of trying to stop/dealing with climate change. Clearly we can't tell exactly what these costs are going to be, but the principle of charging more for something that's very likely to cost more to produce is sound. It's not about stamping on the poor in Gucci heels just for fun. Throughout history, rich people have been able to afford privileges denied to the poor. Why should flying be any different? Those of us with less than stellar incomes aren't instantly going to turn into a grunting pack of narrow minded morons simply because we're denied the opportunity to sit on a plane for six hours every three months. Everyone will still be able to take the occasional flight if it's something they really want, and are prepared to save for. And the rest of the time we get to enjoy the fantastic experiences on offer in our own corner of the world. I would dearly love to see someone do a comparison of the relative CO2 emissions and overall energy costs of airplane travel versus methods that must be more efficient and cleaner: boats, rail, and ? especially ? airship. Airships (dirigibles) would be faster than boats and potentially much more pleasant than airplanes. Using these methods would require more time, but I don't think people would suffer unnecessarily if they could only take one international holiday every year or two instead of every four to six months. And, as someone pointed out, video telephony over the Internet is here, and suffices for most things. stevemarson: "Ryanair et al have just made it possible to commute further in an economical manner." No they have simply made it financial cheaper for the individual. There are host of environmental costs which will in turn lead to financial costs which everybody will have to pay. Unregulated capitalism is grossly inefficient in the ways in which resources to be used. "The alternative is a 24hr+ coach trip (same price) or 18hrs by car and 25 gallons of petrol each way. Very eco-friendly." Or you could employ somebody in Poland who you trust to do the job, and communicate by telephone and the internet. In addition I suspect that traveling by car actually would use less fuel, (no energy is wasted in holding the car several thousand feed in the air). Air travel is only cheaper because the fuel is untaxed. Anybody living in London or the S.East should refrain from pushing their environmental concerns about flying down the rest of our throats. You have altenatives in frequent and varied ferry services and the Channel Tunnel. Until such alternatives are provided for the rest of us non-metropolitan proles please keep your bleeding heart concerns to yourselves. Kimpatsu --"So Max Hastings wants to break up communications between the far-flung members of my family? Home wrecker! Money should go into developing alternative fuels for aviation, but do not punish those of us who broaden our minds with travel." Oh dear, you've fallen for the big excuse. Encouragement of air travel (no, nothing to do with families - it's all for the shareholders) has meant families are spread apart and people encouraged to travel more. The easier it is to travel, the more that people expect to travel and the more they have 'travel' as part of their lifestyle habits. The reason your family is 'far-flung' is because you've not considered that one day you may have restrictions on air-travel. If they all had to go by ship then I bet they wouldn't be so far apart. The emphasis is on flying and driving - and it's packaged as being convenient for the individual. Others under flight paths or who are displaced for the selfish masses don't count - ever. They are apparently the selfish ones for not wanting to move home so a car park can be built for air travellers. 'Frequent Flyers' 'Air Miles' etc. and now, for the really selfish - beds that take up seating room, just to burn even more fuel for less people. And Branson can sod off, too, the two-faced twat. Bio-fuels just to keep his planes in the air longer than everyone else. No mate, you sure ain't in the business of saving anything. He'll have us believing that his 'space planes' can run on chicken-crap next. Yup, Virgin Chickens(tm) from Virgin Farms(tm) powering 'Virgin Space'(tm)with Virgin Chicken Shit(tm) It doesn't help to have news crews flying all around the planet to show us how quickly the ice is melting, either. Here's an idea. Let's see massive overinvestment and subsidies in less polluting forms of transports. Specifically railways. Less help for ling distance travel but ideal for greater European integration. Lets set ourselves the challenge of shifting the cheap flights revolution onto the train. Its 2007. It ought to be possible to do Edinburgh - Paris in less than 5 hours (and for less than ?50?). We should have been taxing air and road travel for the last two decades and putting the proceeds into public transport infrastructure. Its late in the day but lets start now. We need a carbone footprint ration. High tazes will just mean the poor won't fly and the rich will continue to fly taking the share of the poor. It is actually the rich and the middle classes who are the biggest hypocrits because they burn up the most energy. They have bigger houses with conversions and conservatories and it is the middle classes who drive their large polluting cars close to the curb and make it more difficult for me to cycle. It is mainly the middle classes who drive their children to school. Working class people cannot afford the same luxury lifestyles and do not have all the mod cons which burn hup so much energy.