1 August 2001. A handful of conservation groups were on hand offering teachers inspiration and information on how to teach about environmental issues, but they were clearly in the minority. They were selling lies, and the teachers were buying - quickly filling their bags with curricula as corrosive as the pesticides that the Farm Bureau promotes. Air travel has emerged as one of the greatest threats to the future of the planet. Airports outdo almost all factories as sources of dangerous pollution, while the noise from planes blights millions of lives.
Supersonic travel is the most ecologically vicious of all.
Aeroplanes produce high emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, water vapour, nitrogen oxides and sulphur oxides which, when emitted at high altitudes, damage the ozone layer and make a large and growing contribution to climate change. Each passenger on any return flight across the channel 'consumes' more carbon dioxide than the average British motorist will in a year. A thinning ozone layer could inflict lasting genetic damage on some plant species, Swiss and German researchers say. Check out Climate Change Solutions . Heathrow was already one of the main producers of volatile organic compounds, and the expected construction of Terminal 5 would make matters worse.