This article in The Guardian got me worked up yesterday:

Worried about airline pollution? Sell your car, says Ryanair boss
Andrew Clark, transport correspondent
Wednesday June 22 2005
The Guardian

The thorny issue of climate change has left most airlines bending over
backwards to sound green. But Europe's largest low-cost carrier, Ryanair,
has dismissed its environmentally nervous rivals as "lemmings".

Ryanair's chief executive, Michael O'Leary, has refused to support an
industry-wide effort to limit carbon dioxide emissions. Asked yesterday
what he would say to travellers worried about the environment, he replied:
"I'd say, sell your car and walk."

This week, airlines including British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, easyJet,
Flybe and First Choice, formed a sustainable aviation group aimed at
cracking down on pollution, noise and harmful emissions.

Mr O'Leary said Ryanair would not be joining: "A lot of members of the
sustainable aviation group won't be around in 10 years' time - that'll be
their main contribution to sustainable aviation."

He described the coalition as an example of "high-fare airlines getting
together to pursue policies blocking competition," adding: "The sustainable


aviation group, God help us, is another bunch of lemmings shuffling towards
a cliff edge."

Aircraft account for about 5% of carbon dioxide emissions and air travel is
forecast to double within 25 years. There are fears that cheap flights
could hamper efforts to fulfil Britain's commitments agreed at the Kyoto
summit in tackling climate change.

The aviation industry favours an emissions trading scheme, allowing
airlines to buy and sell carbon dioxide allocations. But Mr O'Leary said
such a scheme amounted to a plot by airlines such as British Airways to
punish rapidly growing rivals.

"British Airways won't be growing its existing emission levels because it's
going nowhere - it's shrinking," he said. "We will be increasing our
emissions over the next few years simply through growth in traffic."

Roger Wiltshire, director general of the British Air Transport Association,
said: "They obviously don't want to engage in a debate over the
environment, which is rather sad."

Environmentalists were less circumspect. Jeff Gazzard, of the GreenSkies
Alliance, said: "Michael O'Leary is a recidivist, serial polluter and he
should be arrested for crimes against the climate."

I've just finished reading High Tide by Mark Lynas, which is sort of a travelogue about climate change. Bascially he spent three years going around the world talking to people about how they felt climate change was affecting them, and it is well worth reading. I was feeling a bit smug about not driving a car when I started it, but when he points out that it only takes a couple of short haul flights a year to to bring carbon emissions up to the level of the average driver, I started to feel a bit guilty..and then a bit angry. I am flying up to Scotland next week. And for the first time I'm flying because it is cheaper than taking the train. The trip from Birmingham to Edinburgh is 5 hours by train, and once you factor in getting to and from airports and check in times, it's not a great deal less time by plane. But when I wanted to book this trip, back in March, the cheapest train ticket I could have bought was £85.00, whereas the plane ticket was £50.00 - a big enough difference to make it worthwhile to me. And now I see that rail companies are talking about congestion charging on trains where they are already making a huge profit on tickets..not really an idea that will encourage people to give up their cars and get the train instead.