In the middle of this hot, hot summer, many of us are deserting our sweaty offices and parched lawns to jet off abroad so that we can be ... well, even hotter. The habits of British holidaymakers have yet to adjust to climate change. In a few years' time, we will have worked out that it is more pleasant to go north than south, and to take more winter than summer breaks. But we shall still be flying all over the warming globe.
In fact, we will be flying a great deal more. According to the Boeing president, Alan Mulally, the commercial aviation industry is set to sell £1.4 trillion worth of planes over the next 20 years. Now that we have acquired the taste for it, there is apparently no slaking the human thirst for air travel.
But as we suffer the unprecedented heat and watch the contrails latticing the rainless sky, we might consider the part that aircraft play in wrecking the planet they help us to roam. They are making a truly terrible and largely unchecked contribution to greenhouse gas emissions.
According to Dr Kevin Anderson of the Tyndall Centre at the University of Manchester, UK aviation currently emits more than 40m tonnes of carbon dioxide every year. If nothing is done to restrict these emissions, they are likely to increase to between 100m and 200m tonnes by 2030 - around half of all of the emissions permitted under the UK government's long-term carbon target.
Most of us have learned to recycle our rubbish and turn the tap off while we clean our teeth. But deciding not to take that longed-for trip to Thailand or Brazil or that miraculously cheap flight to Turkey or Berlin is still seen as cranky extremism or, at best, a futile gesture: the plane will take off anyway, and one may as well be on it. A friend told me recently she had been invited to California to give a 20-minute presentation at a conference on climate change.
What brought home the message for me was calculating my carbon footprint. If you haven't tried this yet, you can do it online at www.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.
If we humans are to use the resources of one planet instead of more than three (as we do in the developed world these days) we should each reduce our personal CO2 emissions to around three tonnes a year; the current national UK average is 11 tonnes every year for each person. My footprint, like those of many middle-class folk, is a shameful 26 tonnes. But I could have cut it by almost 20% by subtracting the seven holiday and business flights I took over the last 12 months, which together account for 4.2 tonnes.
As cabinet ministers depart for their summer hols (incidentally, Margaret Beckett may be the only one not boarding a plane) this is a poignant moment to ask what the UK government is doing about aviation's burgeoning carbon footprint. The answer is a mass of contradiction and inertia. The government is committed to reducing CO2 emissions by 60% of 1990 levels by 2050. But it is not clear whether efforts to meet this target will cover international aviation, which is excluded from the Kyoto protocol. UK airports currently process 200 million passengers every year, and that figure is expected to rise to 500 million by 2030.
Meanwhile, at the Department for Transport, growing demand for air travel is still treated as a positive signal of economic wellbeing, and therefore as something worthy of encouragement. There are expansions planned for Heathrow, Stansted, Manchester and Liverpool airports, which will mean more flights and yet more greenhouse gases. Aviation is effectively subsidised by a highly favourable tax regime. The principle of "the polluter pays", which the government has ostensibly embraced, does not apply.
There is no anticipated breakthrough in aircraft design or fuel technology that could turn aviation green in less than half a century. Some new planes are slightly more efficient than older ones, but they are nothing like efficient enough to offset the effects of their growing numbers. The new airbus, which takes up to 500 passengers, is a lot heavier for each passenger than the original jumbo jet. The heavier the plane, the more fuel it needs to fly. And today's new planes will continue to fly for at least 30 years.
The government is trying to get aviation included in the EU carbon emissions trading scheme, but it could take nearly 10 years before that kicks in, and ten years is too long. Anyway, if aviation is included and continues to expand as predicted, it will gobble up most of the carbon trading capacity of most EU countries.
Can anything be done? The government could commit itself to including international aviation in its 60% target for reducing CO2 emissions. It could introduce emission charges to be levied on all national and international flights. It could bring domestic aviation fuel tax into line with that for other transport sectors. It could introduce a carbon trading scheme that was geared to achieve a year-on-year reduction in the total allowance for emissions from aviation. It could impose an immediate moratorium on airport expansion and encourage greener modes of travel.
And as for us flyers, we can pay individually to offset our carbon emissions by investing in things that are good for the environment. We could take the train instead, whenever possible. We could do more video-conferencing. And we could find other ways to take our holidays
