Confession time. I have spent more than 75 hours at over 30,000ft this year during the course of writing about the steep deterioration of the global and local environment. Say nothing. I see the irony and wince.
Nor can I plead ignorance. I know that each long-haul flight burns thousands of gallons of jet fuel and emits global-warming carbon dioxide gas. I know also that these flights damage the upper atmosphere with nitrogen oxide and disturb the sleep of thousands of people living near airports.
It is also thanks to frequent fliers like myself that the government and the air industry can argue that Britain needs five new airports the size of Heathrow. And, yes, I know, too, that every flight leads to more road traffic, more political pressure to build 12-lane motorways to get people to airports, more urban sprawl and more social problems.
But if the real price of air travel today is the inexorable deterioration of the environment, what can people do? Unless we stop flying altogether - which very few are prepared to do, especially when we can travel round the world now for little more than the average British weekly wage - the most human response seems to be to get angry that governments are wilfully subsidising life-threatening pollution, and that the industry is not fully addressing the problems it causes.
But now there is a way to assuage your guilt. And here's how you do it. Several non-profit-making schemes allow passengers to offset their share of the carbon dioxide emitted on flights. They calculate how much carbon dioxide is emitted on a flight. (Roughly, for every 4,000 miles flown by each traveller, one tonne of carbon dioxide pollution is produced.) They then offer to make your flight "carbon neutral" by offsetting an equivalent amount of carbon by reducing emissions elsewhere. This may be by tree planting, distributing energy saving light-bulbs to small communities in the developing world, or investing in renewable energy projects. And it couldn't be easier to do.
By logging on to the Future Forests website (futureforests.com), for example, and clicking on the flight calculator, you can work out what the carbon dioxide emissions are for any flight from Albania to Zambia and how many trees or lightbulbs you need to buy to offset these emissions. Then you pay the fee. It's not much. A long-haul flight from London to Australia, produces 3.75 tonnes of carbon dioxide per person and would need five trees to be planted at a cost of £42. With the average return ticket to Australia costing £700, that works out at less than 6%. Trees are planted in a choice of locations, from Barabhaig on the Isle of Skye to Chiapas in Mexico.
Businesses, a few in the travel industry and some institutions are now taking note of the carbon-neutral flight idea. They are supported by eight out of 10 British travellers, who stated in a recent Mori poll that they would willingly pay to offset the environmental impact of their flights.
When it comes to the environment, aviation is in a world of its own, not just being allowed to escape the rules everyone else must observe, but being paid to pollute. But it is very powerful. Commercial aviation, along with the military, is miraculously excluded from the Kyoto protocol on greenhouse gases, officially because governments cannot agree how to allocate responsibility between countries for aircraft emissions. As a result, each year the world's 16,000 commercial aircraft pump out 600 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, more than 60% of what all 1.1 billion Indians do, and take no responsibility whatever. Cars have to undergo emissions inspections, but planes don't. And, unlike every other motor fuel, aviation fuel is tax-free on all international flights. This is because of a 1944 agreement to promote the then fledgling industry.
The prospect of increased global warming should scare the wits out of everyone, especially the travel industry and holidaymakers. Over the next 50 years, we can expect European ski resorts to be without snow, the death of most coral reefs, cities such as Venice and countries such as the Maldives under water, and severe climate change in Florida and the Mediterranean.
To be fair, the industry says that it is working on reducing carbon emissions, and has improved fuel efficiency in planes by 17% in 10 years. It says research is being carried out to find alternative fuels for air travel and that it's trying to improve standards. But it has always resisted extra taxes or controls, and knows well that there is no chance of having remotely eco-sensitive air travel in the next 20 years.
So hang on for a bumpy ride. Aviation is burgeoning; in Britain, air passenger numbers are predicted to increase from 180m a year today to between 349m and 461m in 2020, and the figures are similar for mainland Europe, the US, Japan, Australia and other rich countries.
It is also predictable that the mounting anger, health concerns and depressions that communities affected by air travel or airport expansion plans experience today will be multiplied across the world in the future. But while countries like the Seychelles tax tourists to pay for the environmental damage, there are few signs that the UK chancellor will go down the same route.
In the circumstances of the government and the industry not taking responsibility for pollution they cause or encourage, it seems the least that we can do is to offset our own carbon dioxide emissions.
· Further information and personal calculators: futureforests.com, carbonneutral.com, co2.org.
