I returned yesterday from a concert tour of the United States with my piano trio. We flew to the US, and flew between the major cities we visited. One day we were sitting in Detroit Airport discussing George Monbiot's Guardian articles, and Al Gore's film about the dangers facing the environment, An Inconvenient Truth, which ironically (or perhaps nobly) had been shown to passengers on the transatlantic flight. It made us start talking about the role of travel, and of transport, in our jobs. Was it time to think again about the way we blithely jump on planes and go far away to play concerts? What would happen to our careers, our incomes, our reputations if we refused to go anywhere that couldn't be reached by rail?

As we talked, I noticed an American lady listening in with a certain expression of puzzlement. So I asked her, "Is this topic being much talked about in the United States?" "I haven't really understood what you're talking about", she replied. So I clarified. "Cutting down on air travel?" she said with a frown. She hesitated. "I'm afraid to say I haven't heard anyone discussing this at all," she said. "Really?" "Yes, really. Not discussing it, and not reading about it either. I haven't seen this mentioned in the papers."

Well, she was a teacher and told us she had spent 30 years in the same school, so perhaps she hadn't had a reason to get involved in issues outside her geographic area. Maybe she wasn't typical of American travellers. But I was now curious, and I brought the subject up at a dinner party in New York a week later. This time my companions were a diverse and high-achieving group: a university professor, a musician, a dancer, a psychologist and an engineer. All travelled extensively in the course of both work and leisure.

I told them I had met an American teacher who claimed not to know that there was a debate about cutting down on air travel, or making its costs so realistic that people would give it up. This whole group of highly intelligent people turned to me blankly and said, "What? Stopping people from flying? Well, how could that be?" And it turned out that they didn't know about it either. When I said that there were regular articles in European newspapers, presenting the latest scientific evidence and debating the possibilities for change, they were amazed.

I know a number of people, in Europe, who are seriously trying to make lifestyle changes because of the evidence on man-made climate change. But it is all very well for Europeans to make idealistic decisions. Unless the Americans join in, our gestures will be minuscule in effect. With information so easily available around the world, how can Americans still say they are unaware of the argument?