PART 1

If there’s one thing I’d like to convey in these blog posts it’s that travelling is awesome. It’s truly bamboozles the brain. Particularly in the way it throws up delights and difficult questions in equal measure.

Some of these questions occur before the first soggy sock had been donned, or troublesome tent erected. And the daddy of these had to be climate change.

Though it’s in the media constantly, we don’t often ask ourselves the difficult questions about how it effects out lives, and how we can responsibly deal with its causes and consequences.

I’m sure I can confidently assume some knowledge on the matter, but for those not those who aren’t in the know the story goes something like this: the world is getting warmer as a result of increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases (such as CO2) in the atmosphere. This is pretty much beyond refute, and has an avalanche of scientific literature backing it up, all based on the sound scientific principles that gave us ipods and Dolly the sheep. It isn’t a conspiracy designed to make us all stay at home and live the simple life. But there is one point of debate – whether or not the increased levels of greenhouse gases is as a consequence of human activity. It seems that some people are being deliberately oblique on the matter, and while a consensus will never likely be reached, for the sakes of this discussion let us assume that we humans have a BIG part in global warming.

Now, there are few more obvious polluters than aeroplanes, which release oodles of CO2 straight into the upper atmosphere. Since air travel is an integral part of most itineraries, it immediately becomes a problem. However there are alternatives, some of which I’ll touch on later.

Staying with air travel for the moment, what can be done to make it more environmentally sound? Well the solution favoured by most politicians is to tax aviation fuel. As can be seen with the taxation of automotive fuel, it does little to deter the use of cars, and just serves to fill the government’s coffers. If really hefty taxes were introduced then this might reduce air passenger levels, but would this necessarily be a good thing? People of low financial means (amongst which I count myself) may find air travel beyond their budgets, with few viable alternatives available. Would this be a democratic thing to do?

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END OF PART ONE

I’ll post PART TWO tomorrow!

I’d appreciate your comments on the issues raised.

Thanks!

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