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Cheap Travel Deals!"CHEAP TRAVEL"
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Environmental responsibility can be a tricky business. I'm repulsed, for example, by the fact that "disposable nappies" are virtually indestructible, and will not biodegrade for up to five centuries. So I've opted instead for Moltex nappies, available by mail order from the Natural Baby Company, and guaranteed to rot away in a brief decade. Suffused with smug pride in my environmental achievement, I passed my tip on to a trenchantly green friend. She came back to me after researching the matter, and told me that while these nappies were certainly environmentally friendly in themselves, she would not be following my example. Her problem was that Moltex nappies were imported by air freight from Germany. Since environmental damage caused by the carbon dioxide emissions of planes was a more urgent problem than waste disposal, she was not convinced that patronage of Moltex was the green option it appeared to be. It was with some relief, therefore, to read of Geoffrey Lean's advice this weekend in The Independent on Sunday. Cheap travel by air, the environmental expert reassured his readers, was sometimes necessary, even though it was damaging to the atmosphere. When he has to fly, he logs on to Future Forests, so that he can make a contribution to the organisation that will offset his contribution to environmental despoliation. And very reasonable too, the price of guilt-free cheap travel appears to be. Mr Lean, in return for an 11-hour return flight to San Francisco, had to hand over a mere pounds 25.50. With this modest sum, Future Forests can plant three trees in Britain, enough to soak up the same amount of carbon dioxide as they grow, or finance the installation of three energy-saving light-bulbs in Jamaica. What price a pack of nappies from Germany? Not very much at all. Can't find what you need? Try a Google Web Search in the box below!
But more, it is certain, than the airline cheap travel industry wants to cough up for. In direct contradiction to the sensible mantra that the polluter pays, the airlines do not contribute to any system that offsets the damage that air cheap travel causes. There is, controversially, not even any tax on plane fuel, which costs 18p per litre in comparison to 75p per litre for car users. This anomaly, along with various other tax exemptions, is connected to a convention, put in place after the Second World War, stating that the aviation industry should be fostered as much as possible by all nations in order to promote positive international relations. Whether cut-price cheap flights to Faliraki have succeeded in bringing this noble idea to happy fruition is highly debatable. Indeed, the cost of air cheap travel has become so low that we have lost all sense of perspective on it. Every penny counts for airlines slashing prices to the bone, and any sense of environmental responsibility is anathema to them. Alistair Darling, in the three-year consultation exercise that has preceded today's white paper on air cheap travel, has been urged by many pressure groups to make a firm commitment to some sort of mechanism which will prompt aviation to start paying its environmental costs. To do so, as Future Forests will attest, wouldn't add an appalling burden. While airplanes certainly do contribute to pollution, the contribution at present is surprisingly small. Airplane emissions account for only two per cent of carbon dioxide emissions, although environmentalists are careful to stress that since the emissions are injected straight into the upper atmosphere, they are far more damaging than those released at ground level. What worries environmentalists though, is the fact that air cheap travel, already hugely expanded, is certainly going to carry on growing at an enormous speed. World air travel is expected to have tripled by 2030, as globalisation creates an ever expanding desire to travel for leisure as well as work. That's what the white paper has been characterised as being all about - ensuring that Britain is in a decent position to grab as much of this expansion as it can, without upsetting too many Nimby voters. It is the Nimby voters who have been worrying Mr Blair at Heathrow. He is not in favour of expansion at Heathrow, his rivals noting that this may be linked to the fact that there are many Labour marginals in West London. Instead, he favours Stansted, which, while it has a highly organised anti-expansion campaign, is deep in the Tory heartlands of Essex. The aviation industry, though, is united it its insistence that to maintain its position as the hub of European cheap travel, Heathrow must have a new runway. It claims that a new runway could increase passenger numbers from around 64 million to 116 million by 2015, and promises a hike in related jobs, direct and indirect, of a breathtaking 45,000. Yet while the advantages of a new runway sometimes seem to be exaggerated, there is no doubt that the disadvantages of not getting one, have been vastly overplayed. Some of the hyberbole around this demand has been laughably apocalyptic, with the chief executive of British Airways, Rod Eddington, arguing that unless Heathrow gets its runway, British aviation could go into a spiral of decline, similar to that experienced by ship- building and coal-mining. It is difficult to see how such a state of affairs could come about, especially since a new runway is pretty much certain to come to the south- east, even if not at Heathrow. What British Airways resents is that it can see, like everyone else, that Stansted is the politically and practically more sensible choice. But since BA doesn't operate out of Stansted, such a choice will create competition for the airline rather than offering it masses of opportunity for unchallenged expansion. Can't find what you need? Try a Google Web Search in the box below!
Leaks widely published prior to the publication of the white paper, at lunchtime today, suggest that the Government has managed to get round the demands of the airlines anyway. By lifting the regulation that stops Heathrow from using both of its runways, one for taking off and one for landing, simultaneously, it is suggested that annual capacity can be boosted to 105 million cheap travel passengers anyway. Politically, this is a neat solution that will go some way to appeasing the airlines as well as the unions, with whom they are agreed on this subject. What it doesn't tackle at all, especially if the green light is given for expansion at Stansted, is the idea that the aviation industry should continue to expand its market by keeping its costs down, while others pay the environmental price for cheap travel. It is estimated that a single British tax-payer earning pounds 25,000 contributes pounds 557 in income tax to meet the cost of the airlines' tax exemption. The cheap travel deals that we now take for granted, are, in fact, subsidised all down the line by ourselves and by others. Yet still the madness goes on. Of course, we all might as well take advantage of endless cheap flights, when it turns out that we're paying for them whether we fly or not. But perhaps it might be an improvement it we were given a choice, and allowed to stump up the true value of a flight when we wish to, instead of being charged through the back door in order to continue the illusion that the world is shrinking. Even the pro-expansionists' arguments that tax on airlines will target the poor, and halt the democratisation of the airways, is wrong. It is overwhelmingly the better-off who take advantage of cheap flights, with the prevalence of cheap travel deals often convincing them that a second home abroad makes financial sense. Far from democratising air travel, this state of affairs ensures that the poor subsidise the rich. It is about time that airline users paid their way, and faced up to the fact that air travel is only obscenely cheap because the industry is so very good at leaving others to pick up its bills..... Compare cheap travel deals here /cheap airfares home |