someone correct me if I'm wrong but I thought I read elsewhere that flights contribute less than a tenth of a percent of the carbon emissions per year?

Did you steal this or did the other poster steal yours ? I can't be bothered to see who posted first

Just saw that you posted first - apologies

All phrasing is theft but Gavin is quoting me.

Not saying that they shouldn't aspire to it, however it would be an extremely bad idea, the World cannot sustain 6bn people at Western Lifestyle levels. Is this what you want?

Sure was.

that may be the case, but it's considerably less than one tenth of one percent of the world's population who are flying at any one time, so the net contribution of each individual who flies anywhere for anything is far, far in excess of their "fair share" of per-capita emissions.

The China and India argument is a fine example of the Western governments' abject and arrogant hypocrisy (aided and abetted by views such as Gavin's and J.E's). How can we, who have pushed a great deal of our dirty, polluting primary industry and heavy manufacturing operations to lower-cost economies, possibly presume to then expect those economies to limit their development to levels far below the indulgent polluting we're-not-going-to-stop-buying-5.7-litre-hemis consumption exhibited by the West.

Canada's particularly bad, by the way, coming in at no 9 behind Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, USA, Luxembourg, Trinidad & Tobago, and Australia. UK sits at 25 in the list, according to the World Resources Institute here

Not the way it was put from what I remember, it said that the total carbon emissions by all air journeys per year (not per passenger) was that although I can't find the article and I think it was written a few days after the tv show about the global warning "myth" aired on channel 4 so I'm not sure how much credibility it had anyway.

Of course it's hypocrisy, but that doesn't change the fact that it would be a really really bad thing for the World if all peoples lived by Western standards, so what are you suggesting the answer is? Two wrongs don't make a right.

I think that amounts to what I was trying to say - but reading it back I didn't articulate it very well. My point was that even though the total contribution of air travel to total carbon emissions may be <0.1%, the proportion of the world's population that undertakes that air travel is <<<0.1%, so each of them is contributing much more than the average to total emissions. Air travel in the abstract isn't killing the environment, but air travellers are irresponsible polluters.

I will personnal be adding to that massively over the next week or so, with trips to Seattle, Cincinnati and Chicago all within the next 10 days

I guess it's not just the governments then, this hypocrisy thing

No they don't, but the West could start by trying to right our own wrong rather than lecturing the emerging economies. The average Canadian emits just over 17 times more carbon dioxide in a year than the average Indian, adn almost 5 times as much as the average Chinese, despite all their heavy industrial development. If raising energy consumption levels in south Asia, China, Russia, Latin America and parts of sub-Saharan Africa, as a result of increasing economic prosperity, means that the number of people living in extreme poverty is reduced, then so be it.

We can't change (foreign) government policy, economic development or the rights of Indians and Chinese to own motor vehicles, but we can change our own attitudes, behaviours, policies and financial incentives.

I'm not an expert, so I don't know if this would be most effectively done by raising fuel taxation to several times its current level, decommissioning coal-fired power stations, road-pricing, increasing investment in public transport, raising subsidies for better home insulation, whatever - but the fact remains that we should change what we can rather than complaining about what we can't.

But, as I said, I'm as hypocritical as the next guy on this. I like my air-conditioned house; I travel by air on business and on holiday; I like my beer cold and my baths hot; I'm not at all turned on by the idea of a composting toilet. I have no need of a large and powerful truck, though, so I didn't buy one

I believe that what should be happening is massive investment on working for alternative fuel sources, somehow obtaining hydrogen from water for example. There's plenty of water about, the seas keep rising apparently. I'm not talking about Ethanol, that's just a waste of time and pushing up food prices for those who can't afford it. If vehicles didn't emit then they'd be no need for this discussion.

There also needs to be some lateral thinking with regards to housing, probably the most sensible thing would be to build homes underground, skylights to let in the light, natural winter insulation and summer cooling etc. That would reduce the footprint on the Earth quite substantially.

I have a big truck because I need one, don't claim to be green, but then on the other hand I haven't been in a plane in 7 years and don't have airconditioning in my house.

Anyway, work to be done, this discussion isn't paying my gas bill.

Or demand that the patent for the car that runs on water be taken back from the oil/car companies

I'd love to see an efficient way of cracking water to get hydrogen, then burning it in the oxygen to produce nothing but water vapour out the back. I recall doing some sort of project on it at school, and wondered at the time why this wasn't how all cars worked. If somebody invented a way other than electrolysis (which uses more energy to crack the water than the combustion energy released by the hydrogen) they'd probably end up very wealthy, once they'd overcome the vested interests of Big Oil to stop it happening in the first place....

They would end up very wealthy on the payroll of Big Oil to stop it happening