Leaving Jet Planes

This is why people are so apathetic to politics:

Tim Yeo, love cheat Tory MP and chairman of the all-party environmental audit committee, this week called for domestic flights to be taxed so heavily that "in five years' time everyone is choosing to go by train within the UK". Predictably, he was quickly denounced by faceless New Labour nonentities for having previously admitted to taking private flights between golf courses. This tiresome point scoring ignores two crucial facts: first, Labour are in no position to accuse others of hypocrisy at a time when we have Trident, private contractors in the NHS and ex-education ministers sending their kids to private schools. Second, and much more importantly, only months after Tony Blair described the Stern Report as "the most important document on the future which I have received since becoming Prime Minister," Tim Yeo is, for once, undoubtedly right.

The benefits brought by the democratisation of air travel need to be carefully offset against their effect on the environment: I've cut down on the number of foreign holidays I take but would never want to give them up entirely. However, in a small country like Britain, there should be absolutely no need for people to fly between Manchester and London or Newcastle and Bristol. The political cowardice of Blair's more recent statements on flight emissions - amusingly at odds with his resolve when invading oil-rich countries - sadly exemplifies the increasing moral bankruptcy of his government. The way forward is staggeringly obvious: punitive taxation on domestic flights, more train services with much cheaper fares, and, in the medium-term, the improvement of a small number of strategic roads like the A1, and the construction of high speed rail links between major cities - as in competitor nations like Japan, Germany, France and South Korea - to be linked, through Eurostar, to the Continent.

I won't hold my breath.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1989923,00.html

http://www.monbiot.com/