"Despite the claims the companies make for the democratising effects of cheap travel, 75% of those who use budget airlines are in social classes A, B and C(23). People with second homes abroad take an average of six return flights a year(24), while people in classes D and E hardly fly at all: because they can’t afford the holidays, they are responsible for just 6% of flights(25). Most of the growth, the government envisages, will take place among the wealthiest 10%(26). But the people who are being hit first and will be hit hardest by climate change are among the poorest on earth. Already the droughts in Ethiopia, putting millions at risk of starvation, are being linked by climate scientists to the warming of the Indian Ocean(27). Some 92 million Bangladeshis could be driven out of their homes this century(28), in order that we can still go shopping in New York.
Flying kills. We all know it, and we all do it. And we won’t stop doing it until the government reverses its policy and starts closing the runways."
What will God say to us at Kingdom come? A sobering thought for Lent.
George Monbiot � We Are All Killers:
Filed in: Monbiot, travel, aircraft, CO2, global_warming
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