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Burn baby burn

With air travel now a prime target for environmentalists, it can be tempting to think about driving to your holiday destination in order to reduce your greenhouse contributions. But do planes really deserve the flak they are getting and is it really an eco-sin to just keep on flying?

It is certainly true that the aviation sector is growing at a rapid rate, roughly 4% annually, and that the emissions being produced by planes harm the environment. Yet as it stands the industry contributes only about 3.5% of the total anthropogenic climate change, that is taking into account not just carbon dioxide emissions but also ozone-forming nitrogen oxides. This is roughly just 10% of the total contribution caused by the transportation sector, of which road traffic makes up more than 80%.

And mile for mile, the amount of carbon dioxide planes produce is not as high as you might think. For every 2000 miles travelled on a plane, each passenger is responsible for pumping a tonne of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. But driving a mid-sized car will produce the same amount of emissions by travelling just 1900 miles and a large 4x4 will only get as far as 1350 miles.

Of course, if a car is full of people then those emissions can be divided by the number of passengers, but on the whole people tend to travel more miles by car each year than they fly.

Another, often ignored, consideration about aviation is that although the industry is growing, the engine designs and fuels are improving in efficiency and cleanliness; a trend that seems to be accelerating. In 2006, Sir Richard Branson pledged to commit £1.5 billion toward developing cleaner biofuels for aviation over the following 10 years.