The British Airline Pilots Association Wants Your Views

of traffic zigzagging all over the country should be targeted too.I'm sure they pollute just as much if not more.

Tell you what you collectivise public transport and I promise never to take a short haul flight ever again. Till then I'm going to travel the way my wallet dictates. I'm not a climate change nay sayer but haranguing folk at the airport and bitching about people flying is going to get us nowhere without offering an alternative i.e. collectivised public transport.
All we've got to do is foster working class millitancy to the point where we(?) the working class take control over the transpotation networks of the world and offer free eco-friendly travel for all.
Simple really.
Or we could just superglue ourselves to an airport...

I am reading the unreferenced and emotively-written report from airline pilots, released for free on the balpa website today in response to the "attacks" fastest-growing threat to the environment, airport expansion. Can I just point out that I went out of my way NOT to attack any airline passangers or staff, verbally or physically. It is very cleverly-written and I will look into some of its claims, especially about the efficiency of rail. It does not touch on the economic damage that holidaying abroad has on the UK's tourism industry.

FACTS ABOUT BINGE-FLYING in the UK

-The press reported that flying counts for only 2 to 3% of CO2 emissions. This is worldwide and the 2% figure seems to be from 1990.

-In the UK it's an other story. Our average, currently doubling every 5 years, is 5% of total CO2. Then subtract the cooling from sulphate aerosols, add the water, and the global warming equivalent is triple this. If we continue to allow BAA and airline corporations to expand, with the current loophole in the Climate Bill, aviation will be to blame for climate change in the year 2050. (source: the stern review - search for aviation on the website) So 5 x 4 is 20% CO2e (equivalent) in 2007. By 2012 that will be 40% of current total emissions. As we are aiming to reduce emissions, flying will share more to blame.

-If as they claim, the pilots support technical solutions and carbon trading, then why do they oppose a tax on jet fuel? Because they know that carbon trading in the EU doesn't work because too many permits were given out. If you are a staunch capitalist I will demand that you increase the carbon price from 20 to 80 euros (source: the stern review - search the document for for "price of carbon") Only then will geological storage be economical.

-If as they claim, they want the "rationalisation" of air routes, why in 2005 did I have to fly to Amsterdam to catch a KLM flight to South Africa, wastefully emitting 200-400 kg equivalent CO2? Connecting flights are very wasteful. There is genuinely room for a 50% saving there.

-Airports do not respect free speech. Their poorly trained security guards got the police to threaten to remove us from their property. They also placed a screen in front of the half-naked man glued to the revolving doors, for his "privacy". If he wanted privacy he would not have had an anti-climate-change slogan written on his back. The airport did not bother to respond to our actual question of what they are doing to warn passangers of the consequences of climate change. If the airport were responsible about having a serious debate, they would print out thousands of copies of the Balpa report and distribute it in the magazine racks and airport information centre.

- I totally commend the pilots for supporting more efficient planes such as the Airbus A123. It will be a challenge transfering their skills to the environmental sector but maybe a few could be employed to shake a bucket at the passangers, for contributions to charities. The inefficient ones such as the B52 should be recycled to make beer cans.

The Camp for Climate Action near Heathrow Airport in August has obviously got the airline industry rattled.
They have been planning a third runway for years and have completed terminal five and got it ready for duty free shopping and diverted two rivers and widened the M25.
All they need to do now is to demolish one village and ruin the other two, and the environmental movement should be getting ready to resist and fight back in self defence.
Everyone who has anything worthwhile to add to this latest war of disinformation from the airlines should be seeking maximum publicity for the cause of saving the human race from extinction by fossil fuels.
This may well be our last chance before the ecological cataclysm that will spell doom for future generations.

by again dividing the environment and jobs. It is not just about pilots, at every level workers in polluting industries are the first ones to be affected, and change has to happen with them not against them.

Google "Just Transition"

As far as I am personally concerned there is no debate about global warming.
Recent news was that the Earth's temperatures and the melting ice caps and the rising sea levels were all occuring at three times the worst predictions of the past two years. (Climate Indymedia).
The Independent newspaper front page on 19 June 2007 said: "The Earth today stands in imminent peril
...and nothing short of a planetary rescue will save it from the environmental cataclysm of dangerous climate change.
"Those are not the words of eco-warriors but the considered opinion of a group of eminent scientists writing in a peer-reviewed scientific journal."
It will be the working people obviously who will be doing the work that needs to be done to restore and regenerate the global environment, but that does not mean that the worst polluting industries should be legally allowed to continue to pollute and destroy the planet.
At the moment I am working on lending support to the efforts of the eco warriors who are planning to help make the Camp for Climate Action at Heathrow Airport in August the biggest environmental protest campaign the world has ever seen.
Unless the working people of all the nations unite and join forces and resist and fight back in self defence against the destruction of the Earth there will be no future generations because all the scientific evidence shows that the human race is heading for extinction this century.
There is a lot of work that needs to be done but not the sort of work that is killing humanity.
Our report "Can You Save the Human Race?" will be available soon free on the internet and it will provide all the ideas and plans and projects from all the environmentalists who have been working on this for many years.
Let's hope it works for the sake of the children, most of whom come from working families.