An article in UK based TimesOnline speculates that air fares will double within Europe with the passage of a new carbon tax.

The article reminds us that “Aviation is the fastest growing source of greenhouse gases, and flights within Europe are on course to double by 2020 and triple by 2030.”  The number of flights is increasing at a incredible rate.  (TimesOnline 7/5/06)

This brings to mind a comment I read on the TransitionCulture blog.  A reader reported seeing the following ad posted in a New York airport:

“Exactly 0% of passenger jets can be
fueled by wind, solar or nuclear energy. So what’s the alternative?” *

The alternative is paradigm change.  The alternative is re-thinking our “need” for air transport, particularly short-range use of aircraft.  The alternative is using other forms of transport whenever possible, and considering whether the trip is necessary in the first place.

Consider the Schumacher/Hawken** four types of capital: financial capital, manufactured capital, human capital and natural capital.  We are a society that uses a counting system dependent solely upon financial capital.  If it doesn’t affect our pocketbook - financial capital - we figure it doesn’t count.

Up until now, those cheap air trips haven’t cost us much in the financial capital realm.  But they have been costing us (and our unborn grandchildren) dearly in the natural capital realm, in un-counted forms like greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental desctruction.

Hooray that now, finally, steps are being taken to assess a “counting” method such that those excess air trips will cause us to bear something closer to their true cost. 

Perhaps now, with those higher costs to our pocketbooks, society’s decision matrix will move closer toward the decision we should be making:  is this a necessary trip?  or is it “costing” me too much?

In other words … am I squandering the precious resources of the only planet we have?

* I’ll pass over the nuclear comment in that ad, and omit discussion of the source of that ad with its advocacy of hydrogen - both discussions for another time.

** The four types of capital were expounded by E.M. Schumaker in Small is Beautiful and resurrected by Paul Hawken et al in Natural Capitalism.