Airlines See Emissions Trading as a Get-Out Clause ; ANALYSIS

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Britain's aviation policy is still cruising along cheerfully in the wrong direction, the new figures for proposed airport expansion make clear, but there's an awful crunch coming.

The vast growth in airport capacity, passenger numbers and runways currently planned under the 2003 aviation White Paper cannot go ahead unchanged if Britain is to meet its targets for tackling global warming, targets that were given new emphasis by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown this week after the publication of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change.

Consider: as flying continues its headlong boom, greenhouse gas emissions from aircraft are rising faster than those of any …