Exposed: Britain's Dirty Secret; the Government Has Been Disguising the Quantity of Greenhouse Gases That We Create with Our Flights to and from the UK

Leake, Jonathan, New Statesman (1996)

Greenhouse gases generated by British aviation could be far higher than the government's published figures, according to new data obtained from the Department for Transport (DfT). The DfT's published figures--which are also the ones used by airlines, and by Gordon Brown when he announced a [pounds sterling]5 hike in air-passenger duty in his 6 December pre-Budget report--state that British aviation generates roughly 34 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.

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To environmentalists, that figure has long sounded suspiciously small--and now they know why. The department has admitted that it works it out simply by counting the aircraft that take off from Britain. Those that land here are excluded.

That might appear reasonable if half the passengers on those planes were foreigners--but they are not. In fact, according to the Office for National Statistics, 70 per cent of the passengers landing and taking off from the UK are Britons, most of them taking cheap tourist flights booked and paid for here. Which means that the DfT should be adding up the emissions from all the …

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Publication information: Article title: Exposed: Britain's Dirty Secret; the Government Has Been Disguising the Quantity of Greenhouse Gases That We Create with Our Flights to and from the UK. Contributors: Leake, Jonathan - Author. Magazine title: New Statesman (1996). Volume: 135. Issue: 4823-4825 Publication date: December 18, 2006. Page number: 22+. © Not available. COPYRIGHT 2006 Gale Group.

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