Are low cost airlines to blame for global warming?

It may be contributing to global warming to an extent ,but considering the immeasurable damage our industries are doing to our atmosphere ,the pollution caused by airlines would be minimal.If some of the bigger countries would have signed the Kyoto protocol,then we might have taken huge strides towards controlling global warming in the first place.But that doesn't seem likely anytime soon.My only hope is they don't regret their ambitions later.

We love travelling and have thoughtlessly travelled to 57 countries, mostly by air racking up several hundreds of thousands of airmiles over the years. I submit that for the last three generations we have been paying far less than the economic cost for petroleum products - I will explain. Low cost airlines, one of the earliest was Freddie Laker's airline shake up a complacent industry and re-write the rules of a business. In the days before deregulation, airlines whether government owned or supported by governments established monopolistic routes, cartelised pricing and grossly inefficient adminstration. It is true that every plane that goes up punches a hole into the ozone layer in addition to concentrating other forms of pollution - from chemical toilets to garbage on an unprecedented scale. The overall Ecological Footprint of a 12 hour airline trip is aweinspiring. The other alarming thing is the number of cargo flights that haul all sorts of cargo over very long distances. Dutch tomatoes gracing Asian salad bowls and Indian, Philippine and Ecuadorian mangoes titillating European and American palates are prime examples of trivial movement of goods. All this is possible with the technology advances and the thoughtless policies that has spent the future of our planet in a very short term. We have expended resources that has taken millions of years to generate in a couple of generations! A twelve year old Severn, brought this to the worlds attention in Rio di Janerio in 1992 during the plenary session of the Earth Summit. ... Losing my future is not like losing an election or a few points on the stock market.... http://www.sustainablestyle.org/sass/heirbrains/03suzuki.html CHINA The Nixon-Kissinger duo, during the Cold War years executed a brilliant strategy to outflank the former Soviet Union and open an economic flank in the Cold war. By providing China with Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status. Opening up the US market, duty free for Chinese goods created three short term effects: 1. Promoted investment into China for production facilities. 2. Decouple China from the COMECON, the alliance of communist countries economies 3. Reduced inflation in America with cheap chinese imports. The far reaching effects of the 1978 strategy are: a. Dismemberment of the USSR and economic and political turmoil in all the former comecon countries. (Cuba and North Korea will be the last to go). b. Reunification of the Germany's and the impetus for the transient success of the EU. c. Explosive growth for China. China is today's global manufacturing powerhouse. It is in this context that I would respond to your comments about China's energy consumption. The bulk of China's energy consumption reflects the energy input for the manufacturing of goods for the western economies. Look around and see how many things around you are made in China? There are many things that you do not even see e.g. door hinges, lock assemblies, gas burners and millions of other things. A small proportion of China's energy needs growth is for their own consumption, which calculated on a per capita basis. Admittedly China would be best served to expand its electricity generation capability through renewable means. They tried with the 3 Gorges Dam (horrible Environment Impact). China is not self sufficient for her energy needs and the seach for cheap energy will politicalise China far more than the search for markets for their goods. I think the G7 countries should focus on the development and deployment of alternative energy systems with new resolve. European countries exhibit more commitment to this than the largest offended, the US. The German dirigibles did offer awesome air transport capability with comparatively low impact. I still fail to understand the imperatives that sidelined development of this technology. Perhaps we can remap the future by revisiting the past.

Sure, you can point to the low cost airlines as place to lay blame for global warming, etc. BUT, you can also point to a million other sources...cars, boats, production plants, etc. Its really hard to say that climate change is a result of one activity.