So says the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (RCEP) in this BBC article.
Instead of encouraging airport expansion and proliferation, it is essential that the government should divert resources into encouraging a shift from air to high-speed rail for internal UK travel and some intra-European journeys.
The amount of pollution (especially CO2) from air travel is far higher per passenger-mile than rail. Britain’s problem that, unlike France and Germany, we’ve failed to invest in a high-speed rail network, preferring patchwork upgrades to existing lines dating from the Victorian era.
The RCEP isn’t taking a Luddite line that air travel is evil, only that as much short-haul traffic as possible should go by rail.
Not that this argument will cut any ice with the head-in-the-sand crowd who are still ‘in denial’ about global warming.
