Air travel has been increasingly maligned in recent years – almost always unfairly. Despite endless crowing about “delays!” (at their lowest levels in years) “awful service!” (you get what you pay for) and “airport security!” (OK, the complainers may have a point there) we mustn’t lose sight of the plain facts: air travel is remarkably fast, safe, and thrilling. More than ‘Facebook,’ and other pseudo-social mechanisms (read: social relations conducted through computers), air travel unites and connects people the world over.

Most laudable, perhaps, is how affordable flying has become in recent decades. Air travel used to be a mode of transportation reserved solely for the super rich. Now, it’s almost entirely democratic. (Fly Southwest and you’ll see what I mean.) Nearly every working person in the developed world can afford to purchase a plane ticket.

This may no longer be the case in the Mary Poppins state that is modern day Britain, if the climate alarmists get their way, however. From today’s Guardian:

"Heavy taxes on passengers and a ban on expansion at regional airports will be needed to curb Britain’s insatiable appetite for air travel, a climate change report will say today .But it will still be possible to build a third runway at Heathrow, add second runways at Stansted and Edinburgh and permit an extra 140 million journeys a year by 2050 without breaking the UK’s commitment to cutting carbon dioxide emissions, according to the Committee on Climate Change."

Regardless of the fact that only 3.5% of the world’s emissions are generated by air travel, British climate alarmists hope to price most people out of flying – to make air travel, once again, the exclusive province of the rich.

This is wrong on both moral and pragmatic grounds. To deal with the vulgar side, first: Britain, like the United States, is facing stiff economic headwinds. Much commerce, meanwhile – particularly in a small country like the UK – is contingent on overseas air travel. Middle managers and salesmen need to travel! Higher fees on flying will only hamper economic recovery. (The super rich classes, meanwhile, who generate little to no wealth, will continue to fly their private jets.)

Environmentalism, or, more sinisterly, the profoundly anti-humanist “deep ecology movement,” is typically placed on the liberal left. What kind of liberal left ideology, though, wishes to reserve modern conveniences as the sole property of the super rich? What kind of liberal left ideology supports a more disconnected, calcified world? What kind of liberal left ideology has such a stunted, grounded vision of the future?

What kind of liberal left ideology wants so desperately to clip our wings?

Climate change report calls for passenger tax on flights to reduce CO2

http://trueslant.com/ethanepstein/2009/12/09/environmentalists-only...