SSE NEWS ARCHIVE - July to September 2005

Including airlines in the EU's carbon emission trading scheme is the best way of tackling the sector's climate impacts, the European Commission confirmed in a policy paper published on Tuesday. The Commission says it will propose legislation by the end of next year.

The new paper does not say when aviation might enter the emission trading scheme (ETS), but does not rule it out from the second phase starting in 2008. In contrast EU environment commissioner Stavros Dimas said in May that aviation could not be included until at least 2012.

EU officials told Environment Daily that earlier action depends on political will among governments and MEPs. The UK, currently president of the EU, strongly favours the earlier timetable Its environment and transport ministers called the new paper a "key step forward" on Tuesday.

The Commission will now set up a working group that will contribute to a wider review of the ETS directive next June. The group will tackle technical questions, especially how to allocate emission allowances.

The Commission has side-stepped its consultant's recommendation that allowances should be distributed centrally rather than by member states Instead the paper simply proposes a "harmonised allocation methodology". Airlines should be the entities responsible for trading since they have most influence over emission levels, the paper says. All airlines operating from EU airports should be covered.

The group will also discuss how two options to include the greenhouse effects of aviation caused by emissions of gases other than CO2. In the first, airlines would have to surrender extra emission allowances calculated by multiplying the CO2 emission by a "precautionary average factor".

In the second, only CO2 emissions would be covered in the ETS and "ancillary instruments" would mop up other effects. The most likely of these is differentiated airport charges based on levels of nitrogen oxides (NOx).

In a separate impact assessment, the Commission concludes that including aviation in carbon trading is "unlikely to have any significant adverse effects on competition". Ticket price rises would be "modest", it says, and air transport demand "would not fall but simply grow at a slightly slower rate".

The AEF today welcomed the release of the European Commission's Communication on Aviation and Climate Change, but warned that Europe urgently needs to identify the environmental targets it wishes the air transport sector to achieve.

The Communication highlights the importance of taking regional action to bring greenhouse gas emissions from aircraft under control in the absence of any global proposals, and the need to tackle all the climate change impacts of aircraft, not just its carbon dioxide emissions.

The measures outlined in the Communication, which include aviation joining an emissions trading scheme in the short-term and the potential role of taxation in the long-term, highlight the tools available but the report stops short of setting targets for reducing aviation emissions.

Tim Johnson, Director of the AEF, said "The range of market measures to address this significant and growing problem has been on the table for at least six years. It is very positive that the Commission's Communication has developed the arguments for their introduction, and outlined a way forward, but the vital next step is to prioritise discussion on what we want these instruments to achieve. We know the scale of the problem, we have agreed a level at which we need to stabilise atmospheric greenhouse gases and now we urgently need to agree a limit for emissions from the air transport sector. Including aviation in an emissions trading scheme must not become an end in itself, rather it should be a tool to secure genuine emissions reductions, and that means setting a tough cap on the sector."

Note by AEF:

In 1999, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published its report on aviation that estimated the total climatic impact of aviation as between 2 and 4 times that of its CO2 emissions alone. The 'multiplier' effect is due largely to the impacts of oxides of nitrogen emitted at altitude and the warming effect of contrails.

Emissions from EU air travel, if allowed to grow unchecked, are set to consume the entire sustainable carbon budget of Europe by 2045. That is, if we wish to stabilise atmospheric greenhouse gases at the level EU leaders have agreed is necessary to avoid dangerous climate change, there will have to be no emissions from any other sector - if aviation continues to grow at its present rate. This forecast, published recently by the Tyndall Centre for Climate Research, takes into account all projections from the industry for improvements in technological and operational efficiency.

In addition to a stringent cap, the AEF would like to see the auctioning of allowance permits to airlines, the inclusion of emissions from all flights departing EU airports, as well as the introduction of parallel measures, such as taxes and charges, to tackle non-CO2 impacts.

"Next year too, building on Britain's Kyoto commitments, we will publish proposals on energy policy. Global warming is too serious for the world any longer to ignore its danger or split into opposing factions on it. And for how much longer can countries like ours allow the security of our energy supply be dependent on some of the most unstable parts of the world? For both reasons the G8 Agreement must be made to work so we develop together the technology that allows prosperous nations to adapt and emerging ones to grow sustainably; and that means an assessment of all options, including civil nuclear power. In transport, we will continue to develop proposals for a fundamental change in its funding, including road pricing."

Gordon Brown - Extract from his speech to the Conference on September 26th:

"And to steer that course of stability I call on world oil producers and oil companies now to support the British plan agreed this weekend by the whole international community to raise production, to open the books, prevent high prices hurting the poor, and - let us be clear - to do what should have been done years ago: to promote the environmental agenda for energy efficiency and alternative sources of energy."

OUR COMMENT: Not much on what has been described as the most serious threat facing the world.

Someone with an axe to grind against airports operator BAA has decided to get it off their community chest by littering the Labour Party conference in Brighton with satirical beer mats based on the Monopoly board game. From the comfort of a seaside bar stool, delegates can play BAA Airports Monopoly, dubbed "fantastic fun for just one player".

The beer mats, distributed to almost every conference hotel, bar and coffee shop, feature a truncated version of the traditional game, with the famous London streets replaced by Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted airports - all owned by BAA.

As players move around the board, the game's perpetrators take swipes at BAA. Heathrow is shown as a "Licence to print money", while players landing on Stansted are invited to "Invest £4billion for penny flights," a reference to BAA's plans to build a second runway at Stansted, whose main customers are low-fare airlines Ryanair and Easyjet.

There is no suggestion that BAA chief executive Mike Clasper should go directly to jail without passing Go, but the corner Parking square omits the word "Free", instead adding £ signs. The Civil Aviation Authority, which regulates the airports monopoly, is portrayed as a fluffy poodle.

The identity of the perpetrator is a mystery so far, though there is no shortage of suspects. Virgin Atlantic, Bmi, Ryanair and Easyjet have all railed at the BAA's monopoly, while even the Transport Select Committee has criticised it. Michael O'Leary, the outspoken Ryanair boss, rarely gets through a press conference without dismissing BAA's plans for Stansted as "some bloody marble Taj Mahal". Ryanair said it had no knowledge of the game.

Asked if he was the brains behind it, Brian Ross, economics adviser to the Stop Stansted Expansion campaign, would only say: "We might confess to a peripheral involvement and we congratulate the main protagonists behind it."

World energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions rose by 4.5% last year, their fastest rate since 2000, according to first estimates by German economics institute DIW. The figures show that EU-15 emissions climbed only marginally in 2004 after increasing significantly in 2003 released.

DIW's early review of 2004 data confirms China as currently the major driver of global emissions growth. It released an extra 579m tonnes of CO2 in 2004, a year-on-year increase of 15%. In comparison, world emissions increased by 1.2bn tonnes to stand at 27.5bn tonnes, or 26% above their 1990 level.

Emissions growth in industrialised countries in 2004 was far less rampant. Energy-related CO2 rose by 1.3% across the OECD area, DIW reported. In the USA it increased by 1.4%. In the old EU-15 countries it rose by 0.7%, less than half the rate of increase in 2003, according to official EU figures (ED 21/06/05 www.environmentdaily.com/articles/index.cfm?action=article&ref=19041).

Meanwhile, DIW estimates that EU-15 emissions of all six Kyoto greenhouse gases rose by just 0.3% in 2004, again well down on their 1.3% increase in 2003 according to official EU figures. According to the German institute, EU-15 emissions are now 1.4% below their 1990 level compared with a commitment to minus 8% by 2010.

Across all countries bound to limit greenhouse gas emissions by the Kyoto protocol, total output was 4.1% below the 1990 level in 2004, DIW reports. This compares with the overall commitment by these countries to an aggregate 5.2% emissions reduction by 2010.

Most non-EU industrialised countries have seen substantial increases in emissions over the 1990-2004 period (DIW reports 26% for Australia, 25% for Canada, 14% for the USA). The key factor behind the overall reduction has been the 35% decline in emissions from Russia and other former communist countries of eastern Europe since 1990.

Benefiting from this, greenhouse gas emissions from the full 25-member EU were 7.6% lower last year than in 1990, the institute estimated.

DIW called for "further intensive climate protection measures" to reverse the global increase in CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions. Emission trading, now underway in Europe for industry, should be extended to transport and households, they said.

OUR COMMENT: Tony Blair has made it clear that he considers that a technical solution is the answer to reducing Carbon emissions, either by CO2 sequestration - storing it below ground - or by the development of green aircraft. We know that a low emission aircraft is not going to appear, if ever, before the 2020s - it also seems clear that CO2 sequestration is a long way off. Instead of simpler "this year, next year" measures these solutions are "sometimes? never?" - can we afford to wait that long?

Many obstacles stand in the way of carbon capture and storage becoming a key answer to global warming, the Intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC) said in a long-awaited report published on Monday. The downbeat conclusion contrasts with rising expectations for the technology in Europe and elsewhere.

The IPCC acknowledges that some studies have suggested that sequestering carbon underground could account for up to 55% of all emission reductions needed between now and 2100 to stabilise greenhouse gases concentrations in the atmosphere.

Such forecasts are beset by uncertainties and constraints, the panel concludes. For example, the real capacity of underground reservoirs is still unknown. And though the cost of carbon sequestration is expected to decline, estimates are subject to significant uncertainties.

Unless governments put a cost on emitting CO2 then there will be no incentive to use carbon sequestration, the IPCC adds. Sequestering carbon will itself push up the cost of fossil fuel power stations, it points out - a plant with carbon capture could require up to 40% more energy than one without.

As well as technology and cost issues, health, safety, environmental and legal concerns would have to be addressed to ensure public support. A key legal issue would be how international law would treat CO2 injection in international seas.

At present, only the electricity sector, which produces around 40% of total CO2 emissions, could use the technology at a reasonable cost, the IPCC finds. The price of CO2 reductions would have to exceed US$25-30 (€21-25) per tonne of CO2 over the lifetime of projects to make this viable.

Environmental groups, who are generally sceptical of carbon sequestration, welcomed the report. Greenpeace called it a "clarification of the limits of the technology". The conclusions further reinforced the need for massive deployment of renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies, it said.

Tony Blair has admitted that he is changing his views on combating global warming to mirror those of President Bush - and oppose negotiating international treaties such as the Kyoto Protocol.

His admission, which has outraged environmentalists on both sides of the Atlantic, flies in the face of his promises made in the past two years and undermines the agreement he masterminded at this summer's Gleneagles Summit. And it endangers talks that opened in Ottawa this weekend on a new treaty to combat climate change.

The U-turn will inevitably bring accusations that he has, once again, sold out to Mr Bush, just at the time that the US President is coming under unprecedented pressure to change his policy in the wake of hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Last week the UK Government's chief scientific advisor, Sir David King, said that global warming might have increased their severity.

Over the past two years Mr Blair has consistently claimed global leadership in tackling what he described as "long term, the single most important issue we face as a global community" and has stressed that it "can only properly be addressed through international agreements". President Bush repeatedly expressed anger at his position.

Sharing a platform with the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, in New York this month, Mr Blair confessed: "Probably I'm changing my thinking about this", adding that he hoped the world's nations would "not negotiate international treaties".

This contradicts his assertion in a speech a year ago - which drew a private rebuke from the Bush administration - that "a problem that is global in cause and scope can only be fully addressed through international agreement".

It also denies what his ministers claimed to be his main achievement on global warming at Gleneagles. He had succeeded in getting all the leaders except Mr Bush to sign up to negotiating a successor to the Kyoto treaty, and in arranging a meeting between the G8 and leading developing countries to discuss it.

But instead of endorsing agreed limits on the pollution that causes climate change, Mr Blair told this month's meeting at the Clinton Global Initiative that he was putting his faith in "developing science and technology" - precisely Mr Bush's position.

He justified his change of heart by saying that countries would not negotiate environmental treaties that cut their growth or consumption - another of the President's main contentions. But in another speech last April he said it was "quite false" to suppose that environmental protection would inhibit growth.

Last night, Tony Juniper, executive director of Friends of the Earth, called the Prime Minister's volte-face "unbelievable": "Having failed to practise what he preaches, he is now changing his preaching to match his practice."

The European Commission on Wednesday proposed a comprehensive 15-year programme to improve EU air quality. "This will enable the EU to have one of the most advanced air quality policies in the world," said environment commissioner Stavros Dimas.

As we reported earlier this week, in its final form Cafe is costed at €7.1bn annually by 2020, with projected benefits conservatively estimated at €42bn each year. Earlier drafts called for bigger cuts in air pollution costing nearly €12bn per year. It was watered down under pressure from EU commissioners for industry, agriculture and internal market.

Mr Dimas hinted at the difficulties he had faced in gaining his colleagues' backing for the final version. "We reached a compromise without considerably compromising health aspects," he said. "There had even been some voices considering that the strategy was not necessary at all."

At Cafe's core are a series of targets for reducing key pollutant emissions between 2000 and 2020. Sulphur dioxide should be slashed by 82%, nitrogen oxides by 60%, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) by 51%, ammonia by 27% and ultra-fine particulates (PM2.5) by 59%.

The Commission has now set the ball rolling by issuing a first piece of draft legislation, consolidating existing EU laws on air quality standards and introducing the first limits on PM2.5 (see separate story, this issue). Beyond this, Cafe sets out an orientation for future measures for political debate.

Under the Commission's vision, agriculture will bear the brunt of change. EU official Peter Gammeltoft said Cafe was "opening up new territory" by requiring farmers to make a "dedicated effort" to cut emissions. "Industry and the transport sector have made efforts over the last 20 or 30 years," he said. "We're now at a point where we can't envisage cost-effective reductions without some contribution from agriculture".

Cafe could thus cost agriculture about €2.5bn, of which about €1bn in costs are already in train through the recent form of the EU's common agricultural policy. The Commission estimates costs of around €2bn for transport, €1bn for large and small combustion plants, €1bn for households, and around €600m for other industrial activities.

Among possible measures, the Commission is already preparing to propose a strengthening of the EU's 2001 national emissions ceilings directive next year. It will also examine whether small combustion plants under 50 megawatts in capacity should be brought into the IPPC industrial pollution regime. But there are no plans to place extra controls on installations already covered by the IPPC or large combustion plants directive.

In the transport sector the Commission is to propose new "Euro V" air quality standards by the end of the year. It will "examine the scope" for reducing VOC emissions from petrol stations and will "further encourage shifts towards less polluting modes of transport".

It will also "consider" whether to introduce low-emission zones and minimum public procurement quotas for cleaner vehicles. An existing programme to cut emission from shipping will also be strengthened.

The European Commission proposed the first ever EU-level limits on ambient concentrations of ultra-fine particles under 2.5 microns wide (PM2.5) on Wednesday. Its legislative proposal is the first building block in the Cafe air quality strategy (see separate article, this issue).

The draft law will clamp down on PM2.5 pollution in two stages. By 2010 all member states will have to comply with a "concentration cap" of 25 micrograms per cubic metre (ug/m3). This is derived from an existing EU limit on particles up to ten microns (PM10) of 40ug/m3 by the same date.

Member states meeting the PM10 target should automatically meet the PM2.5 mark because the smaller fraction is also lighter. Nevertheless, the Commission proposes giving states leeway to exceed the cap by up to 20% when the directive enters force, declining in steps to 0% in 2015.

In the second stage member states will have to cut PM2.5 concentrations by 20% by 2020, compared with the average during 2008-2010. Five years after the directive's adoption the Commission will propose further targets differentiated by member state.

As well as PM2.5 curbs, the draft directive consolidates the 1996 air quality framework directive and four daughter directives passed since then, cutting the volume of legal texts by half. Existing air quality limit values remain unaffected.

OUR COMMENT: Although there are no proposals for reducing emissions from aircraft (which would have to be controlled by international agreement, a major task) the proposed Directive will require more stringent air quality standards. If there is a 60% reduction in nitrogen dioxide levels included, BAA can forget R2! However, it will be a long time before we see any details or any action. We must follow the progress of this legislation and fully support it. It has very big implications for the future - it will be resisted and attempts will be made to dilute it. Improvements in Air Quality would have very important health benefits and tougher action is overdue.

Pat Dale

If the Malta International Airport lowers its tariffs to something close to the European average, Ryanair will set up a six-aircraft base in Malta and will guarantee two million passengers per year, said deputy CEO Michael Cawley yesterday.

Addressing the press at the Westin Radisson yesterday, Mr Cawley said that Ryanair can and will save the Maltese tourism industry, generating 750,000 new tourists and directly creating about 2,000 new jobs at the airport - not counting the positive domino effect on the whole of Malta.

Mr Cawley said that the key to everything was price. "Ryanair has recently set up a route to some remote town in Norway. No one had even heard of it. Yet, since we set up the route and charged €32 for a return trip, we have sold almost 600,000 seats in eight months," he said.

Mr Cawley said that low frills, low costs, was the only way to attract tourists. "And Malta will only benefit if it allows us to operate here. We can advertise Malta at €39. And believe me, experience has shown me that people will flock here," he said. He mentioned Riga as another example.

He explained: "We do not only operate from the UK; we can bring tourists from Spain, Italy, France, practically anywhere we fly from."

"For years Malta's tourism industry has been in decline, starved of low cost access which is so necessary for tourism to grow. Our proposal is to base six aircraft and deliver two million passengers to MIA," said Mr Cawley.

He also said that he realised that the proposal might sound radical, but Ryanair has succeeded in many similar ventures around Europe. "Our proposal will help bring Maltese tourism up to the growth enjoyed by other destinations in Europe. We would like to embark on a project with the government of Malta to generate 2,000 jobs within the next three years," said Mr Cawley.

He said that Ryanair's nearest competitor was EasyJet, which was 59 per cent more expensive. "We use price stimulation. At €62, you might not fill an aircraft. But at €32, people don't really care where they go. It's cheap, they can afford it and might just take a weekend break," he said.

Mr Cawley also rubbished suggestions that Ryanair cannot service a route that is serviced by another airline. "We think straight to the point. Most airlines just do not think rationally at all. Look at Air Malta. They were in trouble long before we ever came along," said Mr Cawley. As incredulous as it sounds, Mr Cawley said that Air Malta employs 2,000 staff to cater for 1.5 million passengers.

"Ryanair has 2,800 staff to cater for 35 million passengers. Do the sums and you will see what I mean. We expect our staff to work hard and be efficient – and in return they are the highest paid in the industry. The philosophy runs all the way through the company. Our aircraft only have a 25 minute turnaround time on ground," he said.

He said: "We gear our prices in order to be able to put people on the plane. Sometimes if need be we give away free seats and only charge taxes because we know that these people will spend on other things such as car hire and the like."

Mr Cawley said that Ryanair was well capable of delivering its promise, because it had done so in every other country it decided to operate from. "But if we are bringing so many passengers, we expect more competitive fees. If we don't meet our targets, then yes, we will refund the difference to the MIA," he said.

He explained that MIA's tariffs were not expensive, but outrageous. "They are about three times as expensive at the European average with €20 handling fees per person. We cannot profitably carry passengers with those charges," he said.

He likened the process to a large supermarket buying from a wholesale at a cheaper price in comparison with the prices charged for orders made to a corner shop. "The supermarket buys in bulk and is given a discount. The corner shop buys things at a costlier price and in turn charges a costlier price," he said.

He said that if Malta wanted to be part of the European tourism boom, the MIA had to lower its fees. He said the European average was e7 handling charge per person.

Mr Cawley said that on 1 May 2004 Malta changed forever. "Joining the EU is a good thing. Ireland benefited from it. But I just hope it does not take you 20 years like it took us to realise that things have to change. I hope you change quicker than we did," he said.

Mr Cawley said the airline realised that Malta had particular circumstances and that his company was prepared to work around them.

"We could make it an evolutionary change rather than a revolutionary one by servicing a few routes at first and even not the UK. We would love to have a base here, but at the end of the day it's up to you. You cannot make omelettes without breaking eggs," he said.

He said that Malta was the only country that registered a drop in arrivals from the UK. "The market is ailing. But it is up to you to allow us to do something about it," he said.

He said Ryanair could double if not treble arrivals from the UK. He concluded: "Customers like paying low costs. They don't care about image anymore and that is the reality. Low cost carriers are here to stay, the only obstacle for us and Malta is the MIA charges. We want a deal that is competitive in relation to European average charges."

He said that discussions would continue between the airline and the authorities.

OUR COMMENT: If Malta wants more tourists, airlines and passengers must be prepared to pay for the pollution they cause to Malta as well as to the UK. More important, aircraft emissions must be reduced - this needs pressure from the government and from the EU. What has happened to Blair's climate change mission? How many trees is he planting after his round the world trips?

Pat Dale

A record loss of sea ice in the Arctic this summer has convinced scientists that the northern hemisphere may have crossed a critical threshold beyond which the climate may never recover. Scientists fear that the Arctic has now entered an irreversible phase of warming which will accelerate the loss of the polar sea ice that has helped to keep the climate stable for thousands of years.

They believe global warming is melting Arctic ice so rapidly that the region is beginning to absorb more heat from the sun, causing the ice to melt still further and so reinforcing a vicious cycle of melting and heating.

The greatest fear is that the Arctic has reached a "tipping point" beyond which nothing can reverse the continual loss of sea ice and with it the massive land glaciers of Greenland, which will raise sea levels dramatically.

Satellites monitoring the Arctic have found that the extent of the sea ice this August has reached its lowest monthly point on record, dipping an unprecedented 18.2 per cent below the long-term average.

Experts believe that such a loss of Arctic sea ice in summer has not occurred in hundreds and possibly thousands of years. It is the fourth year in a row that the sea ice in August has fallen below the monthly downward trend - a clear sign that melting has accelerated.

Scientists are now preparing to report a record loss of Arctic sea ice for September, when the surface area covered by the ice traditionally reaches its minimum extent at the end of the summer melting period.

Sea ice naturally melts in summer and reforms in winter but for the first time on record this annual rebound did not occur last winter when the ice of the Arctic failed to recover significantly.

Arctic specialists at the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre at Colorado University, who have documented the gradual loss of polar sea ice since 1978, believe that a more dramatic melt began about four years ago.

In September 2002 the sea ice coverage of the Arctic reached its lowest level in recorded history. Such lows have normally been followed the next year by a rebound to more normal levels, but this did not occur in the summers of either 2003 or 2004. This summer has been even worse. The surface area covered by sea ice was at a record monthly minimum for each of the summer months - June, July and now August.

Scientists analysing the latest satellite data for September - the traditional minimum extent for each summer - are preparing to announce a significant shift in the stability of the Arctic sea ice, the northern hemisphere's major "heat sink" that moderates climatic extremes.

"The changes we've seen in the Arctic over the past few decades are nothing short of remarkable," said Mark Serreze, one of the scientists at the Snow and Ice Data Centre who monitor Arctic sea ice.

Scientists at the data centre are bracing themselves for the 2005 annual minimum, which is expected to be reached in mid-September, when another record loss is forecast. A major announcement is scheduled for 20 September. "It looks like we're going to exceed it or be real close one way or the other. It is probably going to be at least as comparable to September 2002," Dr Serreze said.

"This will be four Septembers in a row that we've seen a downward trend. The feeling is we are reaching a tipping point or threshold beyond which sea ice will not recover."

The extent of the sea ice in September is the most valuable indicator of its health. This year's record melt means that more of the long-term ice formed over many winters - so called multi-year ice - has disappeared than at any time in recorded history.

Sea ice floats on the surface of the Arctic Ocean and its neighbouring seas and normally covers an area of some 7 million square kilometres (2.4 million square miles) during September - about the size of Australia. However, in September 2002, this dwindled to about 2 million square miles - 16 per cent below average.

Sea ice data for August closely mirrors that for September and last month's record low - 18.2 per cent below the monthly average - strongly suggests that this September will see the smallest coverage of Arctic sea ice ever recorded.

As more and more sea ice is lost during the summer, greater expanses of open ocean are exposed to the sun which increases the rate at which heat is absorbed in the Arctic region, Dr Serreze said.

Sea ice reflects up to 80 per cent of sunlight hitting it but this "albedo effect" is mostly lost when the sea is uncovered. "We've exposed all this dark ocean to the sun's heat so that the overall heat content increases," he explained.

Current computer models suggest that the Arctic will be entirely ice-free during summer by the year 2070 but some scientists now believe that even this dire prediction may be over-optimistic, said Professor Peter Wadhams, an Arctic ice specialist at Cambridge University.

"When the ice becomes so thin it breaks up mechanically rather than thermodynamically. So these predictions may well be on the over-optimistic side," he said.

As the sea ice melts, and more of the sun's energy is absorbed by the exposed ocean, a positive feedback is created leading to the loss of yet more ice, Professor Wadhams said.

"If anything we may be underestimating the dangers. The computer models may not take into account collaborative positive feedback," he said.

Sea ice keeps a cap on frigid water, keeping it cold and protecting it from heating up. Losing the sea ice of the Arctic is likely to have major repercussions for the climate, he said. "There could be dramatic changes to the climate of the northern region due to the creation of a vast expanse of open water where there was once effectively land," Professor Wadhams said.

"You're essentially changing land into ocean and the creation of a huge area of open ocean where there was once land will have a very big impact on other climate parameters," he said.

MR. BLAIR: I think that - three points I would like to make here. The first is that I think, whether for reasons to do with concern over global warming or for reasons to do with concern over energy security and supplies, I think this issue is coming together in an important way. It's there now on the agenda and I'm pleased about that. I think it's very important.

The second thing, though, is that I think - and I would say probably I'm changing my thinking about this in the past two or three years. I think if we are going to get action on this, we have got to start from the brutal honesty about the politics of how we deal with it.

The truth is no country is going to cut its growth or consumption substantially in the light of a long-term environmental problem. What countries are prepared to do is to try to work together cooperatively to deal with this problem in a way that allows us to develop the science and technology in a beneficial way.

Now, I don't think all of the answers lie in just - in developing the science and technology, but I do think there is no way we are going to tackle this problem unless we develop the science and technology capable of doing it.

And that really brings me to the third point, which is I think the point that you were really raising, which is, well, how do you create the forces that drive people then to develop the science and technology?

How do you create the markets and the research and the development of this technology so that we can shorten the timeline so that we're not waiting 25 or 30 years to develop fuel cell technology, so that, for example, in nuclear fusion, which is now a major issue as well we are developing the technology, so that you can bring those costs of wind power and solar power down?

How do you do that? And I think that is the issue that the international community needs to address because we tried at Gleneagles to try and - some people have signed Kyoto, some people haven't signed Kyoto, right. That is a disagreement. It's there. It's not going to be resolved.

But how do we move forward and ensure that post-Kyoto we do try to get agreement? I think that can only be done by the major players in this coming together and finding a way for pulling their resources, their information, their science and technology in order to find the ways of allowing us to grow sustainably?

And the meeting that will take place on the 1st of November, which is effectively the G-8 of the India, China, Brazil, South Africa, and Mexico.

That is going to allow us, I hope, not to negotiate international treaties, but to allow us to start beginning the necessary dialogue as to how we are going to shorten these timelines for developing the science and technology and how we are going to ensure that countries like China and India, as they grow - and they will grow.

And they are not going to - they are not going to find it satisfactory for us in the developed world to turn around and say, look, we have had our growth. You have now got yours so we want you to do it sustainably even if we haven't. So they aren't going to demand, in my view, some process that allows us to share the technology and transfer so that we can benefit collectively for the work that needs to be done.

And the real issue I think - because to be honest, I don't think people are going, at least in the short term, going to start negotiating another major treaty like Kyoto. The real issue is how do we put these incentives in the system so that the private sector, as well as the public sector says, this is the direction policy is going to go, so let's start getting behind this. So that is what - I think it's a key issue.

Sweden's proposed budget for 2006, published on Tuesday, follows the precedent of recent years in allocating over SKr1bn (€107m) "to the environment and a continuation of the green tax shift".

This will entail a rise in green taxes of SKr3.6bn. The increase will be balanced by a rise in the basic income tax allowance worth SKr2.5bn and a cut in employer's contributions for solo entrepreneurs who take on staff.

Transport and energy will continue to bear the brunt of this process, with the introduction of a SKr50 -100 tax on air tickets from next May, a 60% increase in the vehicle tax on light buses and light lorries, and a 30% rise in the tax on gravel. The output tax on nuclear electricity will be raised by 85%, a tax on waste incineration will be introduced and the tax on electricity used by households and the service sector will rise by SKr0.006/kWh.

"As part of adaptation to the EU, the reduced tax rates for electricity, gas, heating and water will be eliminated", the government said in a statement. However, the carbon dioxide tax will be scrapped for industrial plants covered by the EU emissions trading system and for high-efficiency cogeneration, with reductions for other plants included in the trading system.

Drastic policy changes are required if the government is to meet its target of cutting carbon dioxide emissions by 2010, a new report warns.

Projections by Cambridge Econometrics suggest that despite efforts to improve carbon efficiency and cut the production of greenhouse gases, the government is on course to miss its self-imposed target.

And the economic forecasting group warns that the emissions trading scheme (ETS), where firms are given a certain limit on the carbon dioxide they can emit, must be tightened to have any effect.

There are two main tenets to Britain's energy policy – the climate change programme (CCP), which is a tax on the use of energy in industry, and ETS.

Across the European Union, the EU ETS requires firms to purchase permits that effectively give them the right to emit carbon dioxide. Each permit brings with it an allowance, which firms can then trade with each other according to need.

However, today Cambridge Econometrics argues that too many permits are being issued and that they are not expensive enough to deliver the kind of cut in greenhouse gas emissions required to meet environmental targets.

It claims that prices must be increased even to achieve a 12 per cent cut in carbon emissions by the end of the decade – well short of the government's self-imposed 20 per cent target.

However, the report notes that despite last year's rise carbon emissions, Britain should meet the Kyoto target of cutting emissions by 12.5 per cent below 1990 levels by 2008-12.

Responding to the report, environment minister Elliot Morley said it showed the progress the government has already made, while admitting that more still needs to be done.

"This report confirms the UK is well on course to meet its Kyoto obligations for cutting greenhouse gases however, it underlines the need for substantial measures in the climate change programme review if we are to meet our more ambitious domestic target for cutting carbon dioxide emissions," he said.

"It also underlines the importance of energy efficiency from households; the new building regulations announced this week for better insulation and more efficient heating systems will save a million tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2010.

"Renewable energy and carbon abatement technologies for cleaner fossil fuel us will reduce our vulnerability to high fossil fuel prices."

The European Commission will finally unveil the Cafe EU air quality strategy on Wednesday, Environment Daily has learned. Implementation costs have been slashed by 40% in response to business concerns over competitiveness. But all elements of the environment directorate's original plans survive, including the first EU-level controls on ultra-fine particle emissions.

Originally due out before the summer, the Clean air for Europe programme was delayed after EU employers' association Unice complained to Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso . Environment commissioner Stavros Dimas was then forced to make a defence of the programme before colleagues.

Whereas the earlier proposal was costed at around €12bn, the Commission will now propose measures expected to cost €7.1bn. The main change is a lowering of the ambition level for curbing ground-level ozone pollution. Specifically, the Commission will propose achieving only 60% of all technically feasible abatement measures by 2020, compared with 80% proposed by its environment directorate.

Ambition levels for other pollution indicators have also been cut, but by smaller margins. The Commission will now propose introducing 55% of technically feasible measures to cut eutrophication and acidification and 75% for particulate matter. Concrete proposals to implement all the cuts will be developed after consultation with governments and MEPs.

Cafe will also propose new controls on fine particulate matter smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter (PM2.5). All member states will be asked to cut PM2.5 concentrations by 20% from 2010 to 2020. Plans to introduce a formula forcing member states with higher PM2.5 levels to make deeper cuts have been abandoned, but will be revisited in 2011.

Finally, Cafe will propose collecting the air quality framework directive and its four daughter directives into a single legal text. The exercise, designed to appease the EU's 'better regulation' lobby, will cut the number of legal articles from 69 to 32 and the number of annexes from 32 to 15.

Internal market commissioner Charlie McCreevy is understood to be still arguing for a further watering down of the plan, but his resistance is unlikely to hold up its adoption on Wednesday. Critically for Cafe's champion, environment commissioner Stavros Dimas, the strategy is now expected to produce €42bn in health benefits, plus unquantified benefits in reduced damage to biodiversity and buildings.

0817 GMT [Dow Jones] Davy Stockbrokers says BAA (BAA.LN) is well-run and good at project management, but says there's a regulatory question mark over the viability of a new Stansted runway. "The best new runway to compete with Frankfurt and Dubai is and should be Heathrow," says Davy's Stephen Furlong. Has no rating. (QAF)

OUR COMMENT: Better still, no extra runway anywhere.

Pat Dale

Cry victory for Tampere, Rzeszow, Kaunas and, indeed, Bydgoszcz! They - along with 85 other faraway places with strange-sounding names - have just made Ryanair your carrier of supreme choice: more bums (3.26 million of them) on more seats in August even than BA. It's another triumph for Michael O'Leary, for rampant expansion - and for sheer, unadulterated, un-Irish nastiness. Welcome to MasochismAir.

Here we are again, waiting to check in with 102 people in front of us because the bus from the big city - 60 miles away - arrived five seconds before we did. Nothing's moving. A Croatian girl at the front has left her passport in the hotel (60 miles away). A Spanish boy thought that identity cards would get him on a plane to Stansted.

And the familiar business of the baggage rebalancing is already far advanced. Right down those two stretching, desultory queues, lads in trainers have their suitcases open on the floor, shuffling stuff back and forth. "Is it under 15 kilos now?" "No, still bloody 17.5." Piles of jeans and T-shirts are slyly decanted into a black garbage bag to be carried through below check-in sightlines - then stuffed into hand luggage. The floor itself is strewn with mounds of crumpled cotton debris, as though Mandelson's China boycott has gone flops in a trice.

Occasionally, after glum altercations, company weight watchers dispatch cursing transgressors to queue at an overflow office and pay for their sins. When does a £40 ticket cost you double the money? When you're 10 kilos over a load. Expletives seldom deleted. So back to the crawl through security, and the sharp-elbowed rush when the boys with the black bags disregard any hope of an orderly boarding routine (as explained via a defective loudspeaker system). So to seats so closely packed you can hear the first squeaks of incipient pulmonary embolism starting four rows away.

Nasty? Of course. But insanely cheap some of the time (unless you're old, young, disabled or want to change your booking) and relatively efficient most of the time. MasochismAir takes you to places you never knew existed, destinations without reasonable alternatives. That's not the whole of its branding success, though.

For O'Leary doesn't play emerald super-yob by accident. He's just a "jumped-up Paddy" who "doesn't give a shite", because he says so. Worried about the environment? Then "sell your car and walk". Worried about Europe's commissioners? They're "morons". Fill in the blanks after B and A "and you get bastards". His most unctuous ballad is called "Screw the share price, this is a fares war". He's honed Mr O'Nasty, the guy who liked to charge extra for wheelchairs.

One lurking strand of Ryanair's subliminal pitch, in short, seems to translate BO down that stretching queue into bloody ordeal. This isn't supposed to be a pleasant experience circa 1986, with welcome smiles and blond stewardesses handing out cocktails. This is a carefully constructed obstacle race. O'Leary's increasing operational shift from Stansted to Luton puts the airport of reality TV choice back at screen centre. I'm a nonentity, get me out of here.

And, of course, it works brilliantly, 3.26 million times over. Decades of airline marketing tried to make flying a wondrous experience, full of cosseted comfort and luxurious treats. The truth, though, was always grimly different. The ordeal was constant; it just wasn't made into a selling point.

Michael O'Leary has put that straight for ever. Bondage and humiliation still function at 36,000 feet. Ryanair prospers because indignity sells. There's the same retrospective glow from the standing and scrabbling as you get from kneeling in front of a pile of jeans in Primark, Peckham, and finding a £5 pair that fit. I went, I fought, I endured - and now I have a bargain tale to tell. Call it victim consumerism: classless examination by indignity.

How does BA strike back? The good news, maybe, is that they've finally got the message, courtesy of Gate Gourmet, days of inaction and buckets of bile. On my last long-haul test a few days ago, check-in pushed a scrap of paper back over the desk along with my boarding pass. What's this? It was a voucher to spend $20 (Canadian) on any airport meal before leaving, "because the in-flight food may not be up to our normal standards".

Good, old-style thinking, except that the only "meals" on offer before the departure gate were polythene-wrapped bagels at a bar. I notionally dined on two packets of peanuts, an apple and a Bloody Mary, and left the notional change. The cabin stewards - serving below-normal-standards cheese and biscuits - were surly all the way home. But the captain wasn't on message with his farewell "thank-yous" and "pleasant trips". On MasochismAir, we never forget we have no choice.

Car drivers look like being in for a rough few weeks. As if the scare stories about fuel rationing and supply blockages weren't enough, we must also endure a climate of rebuke from those who eat organic and ride bicycles, but think nothing of jetting away every other weekend on budget flights.

Truly, the pressing double standard de nos jours is not marital infidelity, nor even how both to vote Labour and send your child to private school: it's the refusal to accept that cheap air travel is raping this planet faster than anything else.

The current finger pointing at motorists is a classic diversionary tactic. Excessive consumption, says the populist blame game, is down to car owners and, by extension, George W Bush (who is, after all, to blame for everything). In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, it has become clear that, jointly, we are responsible for the ills of the world.

As if to emphasise this, judgmental TV cameras in the American gulf states have lingered on long lines of cars queuing for petrol. In Britain they are alighting greedily on "Unleaded sold out" signs on the forecourt. Here are the culprits, they imply. Here is the hubris: the petro-chemical age brought to its knees.

Nobody, but nobody, has lifted their eyes to the skies and examined the vapour trails of a million budget flights, each one responsible for hundreds of tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions daily.

Up there, releasing gases into the atmosphere at a much higher and more harmful level than car exhausts, are the planes. Up there, the real disaster is taking place. Up there, unchecked, they're pumping one thousand times more filth into the air than all the Ford Focus drivers in the world.

A plane flying from Australia to London, for example, will use more than 200 tonnes of jet fuel and pump out more than 500 tonnes of carbon dioxide. On a flight from London to Miami, one person will be responsible for climate change emissions equivalent to one car doing 12,000 miles. Multiply that by 350.

Or, closer to home, travelling by plane from Scotland to Manchester produces up to nine times more CO2 per passenger than travelling by train. Forty five per cent of European flights are around 300 miles, barely long enough to reach maximum cruising height before coming down again. Many of these journeys could be made as quickly on a high-speed rail network.

According to the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, if aviation grows as predicted, by 2050 it will contribute 75% of the total greenhouse gas emission.

But we don't get it, do we? We're seduced by the jet and blind to the evils it commits. Air travel has increased five-fold since 1970. Worldwide, passenger numbers are due to double to 7.4 billion a year by 2020 – and that's before Chinese and Indian people start using planes like we do. In Britain, numbers are expected to grow from 200m in 2003 to 470m in 2030.

The no-frills travel boom, which has turned the world into an extraordinarily cheap adventure playground, has become the world's number one climate killer: a fact which, so far, we refuse to face. But if there is no such thing as a free lunch, neither is there such a thing as £5 return ticket to Paris.

It cannot go on. British Airways yesterday launched a green donations scheme: their passengers will be asked if they want to contribute something to compensate for the environmental impact of their flight. A £5 donation on the London to Paris route would be used for carbon off-setting – projects to help developing countries reduce emissions.

A similar initiative in Germany, Atmosfair, encourages passengers to contribute even more. But passengers on easyJet or Ryanair, crisscrossing Europe for fantastically tiny fares, are unlikely to be persuaded to cough up extra money in a voluntary green tax. Astonishingly, international aviation is specifically excluded from the Kyoto Protocol. Flight emissions were not included in the agreed targets, "because of the difficulties that had arisen over the methodologies for allocating these emission".

In other words, the aviation lobby has so far proved too powerful to take on. And so, you could say, those who criticise George W Bush for not signing up to Kyoto are on much the same low moral ground as him when they board a scheduled low-cost (SLC) flight to anywhere.

Airlines and airports enjoy about £10bn of tax breaks and subsidies (unlike British motorists). Incredibly, no airline pays tax or VAT on fuel, an agreement which dates from the 1940s. If aviation fuel were taxed it would bring the Exchequer £6bn in extra revenue. Likewise, if other VAT zero-rated aspects of air travel – tickets, aircraft purchase, baggage handling and meals – were taxed, this would bring in more than £4bn.

It is a myth that international agreements rule out the ending of aviation's privileged tax-free status. Britain needs no international agreement to place VAT and fuel tax on domestic flights. There is nothing to stop it increasing air passenger duty.

The other great fallacy about low-cost air travel is that SLC flights have democratised air travel. By implication, to question their right to exist is to be elitist. Yet industry figures show 75% of trips on budget airlines are made by people in social classes A, B and C. Most of the growth predicted will be the wealthiest 10% of the population flying overseas at weekends.

The poorest 10% of people rarely fly. Nor are they likely to fly over the next 30 years, because of the overall cost of holidays. Indeed, some say cheap flights reinforce the social divide rather than lessen it. One poll showed that 4.5% of the UK population makes 44% of all flights; another demonstrated that most passengers earned more than £30,000.

It is clear that the £10bn revenue from taxing airlines in the same way as motorists could be spent in a far more equitable way, mitigating damage to the environment and providing safe routes for every child to get to school.

In February 2003, the Department for Transport re-ran its computer-forecasting model, taxing aviation fuel at the same rate as petrol and with VAT on aviation products. The resulting forecast showed no new runways would be needed anywhere in the UK to 2030.

Whichever way one looks at it, budget airlines must be landing in the last-chance saloon. Britain is likely to use its presidency of the European Union to force airlines to buy permits to cover their carbon dioxide emissions, a scheme that will probably take effect by 2008. This should put ticket prices up within the European Union by £1-£6.

Meanwhile, the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution thinks tickets should cost a minimum of £35 one-way, if only to end the sense of disconnection between flying and what it does to the environment. For the sinners in the sky, it seems a small punishment.

More than 70 per cent of the FTSE 500 companies have agreed to help investors assess the impact they make on global climate change, by disclosing the amount of carbon dioxide they produce.

The Carbon Disclosure Project, supported by a coalition of institutional investors with more than $21,000bn (€17,000bn, £11,500bn) in assets, wrote to every company in the index of the world's biggest companies, asking for information on their output of greenhouse gases. The companies were also asked whether they considered climate change a commercial risk or an opportunity, and to outline the risks.

James Cameron, chairman of the Carbon Disclosure Project, funded by a variety of charities, said investors should welcome the opportunity to know more about companies' risk from climate change: "Who can be against greater disclosure and transparency?" He said the number of companies responding to the letter showed how the issue of climate change was rising up the corporate agenda.

Last year, 59 per cent of FTSE 500 companies responded, up from 47 per cent in the previous survey.

Investors could also benefit by understanding a company's output of greenhouse gases, which are coming under increasing regulation in many parts of the world. Countries that have ratified the United Nations brokered Kyoto protocol on climate change - the treaty came into force earlier this year - must reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, which cause climate change.

Businesses are expected to bear the brunt of these emissions cuts, as they account for the bulk of emissions in most places. In the US, which has rejected the Kyoto treaty, some states are planning to ask companies to reduce their greenhouse gas output on a voluntary basis. Paul Dickinson, co-ordinator of the Carbon Disclosure Project, said companies were likely to make a clean breast of their emissions in responding to the project's questions. "They wouldn't want to lie to their investors."

Steve Westly, controller of California and trustee to the Calpers pension fund, a signatory to the project, urged fund managers to support the calls for disclosure: "We believe it is inevitable that the US will join the other G8 countries and introduce limitations on the emissions of greenhouse gases. That is why we are leading investor collaboration to gather the data on corporate greenhouse gas emissions required to undertake prudent investment management."

In New York this week, business leaders will discuss action on climate change at the Clinton Global Initiative, called by former US president Bill Clinton. More than 300 business leaders and heads of state will take part.

The warning comes after the deputy prime minister linked America's refusal to tackle climate changes to the New Orleans flood disaster. Professor Chris Collier, president of the Royal Meteorological Society, will use his address to society's annual conference on Thursday to express concern about "heat islands" from urban areas.

Prof Collier is calling for research on the impact of new setlements on the climate. He told SocietyGuardian.co.uk today: "The meteorological effects of urban areas on the can be comparable to climate change." He explained that areas downwind of cities could expect higher levels of rainfall.

"Tall buildings have the biggest effects, but it built up areas generally have an impact," he said. "John Prescott is talking about a very extensive new development, particularly to the east of London. The potential impact of that needs to be studied."

His speech will come at a time of increasing alarm at the environmental impact of the government's housebuilding plans. Earlier this month Peter Ainsworth, the chairman of the Commons' environmental audit committee, warned that the scheme would add to global warming.

In an interview with SocietyGuardian.co.uk he said: "The environmental consequences of a huge expansion of housing in the south-east are also potentially very worrying. Unless you have really rigorous environmental standards built into the houses themselves, you've got a whole lot of little CO2 generating plants all over the countryside."

Last week the Campaign to Protect Rural England warned that the genuine countryside could be lost in a generation unless current development trends are reversed.

In a report published on Friday it added that in the meantime: "Climate change threatens to undermine the long established natural processes at work in the countryside, while our response to the associated extreme weather and increased shortage of water could cause more damage still."

OUR COMMENT: It's not only air traffic that causes climate change, it is cars and houses as well. However, it is possible to build houses that conserve energy so well that they are almost "carbon neutral". It is also possible to reduce the level of vehicle CO2 emissions in a variety of ways. (The simplest, don't buy gas guzzlers!) So far, a climate friendly plane has yet to be built and, until it is in use, then air traffic should not be encouraged to expand.

Pat Dale

Motorists face rationing at petrol stations under emergency plans that are being drawn up by ministers to combat this week's fuel protests, The Independent on Sunday has learnt.

Ministers met secretly last week to finalise the Government's response to blockades of Britain's refineries threatened for Wednesday.

Petrol prices - which passed the £1-a-litre mark in the wake of Hurricane Katrina - are expected to remain at record highs in the coming weeks because of damaged refineries on the US Gulf Coast.

Soaring petrol prices are likely to add to growing demands for fuel tax cuts and further encourage militant hauliers and farmers into taking direct action in order to force the Government's hand.

Planned measures to combat a successful blockade include rationing of supplies, limiting the hours during which petrol can be sold and reserving some filling stations for "priority users". Leading hauliers were called in for a meeting with Department of Trade and Industry officials last week, at which they were warned that police have new powers to remove blockades.

Nevertheless, protesters are determined to press ahead with plans to cause traffic chaos with a mass go-slow. The South Wales Hauliers' Association is to mount a rolling blockade on the M4 on Wednesday, before deciding whether to advance on refineries. Another group, Fuel Lobby, has already announced that it plans to prevent supplies from reaching filling stations from 6am on Wednesday.

The Government is taking seriously the prospect of a repeat of the 2000 fuel protests, Mr Blair's most serious domestic crisis until the 7 July bombings. "I think that you can be sure that we are not going to get caught napping," one well-placed senior official said yesterday. Ministers meeting last week discussed a document, "Downstream Oil Resilience", setting out its response to threatened shortages.

"Specific measures... may include a restriction in some form of the amount of fuel a motorist is able to purchase at any given time," states the document under a section entitled "Forecourt Supply Management". It continues: "Measures may also be introduced to discourage motorists from the practice of topping up their fuel tanks at frequent intervals. The Secretary of State may also restrict the hours during which filling stations may sell fuel."

Additional emergency measures to be introduced under the Energy Act of 1976 include setting aside designated filling stations for the exclusive use of "priority users".

Police were placed on alert to expect protests from this weekend in a memo sent to all forces last week. It stated: "Intelligence indicates that spontaneous protests and blockades may occur as early as Saturday 10."

Gordon Brown yesterday described surging oil prices as a "global problem which requires global solutions". The Chancellor urged oil producers to serve their "common interest" and boost supplies during a meeting of European Union finance ministers in Manchester.

Britain may come under increasing pressure to follow France's lead in threatening a windfall tax on petrol companies unless they agree to reduce prices. Mr Brown insists the economic impact of crude oil prices will be "limited". Motorists facing the prospect of paying £1 a litre for unleaded petrol for months to come may disagree.

Disquiet about rising fuel costs is set to deepen over the coming days as more energy suppliers introduce sharp price hikes. British Gas led the way last week when it increased prices by an astonishing 14.2 per cent. The week-long blockade five years ago closed more than 1,000 petrol stations across the country as panic buying took hold.

They say an Englishman's home is his castle, but no more so than his car - until now, that is. High petrol prices are prompting British motorists in their thousands to open up their hatchbacks and share car journeys with neighbours and colleagues.

The number of people signing up for a scheme offering and taking lifts this summer doubled compared with the previous three months, says Liftshare, Britain's biggest such organisation. It claims 87,000 drivers on its books, with 100 joining every day.

Two new recruits are Amanda Green and Pauline Day, who work for Essex County Council. They started sharing the commute from Colchester to the office in Chelmsford in August and will soon be joined by another colleague to cut costs further.

"Other people who work near me live near me or are on the way, so it was easier for lift-sharing and cheaper for everyone because petrol prices and the cost of public transport have gone up," said Green, an administrator, who receives £12.50 a week from her boss, Day, towards her £25 petrol bill. The agreement is a big money-saver for Day: she used to spend more than £100 a month commuting by car and train.

"I would have driven all the way before, but the A12 is atrocious, so it cost me the same to drive as to take public transport," she said. "With Amanda and Annabel [the third person], if we share we reduce costs enormously."

Liftshare's development manager, Imogen Martineau, said the story was the same across the country. The biggest membership area is London (10,000), followed by Devon (2,000). Regions where the scheme is supported by the local council tend to have more members, with motorists everywhere frustrated by the increasing cost of petrol and congestion.

"We don't show our map of members in presentations any more, because there are so many details you can't see the UK," Martineau said.

Liftshare, set up by Ali Clabburn when he was a student looking for lifts from university in Bristol to London at the weekends, estimates that participants typically save £1,000 a year. Environmentally it is also a bonus, saving the equivalent of 200 trips to the moon in car miles every year, said Martineau.

About two-thirds of Liftshare members come via schemes paid for by local councils and businesses.

"Get out of your car and take up cycling" has been the message of environmental groups for decades. Now it has become the unlikely slogan of the RAC, one of Britain's leading motoring organisations and a friend of the driver for more than 100 years.

The RAC is issuing the advice to persuade drivers to save fuel as it warned that higher petrol prices are here to stay. The RAC - better known for its opposition to "attacks on motorists" like road charging and speed humps - says one in five car journeys is under 1.5 miles and therefore unnecessary.

"You could easily walk, cycle, take the bus, without putting yourself at any great hardship," said Edmund King, executive director of the RAC Foundation, the organisation's policy wing.

The surprise advice came as protesters are threatening to mount blockades of fuel refineries this week in protest at the high duty on petrol, which is threatening to top £1a litre.

Yesterday, however, Chancellor Gordon Brown raised hopes for a cut in petrol duty to ease the pain of Britain's motorists, after he blocked a Europe-wide agreement against tax reductions to cushion the oil shock.

The Chancellor will also call this week for Britain to reduce its dependency on oil, switching to greener renewable energy instead.

At a meeting of the 25 European finance ministers in Manchester this weekend, Brown refused to endorse a promise by eurozone finance ministers not to take "special tax measures to lower excise duties or VAT rates", as a response to surging prices.

After the meeting the Chancellor would not rule out reducing excise duty in Britain, saying "any further announcements that we make are announcements in the pre-Budget Report".

Later this year Brown is also expected to confirm the second successive annual freeze in fuel duty, but the Treasury is expected to bank a windfall of £1.5bn in extra VAT and tax on oil company profits as a result of the recent surge in prices.

Earlier in the week the Treasury dismissed calls for variable fuel duty - which would be cut if petrol went above a certain prices, or increased if it dropped much lower. "We never rule things out; it's just not something I can see us bringing forward at the moment," a spokesman told The Observer.

Instead the finance ministers focused on increasing supply to try to ease the world oil shortages, blamed on disruptions caused by the war in Iraq and damage by Hurricane Katrina to operations in the Gulf of Mexico.

The EU is urging the major oil-producing regions of Russia, Norway and Opec to increase production, and member states called on oil companies to boost investment in oil exploration as well as alternative energy sources.

Sources said the events of the last two weeks had given "a real impetus" to alternative energy. "We have got to do something, so we are not so vulnerable to these shocks and in the longer term we are able to get things more stable," said a senior Treasury source.

BA's new scheme to allow passengers to "offset" the global warming emissions from their flights has been dismissed as "fundamentally flawed and environmentally hopeless" by environmental campaigners.

The scheme calculates aircraft exhaust emissions for a flight, creates a "value" for those CO2 emissions and passengers can then buy a contribution to schemes such as low energy light bulbs or biomass stoves in the Third World through an organisation called Climate Care.

Unfortunately, Climate Care don't set any CO2 reduction goals for their schemes so it's difficult to see if these projects actually reduce CO2 on any meaningful scale - their contribution to reducing climate change seems largely to consist of generating a warm feeling amongst donors.

BA's total CO2 emissions were 15.8 MILLION tonnes in 2004 - GreenSkies estimates that each Climate Care scheme by itself would only "save" around 2/300 TONNES of CO2 a year at the most.

GreenSkies Alliance co-ordinator, Jeff Gazzard, said: "BA's offset scheme will not make even a pinprick of difference to the growing and worrying climate change impacts of their flights. Most passengers will simply ignore a voluntary scheme like this; the CO2 savings are unquantified and it's difficult to judge if they are additional and might therefore have happened anyway; and we have no idea of the climate change reduction programmes in each scheme's host country, where CO2 emissions could well be growing. There is simply no context to see if these schemes, however well meaning, actually work"

Jeff Gazzard added: "What is clear, however, is BA's desire to convince its more gullible and bewildered passengers that flying can be guilt-free and environmentally friendly - it can't! This CO2 offset scheme is simply a light-green curtain in front of a stage full of pollution and is an out and out eco-con trick. We would strongly advise BA passengers to spend their "green £'s" with established environmental groups like the Woodland Trust, WWF, Friends of the Earth and the many other NGO's who actively make a difference."

"British Airways simply wants to encourage its passengers to 'Carry on Polluting'. But there is only one sure way to reduce the climate change impact of aircraft exhaust emission - and that is to fly less! Our casual and extravagant use of fossil fuel must change. Holidaying in the UK and using video conferencing are just two straightforward alternatives to flying that actually work and we urge everybody to try and do their bit in the fight against climate change by flying less."

OUR COMMENT: Expensive oil may be here to stay. The government should be reminding all that oil is a limited resource, and we have an urgent climate change problem which has arisen because of the excessive use of fossil fuels. Increasing production is not a long term answer . Neither is rationing by price. What has happened to the promised UK world lead in promoting action on climate change? – which means alternative energy and energy conservation. AND, what contribution will the airlines make?

Pat Dale

Engineers have designed an aircraft so quiet that people will be unable to hear it beyond an airport perimeter. The "Flying Wing" was unveiled yesterday on the final day of the British Association science festival in Dublin.

The design came from the Silent Aircraft Initiative, an academic-industrial collaberation involving Cambridge University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Rolls Royce, Boeing and other aerospace companies, airlines and airports. Forty researchers have been working for two years to produce the design. Simulations show that it would be "functionally silent" – not detectable above the ambient urban noise such as road traffic.

Development times mean it is unlikely to fly before 2025. But Tom Reynolds, a Cambridge University engineer, said the project would deliver shorter-term benefits in the form of new flying and air-traffic control procedures to reduce the noise from existing aircraft. Arrangements were being made to test these at a regional airport - perhaps Nottingham East Midlands - next year.

The design is far more efficient than a conventional aircraft because the whole structure provides lift. There is no separate fuselage to drag back performance.

Mr Reynolds said silencing features included putting engines above the aircraft so the body of the plane shields the ground from sound, embedding the engines in long ducts muffled with acoustic liners, and designing a low-noise engine that pushes air through more slowly but in greater volumes than today's engines.

The experience for passengers will be transformed. Instead of sitting in rows with a window at either side, they will be in a huge delta shaped cabin that will give airlines great scope for imaginative configurations.

"The cabin need not have windows, or it could have virtual windows displayed around the cabin," Mr Reynolds said.

The aircraft will descend more steeply and more slowly than today's models. This will have a big silencing effect because half the noise emitted comes from the flow of air over the air frame rather than the engines. Even a slightly slower approach can make a big difference to noise on the ground.

Paul Collins, manager of the Silent Aircraft Initiative, said the MIT would spend £2.3m on the three year project, which started in September 2003. But most of the resources – researchers and equipment – have been committed by the industrial partners.

The initial design is for the minimum viable size – a 250 seat aircraft with a 4000 mile range, comparable to a Boeing 767.

Mr Reynolds said: "It becomes more efficient as it gets bigger and there would be no problem scaling it up to take as many as 800 passengers".

The Cambridge engineers said there would be no trade-off between silencing and other environmental objectives, above all reducing carbon emissions in the fight against global warming. "The blended wing is much more fuel efficient than today's aircraft designs and the noise shielding does not add any penalty in efficiency" Mr Reynolds added.

OUR COMMENT: No testing at Stansted? - the Regional airport for Cambridge! Surely BAA can find time to help test ways to reduce noise.

Pat Dale

Britain is burning so much oil, gas and coal it may miss its international target to reduce global warming gases, according to government figures which show carbon dioxide emissions rising by 2.5% in the first six months of this year.

The figures from the Department of Trade and Industry, analysed by Friends of the Earth, show that emissions of the main greenhouse gas have risen by 5.5% since 1997, when they should be reducing by 1% a year.

The Article continues:

The government is obliged by the global Kyoto agreement to reduce emissions of six greenhouse gases to 12.5% below 1990 levels during the 2008-12 period. It was so confident of meeting this target that it set an ambitious domestic target of a 20% cut in 1997. That is now widely accepted as a near impossibility.

The prospect of Britain missing the lower Kyoto target will embarrass Tony Blair, who has taken a diplomatic lead on global warming and is in Beijing today for EU bilateral summits with India and China, where climate change is due to be discussed.

"Britain's credibility as a leader on climate change is now in serious danger and urgent steps must be taken," said Tony Juniper, director of Friends of the Earth.

Yesterday the government said that it still considered itself on target to meet its Kyoto obligations. "But there is no complacency. We are reviewing our climate change programme to meet our ambitious target of 20% cuts by 2010 and will report later this year", said an environment department spokesman.

One of the reasons Britain took the international lead on global warming was because its carbon gases fell dramatically in the 1980s and 1990s with the closure of coal mines and the wider use of gas. Much of the emissions rise is attributed to a rise in transport.

Record oil prices and now the unfolding disaster of Hurricane Katrina on America's southern seaboard are producing a new political climate on energy efficiency and global warming policies.

Speaking in the European parliament on Tuesday, EU energy commissioner Andris Piebalgs called for faster development of an EU action plan to cut Europe's energy consumption by 20% by 2020, as foreseen by a green paper launched in June.

Calling for "greater political focus" on ways to deal with soaring oil prices, Mr Piebalgs said he intended to increase pressure on member states to implement the EU buildings directive, and agree the energy services directive before the end of the year. Mr Piebalgs said the Commission would push for more research in green energy sources, adding that he also expected to see an increase in investment in nuclear energy.

He confirmed that the Commission will table a biomass energy action plan by the end of the year. A communication on national renewable energy support schemes should also be published this year, and a biofuels communication will follow in 2006.

Meanwhile, led by Germany's indefatigable environment minister Jürgen Trittin, a number of European politicians have explicitly linked Katrina to climate change and highlighted US refusal to agree binding greenhouse gas reductions as being part of the problem.

In a newspaper commentary written on the day of the storm, Mr Trittin accused US president George Bush of "closing his eyes to the economic and human damage being inflicted on his country and the world economy by natural disasters such as Katrina".

Far from relaxing global emission reduction targets they should be strengthened, Mr Trittin wrote. "Once common sense prevails in the headquarters of the environmental polluters, the international community must be in a position to reach out to America with a detailed proposal on the future of international climate protection".

In a further development, some of Britain's largest environmental and third world aid NGOs last week joined forces to launch a new campaign demanding substantial UK and global greenhouse gas emission cuts. They have dubbed the campaign "Stop Climate Chaos".

OUR COMMENT: Can the government still justify promoting a huge aviation expansion?

Pat Dale

Regional airports in the European Union, often used by low-fare carriers like Ryanair, face limits and certain freedoms to help them attract business under rules approved by the EU Commission today.

The rules, first proposed in February, are meant to encourage development of smaller airports in the EU, some of which have flourished as low-cost airlines grow and start new routes. The Commission said it wanted to encourage this growth and the mobility it generates while preserving fairness and compliance with EU state aid rules.

The guidelines allow state aid to be used for establishing new routes at regional airports with fewer than five million passengers a year. In most cases the aid may cover 30% on average of the additional start-up costs for routes that will become economically viable, a Commission spokesman said. The aid may be used for three years or, if the airport is in a less developed region, up to five years.

The guidelines were developed after the Commission ordered Ryanair to repay about €4m in aid to the Belgian regional government of Wallonia, which had offered the airline cheap rates at the area's Charleroi airport.

A Commission spokesman said today that the EU executive was still following that case closely. Ryanair is appealing the order. But Ryanair criticised the guidelines, saying they imposed restrictions on what public airports could offer to airlines, while these restrictions did not apply to private airports.

The airline said this automatically put public airports at a competitive disadvantage. Chief executive Michael O'Leary said the rules would "destroy the competitiveness of the many publicly owned regional and secondary airports around Europe that are currently trying to survive and grow their passenger numbers by offering lower costs and more efficient services to airlines".

OUR COMMENT: This is somewhat at odds with the EU environment commissioner's declared intention of including the aviation industry in the EU carbon emissions trading scheme which is designed to encourage lower carbon emissions through a market mechanism. This EU decision could result in an encouragement of more aviation expansion . However, by restricting the help to airports with less than 5mppa the measure might help to spread the environmental burden placed on those who live round airports, a recognition that there should be environmental limits to airport development. A 5mppa limit would be too much to expect, but when considering Stansted's experience most would have settled for 10 or even 15mppa, a size that could have offered a good service as a regional airport, annoying to many residents, but not impossible, instead of the increasingly intrusive presence it presents today, a national centre for low-cost carriers with passengers who have to travel a considerable distance from their home town.

Pat Dale

FLIGHTS from Stansted to New York are due to start again next week. Eos, a new US airline, has completed all the test flights to and from Stansted and will be flying exclusively business class in a Boeing 757 with only 48 seats.

Each will be in a space the size of a double bed and recline to become completely horizontal. Every passenger space will also contain extras for the business traveller such as a work surface and laptop access. The fares will be half the price of the average business class ticket.

Starting in November, another new US airline, Maxjet, will be operating daily flights between Stansted and New York, again using 757s, but with 148 'premium' economy seats throughout and fares aimed at being low.

There have twice before been scheduled transatlantic flights from Stansted. In the 1980s there was a service to Chicago, then in 2001, Continental Airlines began flying to the US, until the September 11 terrorist arracks.

"We felt that it was going to be a long haul to get back," said Mark Davison, a spokesman for BAA Stansted, "especially as most US carriers are still in financial strife, and BA and Virgin are firmly encamped at Heathrow. "So the most likely solution was going to come from a new, start-up airline, which is what has happened."

Asked whether the recent militancy demonstrated at Heathrow was encouraging airlines to look for alternatives, Mr Davison said: "There has been trouble at Heathrow the last three summers and I don't think it has done them any favours, or us any harm. "There is no militancy at Stansted."

Added to the news about US flights - Stansted currently has flights almost exclusively within Europe - comes the promise of flights to China. Geoff Conlon, head of airline business development for BAA Stansted, will be in Copenhagen later this month for a "routes" conference due to be attended by 200 airlines and 400 airports. The idea is to shuffle who will fly where, and Stansted is hoping to bag a Chinese carrier.

"Hopefully we will be seeing the Chinese operating more services here now that the UK has been given tourist status by the Chinese Government.

"This happened only this year and means Chinese citizens are now allowed to come here for holidays as well as business and education."

OUR COMMENT: Stansted needs long haul carriers to justify the scale of its present development. Environmentally the encouragement of Stansted's speciality, the cut price short haul flights, especially within the UK mainland, is one of the worst features of the UK transport system. Successive governments have failed to develop a rail system that could offer an adequate comparable service, and many long distance coach services fail to provide a comfortable journey, often operating from inconvenient coach stations without proper facilities.

Pat Dale

May I come back briefly on the 3 reports (complaints from Bishop's Stortford – ed.) about aircraft activity in your August 11th issue?

First of all, we can be proud that due to the combined efforts of community representatives, BAA, air traffic controllers, pilots and the DfT, some 99% of take-offs currently stay outside Bishop's Stortford on the two flight paths that loop around the town to the north-west and the south-west.

Unfortunately, the ability of air traffic controllers to use the north-west flight path for more than one in three days, as Mr Morton would like, is limited to the very few days of the year with little or no wind. But operating take-offs in that direction would also mean aircraft arriving from holding stacks to the north-east and north-west of the runway having to fly past it and over more communities, causing more emissions, before touching down at the south-west end. At the same time the extra take-offs to the north-west would increase noise at the western point of Bishop's Stortford and the Hadhams.

Turning to your report about Sawbridgeworth, we find that most people, like us, stay focused on the need to get the best possible fit between air travel and quality of life. To illustrate the kind of balance we are achieving, the geographical area affected by the onset of aircraft noise disturbance at the 35 mppa mark is forecast to be considerably less than the area agreed by our local planning authority for 25 mppa.

We want to listen to what people say before we put in a planning application about making better use of the existing runway. That's why our roadshows will be visiting so many places in the local area. Call freephone for dates and venues or visit our website www.stanstedairport.com/future

Thirdly, our systems monitor aircraft track keeping automatically. It was because of those systems that we were able to alert air traffic control to what we suspected was an unusual aircraft approach on December 12th, and that in turn led to an independent investigation and the retraining of the aircraft crew. But such incidents are extremely rare. Our systems are there to maintain high standards of on-track performance round the clock and to keep noise infringements to minimum.

The Herts & Essex Observer issue of 25th August includes a letter from Ralph Meloy of BAA in which he says:

"Most people, like us, stay focused on the need to get the best possible fit between air travel and quality of life. To illustrate the kind of balance we are achieving, the geographical area affected by the onset of noise annoyance at the 35 million passengers a year mark is forecast to be considerably less than the area agreed by our local planning authority for 25 million."

Perhaps I could add a few points to Mr Meloy's 'balance':

The area that he mentions with reference to noise annoyance is the 57 dBA Leq contour. Despite being put forward by the government as the level for the 'onset of noise annoyance', this level is disputed by many, including the World Health Organisation and other international authorities, and was roundly criticised by the government's own Inspector at the Heathrow Terminal 5 enquiry.

This 57 dBA Leq area agreed with UDC for 25 million resulted from a gross over estimate. The fact that BAA bamboozled the planning authority into setting a cap greatly in excess of the airport's needs is neither here nor there. The fact is that the area predicted by BAA to be affected at 35 million passengers per year will be greater than the area currently affected - and that's with the airport still being some way off the 25 million mark.

The last time that Stop Stansted Expansion (SSE) looked at this issue, we found that in the second quarter of 2002, approximately 91% of the complaints received by Stansted Airport's Flight Evaluation Unit related to incidents outside this 57 dBA Leq area. According to Mr Meloy, though, these people weren't in an area where aircraft noise is annoying.

Perhaps it's time that Mr Meloy's focus turned to the realities of the disturbance his airport causes, rather than focussing on imaginary geographical areas and unrealistic measures of noise nuisance.

Ryanair said yesterday it was cutting the flights on its Stansted-Newquay route from 28 to 16 per week because of what it described as an "anti-visitor" tax imposed by Cornwall County Council. The local authority responded by inviting other airlines to fill the take-off and landing slots Ryanair will vacate in November.

Cornwall is to impose a £5 fee on all passengers over the age of 16 flying out of Newquay from late next month. It says the levy is needed to help fund a £2.8m expansion of the airport. Ryanair attacked the levy as "ridiculous", and warned that it would consider cutting flights to Newquay further if demand fell as a result.

Michael Cawley, the airline's deputy chief executive officer, said the airport was in a competitive, price-sensitive market against 84 other low-cost destinations available on Ryanair flights out of Stansted.

My Cawley claimed that "Cornwall's ridiculous decision to introduce a £5 tax would result in increased revenue of £250,000 for the council and reduced income for the region of £10.5m – leaving Cornwall worse off to the effect of £10 per year in terms of expenditure by visitors bought by Ryanair from London."

The airline said its figures for the potential loss to the region were based on studies done elsewhere in the UK.

The council said it was disappointed by Ryanair's response, but its executive committee member for the economy said the airport fee was essential. "Newquay is one of the fastest growing regional airports in the UK, with passenger figures growing from 118,000 in 2002 to a predicted 334,000 in 2005."

Mr Mitchell said that in recent months, bmibaby, Monarch and Air South-West had either introduced flights or announced plans to do so.

"We are currently talking to a number of operators about expanding the flights to and from Newquay. The flights to Stansted are very popular with both local residents and visitors and I am sure that another airline will be interested in taking up any flights freed up by Ryanair's decision."

Hurricane Katrina should be a wake up call for President Bush on the need for urgent US action to tackle climate change, Friends of the Earth said today. The hurricane is one of the worst natural disasters America has ever faced and is a stark reminder of what scientists expect to happen as a result of human induced climate change.

Although there is at present no means by which to tell whether this particular storm was due to human induced global warming, the devastation it has caused is consistent with the projections generated by climate change models that suggest such storms will become more severe as the world warms up.

Computer models projecting the impacts of climate change on the weather suggest that increased sea surface temperatures caused by global warming will lead to more intense hurricanes.

Research findings published in the science journal Nature [1] in July suggests that this is already happening. The analysis, by climatologist Professor Kerry Emanuel of the Massachussetts Institute of Technology, says that major storms in the Atlantic and Pacific since the 1970s have increased in intensity by about 50 per cent. This trend is closely linked to rises in the average temperatures of the sea surface.

In stark contrast to the position of the Bush Administration, the New Orleans City Council in May 2001 passed a resolution urging federal action on climate change. And the danger posed to the city by global warming was recognised in June by New Orleans Mayor, C. Ray Nagin who noted. "The International Panel on Climate Change has warned that New Orleans is the North American city most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. The rise of the Earth's temperature, causing sea level increases that could add up to one foot over the next 30 years, threatens the very existence of New Orleans".

Tony Juniper, Director of Friends of the Earth, said that "The Earth is warming up fast and the consequences of extreme weather are being felt in all regions. In the face of mounting evidence of rapid climate change President Bush has downplayed the scale of the problem and refused to take action to tackle it. His Administration has worked tirelessly to derail international agreement on climate change and sought to put narrow US economic interests above global climatic stability. In the aftermath of this storm even he must wonder if he has made the correct choice".

[1] Nature 4 August: "Increasing destructiveness of tropical cyclones over the past 30 years", by Kerry Emanuel.

PARIS, Sept 1 (Reuters) - The French government will pay 75 euros ($91.49) to millions of families to help them cope with the rise in oil prices, French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said on Thursday.

Villepin said several million low-income households which use fuel for heating would receive a 75-euro cheque, and promised to boost the use of renewable energy.

"I know that some of our compatriots are suffering head-on from the rise in domestic fuel and petrol, without being able to immediately adjust their consumption," Villepin told a news conference.

"We have entered the post-oil era," he said. "I want to draw all the consequences of this and give a real impulse to energy savings and to the use of renewable energies."

Ticket prices for long-haul flights could go up by as much as £55 under proposals to cut pollution being considered by the European Commission.

A report for the environment commissioner, Stavros Dimas, delivered last month by consultants CE Delft, recommends that the European Union's emissions trading system should be extended to aviation.

Mr Dimas is considering the report and is expected to present proposals next month.

Well-placed sources say he will propose that airlines purchase "pollution permits" that help pay for the CO2, nitrates, water vapours and soot created by every flight.

The CE Delft report claims the extra cost to airlines would be the equivalent of no more than €9 (£6) per air ticket. However, the Swiss environmental group Myclimate has predicted that the extra cost could be $20 (£11) for a short-haul flight within Europe and as much as $100 for a long haul flight.

Globally, airlines are estimated to produce more than 4 per cent of all greenhouse gases and pollution produced by the industry could be costing as much as £30bn a year.

The proposals are likely to prompt a massive row, not only between Mr Dimas and airlines opposed to the changes, but also between Brussels and the US, which is opposed to unilateral action by Europe.

The airlines have mixed feelings about the change. Some, including British Airways and SAS, have been participating in trials of the planned system and believe they can absorb the changes. Others, notably the low-cost airlines such as Ryanair and easyJet, are strongly opposed.

The European Low Fares Airlines Association has already published a paper opposing any changes coming out of Brussels and is planning a stronger response in coming weeks.

The CE Delft report claims there is no legal reason why the EC cannot unilaterally extend emissions trading to cover flights taking off and landing at airports within the European Union.

However, US and other international airlines disagree and could mount a legal fight against Brussels. They argue that the United Nations' International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) is working on a global system for emissions permits, and it would be a breach of international law for the EU to launch its own system first.

Mr Dimas, though, is believed to be frustrated by the slow progress of the Montreal-based ICAO.

There are times in a woman's life when she questions her most basic beliefs. There are moments that break open lifelong assumptions. Since adolescence, I have held the belief that a week or two of the summer should, if financially possible, be spent abroad. This does not mean mountains, bracing wind or interesting cathedrals. It means somewhere on the Mediterranean, soaking up the sun so meagrely rationed at home. It means swimming, the wine cheap but cheerful, and broken-backed novels around the beach lounger.

As millions of Britons know, it also means endless airport queues, usually at about 4am; flights on which you are crammed like dazed animals heading for the abattoir; and packed, noisy resorts. The Med is almost full. The French, Spanish and Italian coasts form a nearly unbroken, thousand-plus-miles-long line of barbecued flesh. The Greek islands are pulsating with Eurotrash music and the sound of Darren, 17, throwing up.

Where we went this year, on a relatively obscure part of the Greek mainland, tractors and earthmovers were flattening every available outcrop of sea-facing land for new holiday villas. The north African coast is now a mass tourism magnet. Turkey is spotted with resorts. Even Croatia is filling up, they tell me. As I float, blissfully, in the oily azure waters, I can't help wondering where all the sewage goes.

Then there's the climate. Global warming brings its unpredictable events, including sudden dousings and storms in southern Europe, but the sun shines on. The trouble is, increasingly, it shines blisteringly on. One of the most miserable weeks I've had was in an Italian house a couple of years ago with no air-conditioning, when it was so hot no one got a wink of sleep at night. By day, towns like Siena and Florence were empty because nobody could bear to walk their baking streets. Forest fires from Provence to Portugal have become a staple of August front pages around Europe.

All of this could be borne - there are shady spots, sea breezes still - if we felt that at least the summer migration south was a guilt-free, innocent pleasure. But it isn't. The vast growth in cheap and charter air travel is a serious contributor to global warming, and rightly rising fast up the political agenda. The aviation economist Brendon Sewill has just published a devastating pamphlet (Fly now, grieve later, Aviation Environment Federation) about the impact of flying on global warming. It isn't just the CO2 emissions. He describes the smog created by aircraft exhaust gases, the hot, moist air forming condensation trails and the effect of engine kerosene on cirrus cloud formation. This makes flying up to four times more damaging than if measured by emissions alone.

He says that flying is by far the worst thing we do, much worse than driving around in big cars: "Young eco-warriors who care passionately about recycling set off to backpack around the world with hardly a thought that they may be undoing tenfold what they have tried to achieve." Even "elderly couples proudly tell their friends how they have flown halfway round the world to visit their grandchildren without recognising that they themselves have helped to destroy their grandchildren's future."

Between 1990 and 2000, worldwide aviation emissions grew by 50%. Here, the Department for Transport is promoting a huge growth in air travel (an extra 275 million passengers over the next 25 years), expanding airports and assuming huge further increases in aviation emissions - more than cancelling out the reductions forecast for other parts of the economy. The government itself says that by 2030 aviation emissions "could amount to about a quarter of the UK's total contribution to global warming".

All I conclude is that the cheap flight boom cannot and will not last. All those ex-military airstrips being hurriedly turned into new regional airports, all those elderly jets criss-crossing Europe, all those bargain-basement tickets to unfamiliar destinations ... the bubble has to burst. Oil price rises, tax hikes and growing pressure on the industry over its environmental impact will all have their effect. True, cleaner aircraft are being developed, and yes, we are all hypocrites (me included), still keener to visit Prague, go skiing or see friends in their so-cheap gîte in France, than to think through the consequences of the explosion in flying. But this is unsustainable, and most of us know it.

That was the first part of my holiday reflection - a mixture of irritation at the discomfort and hassle of the experience, plus unease about the effects of the crowded airspace. We had a good time, but the excitement and pure pleasure of earlier forays south has gone.

So what should we do? Stay at home? Perhaps it's the effect of the summer ending with such glorious bank holiday weather, or perhaps it was all the conversations with happy friends calling from the West Country - but a better answer might be the revival of the British beach.

Every year, we do go for a week to Devon and we take meteorological pot luck - rain this time, and very persistent rain at that. But those who holidayed later are returning with tales of holidays in Cornwall, Norfolk, Lyme Regis and Wales that rival any sun-kissed nostalgic childhood memory. When the weather is good, there is nowhere like a seaside holiday here. We have sand far softer than anything around the Med. We have the excitement of tides and lovely villages. Many dirty beaches have been cleaned up. And as the temperatures soar further south, our climate begins to grow in appeal.

It's also true that some British resorts and coastal areas that have been in grim decline for decades are changing themselves. Cornwall's surf chic is well known, as are the upmarket Devon sailing towns, like Salcombe. Bournemouth and trendy Poole have been on the up for ages, now as expensive as anywhere outside London. Even in the Scottish west highlands, little villages like Plockton and Gairloch have good restaurants, shops and cafes that are thriving. At the other end of the scale, Blackpool has taken the bold decision to rebuild itself as a gambling mecca.

Between those places, though, there are dozens of resorts that remain desperately forlorn - pebble-dashed, dirty fronts, deserted piers, boarded-up boarding houses, fantastic views cluttered with empty caravan sites. The British coast, once well served by railways, can be surprisingly hard to get to. Compared with the continent, our seaside food remains bland and often disgusting.

Personal revelations are mostly suspect, but if even this Med obsessive is thinking of chucking in the beach towel and holidaying in Britain, there may be something going on. We live in a crowded and highly developed island. But our own resorts have been starved of money and affection for too long. Ministers, mostly returning into international arrivals, might consider the time is right for treating our wonderful shoreline as more than the setting for another party conference.

AIRLINE passengers will have to accept longer journey times on board a new generation of aircraft that will fly more slowly to save fuel. Trips within Europe will take about ten minutes longer but aircraft will burn up to 20 per cent less fuel.

Aircraft manufacturers have abandoned plans to build faster jets, such as Boeing's Sonic Cruiser, which would have flown close to the speed of sound. Instead, they are designing aircraft that will do the least possible damage to the environment.

The new aircraft will look different to existing jets. The wings will be longer and straighter. The engines will sit on top of the fuselage rather than under the wings to reduce noise disturbance. There will be two tail-fins rather than one to prevent noise being deflected downwards. The aircraft will fly at about 430mph compared with more than 500mph flown by existing jets.

Airbus, the European aircaft manufacturer, is leading a European Commission research project on the new aircraft. It is working with more than 30 companies on the four-year project, entitled New Aircraft Concepts Research.

João Frota, the project's leader, said that the new aircraft would be half as noisy as existing jets. He said that the straighter wings would allow slower take-offs and landings. This would permit the use of more efficient engines, which would save several tonnes of fuel during each flight.

Mr Frota said that although flights would take longer, some time could be recovered by more efficient operations at airports. Removing national boundaries from the air traffic control system would save time and fuel by allowing aircraft to fly direct routes. At present, they have to fly in zigzags as they switch between sectors of airspace controlled by different countries. Ron van Manen, head of civil aeronautics at QinetiQ, Britain's leading aviation research centre, said that the aircraft would initially be used on routes of up to 1,000 miles.

He said: "People won't mind spending an extra five or ten minutes on a flight from London to Frankfurt because you can already easily waste that time queueing for take-off. But it would take an extra hour to fly from London to Singapore and people are unlikely to want to do that. They will probably be prepared to pay extra to burn more fuel."

Mr Van Manen said that airspace would have to be divided into lanes to allow the slower aircraft to be overtaken.

Aviation is the fastest-growing source of greenhouse gas emissions and is on course to be the biggest contributor by 2050. Worldwide air passenger numbers are due to double to 7.4 billion a year by 2020, according to Airports Council International. In Britain alone, passenger numbers are expected to grow from 200 million in 2003 to 470 million in 2030.

Sustainable Aviation, a group representing British Airways, Virgin, BAA and 20 other British aviation companies, has set a target of introducing new aircraft by 2020, which will produce 50 per cent less carbon dioxide.

The group has pledged to reduce noise by 50 per cent. Andrew Sentance, the head of environmental affairs at BA, said that flying more slowly would help to meet environmental targets but would not be welcomed by all passengers.

"A plane which is 20-30 per cent more fuel efficient would be very attractive but there are some business passengers for whom getting there as quickly as possible is very important."

Jeff Gazzard, of Greenskies Alliance, a coalition of environmental groups, said: "Taking ten minutes extra is a small price to pay for the sake of the environment. But the only long-term cure is to fly less. Even the fuel savings on this slower plane will be outweighed by the huge growth in flights."

OUR COMMENT: If this aircraft with a combination of less noise and less fuel is actually produced and is purchased by airlines then aviation will be responsible for a little less environmental damage. However, CO2 emissions have to be reduced by 60% by 2050 so, unless the manufacturers can come up with that kind of improvement in the not too distant future, then an increase in the number of flights world wide should be minimal, and that includes the UK!

Pat Dale

France and Germany's environment ministers underlined common environmental policy priorities at their latest regular meeting last week.

Nelly Olin and Jürgen Trittin called on the USA to play a constructive part in global climate change talks in December and stressed the need for more measures to cut transport greenhouse gas emissions.

Aviation should be included in the second phase of the EU's industrial CO2 trading scheme, they said, and agreed targets on cutting CO2 emissions from cars "must be guaranteed".

The ministers also backed moves to achieve a first agreement this year on the EU's Reach chemical policy reform.

HOUSE prices in the area surrounding Stansted Airport have been blighted by more than £600million since expansion plans were announced, it was claimed yesterday.

The Stop Stansted Expansion (SSE) campaign said homeowners in Uttlesford district had suffered an average loss of £30,000 compared to price increases across the rest of Essex.

But while airport operator BAA is considering compensation for about 500 homes directly affected by the proposed second runway, the campaign group maintains about 12,000 homes have suffered.

But BAA, which also uses the Government's Land Registry figures as the basis of its compensation scheme, criticised the comments as "sweeping statements based on selective statistics".

Members of the campaign said owners of all types of homes had lost out in the past three years, claiming prices in Uttlesford had only risen by 24.6% since July 2002, compared to an increase of 38.5% across the county.

Peter Sanders, chairman of SSE said: "We hear so many claims from BAA about the economic benefits of the airport but here we have a clear economic cost of £635 million to local homeowners."

"Coming on top of the report earlier this month that air travel cost the UK economy a £15billion balance of payments deficit last year, one begins to wonder whether there is any net economic benefit, other than to BAA itself."

SSE said the 12,000 homes adversely affected by airport-related blight were mostly in the six CM postcode areas around the airport in the southern part of Uttlesford.

But Mark Pendlington, director of communications for BAA Stansted, said: "Old habits clearly die hard as far as SSE is concerned - yet again we have sweeping statements based on selective statistics that add up to no firm conclusion."

"All this kind of publicity achieves is to further damage the property market that is already under pressure nationally for a whole host of reasons completely unrelated to airport development."

"This scare-mongering must stop and SSE should join us in the real world where millions of people want to travel at affordable prices and where Stansted is widely applauded for helping to underpin the local and regional economy."

Tony Mullucks, a senior partner with Mullucks Wells estate agents, which has an office in Stansted Mountfitchet, said he agreed with some of SSE's argument.

"Houses that are difficult to sell are those immediately around the area of the possible second runway, but others are selling."

"But in Uttlesford it is only a very small part which is being affected by the airport – quite a few people are moving into the area to be within a reasonable distance of the airport."

"The area affected is close to the would-be second runway and at either end – but, outside that, houses have been selling in villages such as Takeley, the Eastons – all of which are not a million miles away."

He added the housing market had slumped across the country, with final selling prices dropping by five to 10% in the past year.

William Chastell, 70, and his son Rob took to their bikes last Sunday to cycle 106 miles round the six Essex villages with the name Tye Green to raise over £350 for Stop Stansted Expansion's fighting fund.

William, from Broxbourne, completed the circular ride in just 10 hours with the start and finish point being the Elsenham Tye Green, which is threatened with "possible destruction" by proposals for a second runway at Stansted Airport. The route passed through Tye Greens in Harlow, Good Easter, Stock, Cressing and Wimbish.

A HELIOS Airways plane had to make an emergency landing at Stansted Airport just one week after another of the airline's Boeing 737s had crashed near homes in Greece.

The pilot of the latest 737 was diverted from Luton Airport to Stansted on Friday after he reported a problem with the flaps on the aircraft's wings, which are used to slow the plane down during landing.

At 10.35am the Helios flight, with 177 passengers on board, landed safely. The passengers were transferred to Luton, their original destination, by coach.

The incident happened less than a week after a similar 737 crashed approximately 400 metres from homes at St Theodore's Hill near Marathon in the early hours of the morning on August 14. All 121 passengers and cabin crew on board died in the d