Hello everybody.
Have I got itchy feet. I mean part of the reason I play in a band (rather than doing a job where you AREN’T financially embarrassed on a near permanent basis) is that you get to travel a fair bit… and I DO like to travel. Yes, and while the rest of the entourage is sleeping off their hangovers, you can often catch me out and about with my camera at some ungodly hour–taking snaps down at the local railway station for I am a self confessed “trainspotter”. Do you have those in the USA?
Anyway, the aforementioned foot problem is mainly due to the fact that I find myself between tours currently–and the humdrum routine of home life coupled with the increasingly moronic output on TV these days is sending your old chum a little “stir crazy” (which has resulted in my attention hovering over the flight offers in the newspapers on more than one occasion recently).
And why not? I could bugger off and catch some sun… or maybe nip over to Berlin to see my muso cronies–there IS some marvelous beer to be sampled in Germany after all.
But what’s this I see on the front page as I close the paper? It’s an article urging the government to slap a heavy tax on air travel whilst ticking off the users thereof for their role in the Global Warming of this planet.
Now the science blaming recent temperature rises on greenhouse gases such as CO2 and methane seems to be pretty unimpeachable but hold on a minute here… air travel at 3% does NOT appear to be the major culprit. So you’d probably guess from the press that it must be road traffic - but once again you’d be wrong because ALL forms of transport put together can only produce 14% of all carbon emissions. So where the hell is all that mystery gas coming from… and why are we not being told about it???
Well, dear reader–I’ve done some research and it seems that there’s an enormous amount of greenhouse emissions directly resulting from deforestation (25%) and animal agriculture (18%)–but these, as far as western governments and their lackeys in the media are concerned, are (no pun intended) fairly sacred cows and above criticism. No… the people to blame of course are YOU AND ME… and we should be made to PAY for our sins in the form of punitive new taxes if we buy a plane ticket anytime soon. Mind you, I don’t see the likes of Condaleeza Rice and Tony Blair cutting back on their flying activities while gallivanting about on a quest to spread their own particular brand of “joy and happiness” around the planet–do you?
No, if you ask your old mate Sensible we are being hoodwinked into accepting these proposed new “stealth taxes” on air travel and we should demand an end to the mass destruction of the rain forests at the hands of agribusiness and the cattle industry instead.
I’ll end with this little little snippet of info: a recent report over here says that one day’s deforestation is equivalent to the carbon footprint of eight million people flying to New York… which makes old Bush’s hack down the trees to grow ‘Bio Fuel’ crops idea the rather large bucket of hogwash that it is.
And so it is with a guilt free heart that I bid you farewell… for I have a ticket to book. I’m told the Canary Islands are nice this time of the year!
Pip Pip,
Captain Sensible
I do think flights could and should partly be avoided, e.g. by using alternatives like video conferences, but you're right of course, most politicians who blabla about climate don't give a damn about it.