Britain Must Cut Flights or Miss CO2 Targets

Planet Ark reports:
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The British government must curb the huge expansion in air travel or risk overshooting its self-imposed target of cutting carbon dioxide emissions by 60 percent by 2050, a study said on Tuesday.

CO2 emissions from aviation in Britain are set to surge by between four and ten times 1990 levels by the middle of the century, accounting on their own for two-thirds of the government's emission target for that year, it said. Yet far from doing anything about the problem, government policy is actively promoting airport expansion which could see passenger numbers more than double to 470 million a year, from 200 million, by 2030, it said.

"The government has to confront the contradictions in its policies," said Brenda Boardman from Oxford University's Environment Change Institute which conducted the study for the government-funded UK Energy Research Centre. "Unless the rate of growth in flights is curbed, the UK cannot fulfil its commitments on climate change. It has to undertake demand management. Relying on technological fixes alone is totally unrealistic," she said.
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Note: During the conference season, a Government spokesman was reported to say: "We're not going to stop people going on holiday."