Trees Need Not Be Us.....

...possibly. The Australian Federal Tourism Minister Fran Bailey is hopping mad. Apparently her country suffers because of overseas perceptions that long-haul flights damage the environment. Negative press campaigns in the UK have, according to Fran, promoted an incorrect idea about aviation's carbon emissions.

“There's quite a lot of media in the UK ... about the danger of long-haul aviation and of course Australia is a long-haul aviation (destination). Aviation contributes two per cent of (global carbon dioxide) emissions, where a lot of ads in the UK suggest it is 98 per cent.”

She apparently went on to say that long-haul aviation caused less environmental impact than high intensity weekend trips by Europeans.

So what do we glean from this? Perhaps we need not plant trees? Maybe we shouldn't be popping off to the Continent but to Oz instead? Confused? Me too....

Trees-R-Us

Apparently the number of Dutch air travellers who want to neutralise the environmental effects of their plane trips is growing fast. Two Dutch companies active in this field, Trees for Travel and Greenseat, have reported that 110,000 people will off-set their flights by investing in environmental projects in 2007.

Now I assume this means, in the main, planting trees. Let's just assume that 110,000 passengers plant ten trees each, that's over a million trees. Last year over 4 billion passengers took to the skies. Let's just say that 20% of them through guilt, a love of the environment or some other reason decided to plant ten trees - that's 8 billion little trees!

Where are they going to plant them? More to the point whose going to plant them? Every other newspaper add would be - Wanted, tree planter. As someone pointed out to me recently, carbon offsets could be the new Amway.