“For years there has been a lively debate about the pollution and disruption caused by building a new runway at Heathrow, (now to go ahead); these are valid concerns. But almost everyone ignores the issue that dwarfs all others: climate change. If our airports are full, there’s a solution: fly less. Is this beyond contemplation? If so, our ethics are weaker than those of 1791, when 300,000 British people, to disassociate themselves from slavery, stopped using sugar, reducing sales by a third. The perceptual gulf between us and the victims of climate change is no wider than the ocean that lay between the people of Britain and the Caribbean. If we do not make the leap of imagination that connects our actions with their consequences, it is not because we can’t but because we won’t.” (George Monbiot in The Guardian).

I think everyone ought to be  conscious of their contribution to climate change and what problems they are stacking up for future generations.

On the positive side my wife and I walk everywhere we possibly can, and use our tiny car very sparingly.  It is three years old and to all intents and purposes new. We use public transport exclusively in London.  On the minus side I admit that we do use aircraft, both coming and going across the Atlantic and to and fro to Florida. We  probably use the same amount of fossil fuel taxi-ing to take-off as we do all year in the car.  This is a moral issue, actually.  I don’t like to have to accuse myself of hypocrisy, but it is a fact that I stand among the guilty,  conveniently justifying myself  with the fact that the planes were leaving with or without me.  Me culpa. Stay at home?  “It’s not because we can’t but because we won’t”.