Spokespersons for airline companies have been hard at work, trying to allay public concerns by quoting a 2-3% contribution to global CO2 emissions. As we've come to expect from the aviation industry, this is misleading: the figure corresponds to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report of 1990. Aviation emissions more than doubled during decade which followed.
These figures also ignore per capita rates: British citizens fly more than those of any other nation except the United States. If everyone flew as much as people in the UK, the figure would be about ten times higher.
