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Count on aviation to come to an end:

RISE IN AIR TRAVEL HARMING GLOBAL ENVIRONMENT

Date: 5 Jul 2004
From: "Peter Montague" }

Agence France-Presse, July 5, 2004

London - Rising demand for air travel is one of the most serious
environmental risks facing the world, an international research body
said Sunday.

"This growth has been fuelled by generous tax breaks and state aid
and is contrary to the objectives of environmental policy, especially
efforts to prevent the worst consequences of climate change," the
Stockholm Environment Institute's regional centre at the University of
York in northern England said.

Britain and other EU governments have made a massive commitment to
expanding aviation, the report says.

The report, of which a full version was to be published Monday,
argues that the aviation industry should play its full role in helping
to reduce greenhouse gases.

The study recommends a series of actions, including an end to the
tax-free status of aviation fuel, to be carried out by the British
government and European Union over the next 30 years to combat the
problem of increasing air travel.

It advises also that journeys of less than 400 miles (640 kilometres)
should be made by train - reducing the number of flights by 45 percent
- while businesses should use video conferencing rather than flying
staff to meetings.

Airlines should pay also an environmental charge equal to the damage
they cause, the study suggests.

One of the report's two authors, Professor John Whitelegg, said that
high-speed rail services such as Eurostar, currently linking London
with Paris and Brussels via the Channel Tunnel, needed to be improved
so that every British city was linked by train to mainland Europe.

"At the moment we have cheap flights and some of the most expensive
railways in the world. That is the wrong way around," he told BBC
online. "We should also build high-speed trains underneath the oceans which
will connect the
world's cities." According to Whitelegg, several underwater train routes,
which would go through tunnels built on the ocean floor, are being studied.

* * *

Copyright 2003 Agence France-Presse.

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