Average by gas price year

If you believe the weather forecasters, we may be due for a few days of sunshine. In which case, those of us who are still at home to enjoy the pause in the storms can raise a glass to holidaying in the back garden, rather than camping for hours on stone floors in overcrowded airports and boarding overcrowded planes that queue to launch themselves into overcrowded skies.

We are flying more than ever and, if we ignore the unpleasant reality of the experience, this is something to celebrate. Hundreds of European cities and resorts, and many far beyond Europe, are now within reach of most Britons. We can fly at short notice and at ever-decreasing prices - [pounds sterling]29, [pounds sterling]19, [pounds sterling]9 - for a week in the sun, or a weekend in a foreign city. The prerogative of the rich has become the privilege of the masses. Airline magnates such as Sir Richard Branson and Stelios, with their self-mocking soundbites, are popular heroes. They have given us the world.

All this comes at a price, though. Aviation already accounts for more than 3.5 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions and it is predicted it will represent 7 per cent by 2050. Friends of the Earth, the environmental pressure group, has calculated that one return flight from London to Miami (14,000km) produces more [Co.sub.2] per passenger than that produced in a year by the average British motorist. The combined [CO.sub.2] emissions of the world's commercial jet aircraft are almost as much as those of the entire African continent.

As popular tourist destinations such as Prague and Salzburg suffer catastrophic floods, the irony of aviation's contribution to global warming cannot be ignored.

Other environmental consequences of the unchecked expansion of air travel are felt closer to home. At the current rate of growth, Britain will need the equivalent of five Heathrow Airports in the next 30 years. So far, after seven years of argument, the government has secured approval for just one new runway at Heathrow. Although the government hopes to speed future inquiries (without loss of rigour, it says), proposals for new airports in the south-east are already mired in controversy.

The government is responding with a minimalist strategy - predicting future demand and trying to make the case for meeting it. And the arguments for greater airport capacity are easy to list. The government expects passenger traffic to triple to 500 million by 2030; the existing capacity is stretched to an insupportable limit for airlines and passengers alike; airports are good for local businesses and bring jobs and profits; and if Britain doesn't expand its infrastructure, it will lose out to those of our European neighbours who will.

As-yet-unpublished research by the Institute for Public Policy Research presses the government to be more adventurous in its thinking. We cannot go on supplying new runways in the crowded south-east to respond to the insatiable demand for air travel, the IPPR argues. We must therefore seek to manage the demand. It proposes better use of existing capacity - for example, by airport "congestion charging" that would reduce pressure on Heathrow and Gatwick to the benefit of underused regional airports. The IPPR points out that the country's two main airports offer cheaper landing charges than their smaller competitors because they are subsidised by the profits from their airport shopping malls. In a vicious cycle, the opportunity to shop as you fly further increases popularity with passengers (and therefore congestion) and further reduces landing costs. Making better use of existing airport capacity around the country is a practical beginning. But the government needs to go much further.

Airlines are currently exempt from both VAT and fuel tax, the latter exemption representing a huge government subsidy to an environmentally unsound means of travel. The increasing take-up of internal flights is a direct result of this tax privilege. Internal flights are now often cheaper than car or train journeys to the same destination. But simply taxing fuel is fraught with difficulty. No individual state could act without making their national carriers uncompetitive. Europe has been considering including aviation in a greenhouse gas "charge" to cover all industries, but even this plan is problematic in terms of international trade agreements.

The solution has to be global. One possibility is to bring aviation within the framework of the Kyoto protocol on climate change. The emissions from domestic flights are already included in a country's obligations under the Kyoto Convention. In Britain, this has so far been applied only to British Airways, which received a financial incentive for reducing emissions. The scheme is voluntary for other carriers, which have, predictably, increased internal business as steadily as British Airways has reduced it. Only an international agreement covering all airlines would have an impact. It would require great political will, not least to bring the United States back (with enthusiasm) into the Kyoto framework.

Without question, such an agreement would raise the cost of air travel to passengers. To be effective, it would have to. But it could also act as a spur to the development of alternative, cleaner technologies. Some may argue that paying more to fly will hit only the poor. Yet 80 per cent of all flights are taken by just 40 per cent of people. In other words, the main beneficiaries of cheap flights have been the better-off, who are able to take more short breaks.

A colleague has just paid [pounds sterling]19.99 for a return flight to Sardinia (1,550km away), less than she will pay for her early-morning minicab to the airport (30km). How much longer can we expect the environment to pay the real costs of delivering us to our holiday destinations?