Thoughts on a journey to Australia

Written 22/11/11

An Inconvenient Truth:
Several times in recent months I've had reason to visit airports. On my last visit to collect my son and his girlfriend, I was met by too unfortunate images the first was a sizeable number of returning visitors arriving in the UK in October dressed as if it was mid summer, but by far the more worrying was the presence at Gatwick of a handful of armed and armoured police officers accompanied by a springer spaniel. Was their presence designed to make me feel safer ? It did not. It is however a sign of the times.

Now we are at Heathrow, after an unplanned tube journey at get there because the M25 is closed because of an accident. Fog has arrived in London and flights will be delayed. I stand in the terminal and am faced with a bewildering variety of people from probably every continent on earth. What hits me is the scale of air transport, and of course this is only passenger traffic, the arrival this week in the shops of blueberries from Uruguay shows the other side of air traffic.
Unless a way is found to reduce the carbon emissions from planes how can we tackle climate change , but as I look at all these travellers I'm left to ponder , how can we persuade people not to fly ?

How can the message of protecting the planet's future or the lifes of people of those who the average air passenger will never know or meet be saved. I write this a week before the UN Climate Change talks start in Durban, South Africa. Heathrow reveals the enormity of the task, and I understand that mainstream politics routed in short termism and the need to win the next election really doesn't stand a chance.

There's nothing to watch and I've lost my desire to read, I find myself gazing at a world map on screen and follow the path of the plane. I look at the route of our flight and I'm suddenly aware that we are flying over Afghanistan and Pakistan. Ahead it seems are the cities and provinces that a few years ago I was barely aware about, and I realise that they are now below me, although of course 38,000 feet below.

Some hours later we land in Singapore. As I walk through the terminal I realise that for the first time in my life I'm away from european dominance. In the past I've travelled to Europe, the USA and Australia but a few hours sitting in Singapore's terminal awaiting our next flight to Sydney makes me realise that there are billions living in Asia and I suspect like many europeans I had previously given this side of the world little attention.

It's the last leg of a very long journey, and I choose to watch the last part of David Attenborough's "Frozen Planet" series. Attenborough issues a dire warning about climate change at the poles. That I should be watching it on an aircraft contributing to the problem hits me, butthe whole series has been BBC television at its best, and should probably be mandatory viewing for those who doubt climate change.