Cheap Flights – The True Cost of Cheap Flights
Cheap Flights Impact Climate Change
I’m fascinated by the fact that progressive papers such as the Guardian and Independent continue to promote cheap flights and foreign holidays, and that when asked about this they weasel around the issue of the impact on climate change, citing the need for revenue. One assumes that there are industries they do refuse to promote, or industries they will only promote in particular ways, but the tourist industry gets carte blanche.
Longhaul and frequent cheap flights to Europe
In the history of humanity it is only since the 1960’s that we have developed the expectation of the ‘right’ to be able to fly to Sydney, Los Angeles, Bangkok etc on holiday once a year on a fraction of our salaries, and the further ‘right’ to be able to book cheap flights and hop over to Prague, Barcelona and Rimini every 3 or 4 months.
It seems to me that this is an absurd expectation, when these ‘rights’ affect fundamentally other peoples’ rights to life. Try explaining to somebody in the Maldives whose house is being flooded regularly because of rising seas that you have the right to these trips! Let’s not pretend that we don’t now know the effects of what we do!
It’s the toxic combination of the lack of viable alternatives presented to us with the promotion of cheap flights and foreign holidays as a basic right rather than privilege that’s to blame. Of the two ingredients, I’m inclined to believe that promoting the idea of the cheap flight for foreign holidays as absolutely basic to our way of life that’s the more worrying.
Tags: cheap flights, climate change
This entry was posted on Monday, October 5th, 2009 at 2:09 pm and is filed under cheap, flights. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
