Aviation industry to tackle precisely nothing

Hold the presses - the aviation industry has signed an awesome Earth Day agreement to do some stuff about the whole climate thingie! Great news for anti-aviation campaigners, but is it time to hang up our d-locks and put away the banners? Of course not - once again the industry is talking nonsense and massively overstating its ability to reduce its climate impact.

This time they've signed a declaration to do something about the amount of CO2 each plane farts out ("to lead towards carbon neutral growth and a totally sustainable future"), but declined to set any targets or timescales- or even to explain how they might go about tackling the issue. The "declaration on climate change" also focuses on per passenger efficiency - easily tackled by making bigger planes which carry more people - while ignoring the growth in overall emissions from coaxing more and more people to fly unnecessarily.

The one thing the industry can agree on is that they'd quite like to tackle CO2 emmissions by themselves, without pesky governments trying to help them. Call me a cynic, but an emissions-addicted industry crying out to regulate itself sounds not dissimilar to a plea by criminals to handle prison security.

So no targets, no timescales, no solutions - but a tonne of greenwash and some good intentions bandied around like the second coming. Typical industry nonsense tarted up like a sixth-former trying to get into a Wetherspoons. Not to worry though - I'm sure the planet's future is safe in the competent hands of a bunch of dinosaurs who can't even be bothered to run their own airports properly.