Cheap flights to extinction

So, Michael O'Leary wants to fly people to the US for £7 in a fleet of new planes in three years' time. If society allows him to succeed in his latest scheme for the betterment of his business to the wilful detriment of the climate we will surely be on a suicidal course by the end of the decade.

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Let the train take the strain

The theory is this. The world is full of wonderful books, and terrible airports. Drop the airports. Read the books. Take the train.

Just as we now celebrate Slow Food, as opposed to its temporal opposite, let us now learn to love Slow Travel. This is my Mobilisation Resolution Number Two. (I will have to except love miles to Japan, where the in-laws live, and some other, currently inescapable, long-haul flights. So, fire away, cynics.)

War and skis

The Intergovernmental Panel's warning was all across the front pages and TV news this morning. Apparently even the US networks turned up in force to the scientists' news conference in Paris. For the Guardian's man on the spot, the graphs said it all. "The words 'hell' and 'handcart' came to mind," he wrote. I guess no amount of evidence will ever be persuasive for some of the contrarian contributors to my blog strings. But in the history books of the future, I suspect yesterday will prove to be the day that all reasonable doubt was set aside