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Last updated on August 6th, 2017 at 02:53 pm
As Terry McCrann observes, there’s a curious duality of views at the Age on the subject of air travel. For example, this editorial from last Monday calls for increased flights to and from Melbourne:
International airlines are bypassing Australia’s second city in favour of Sydney, which has consolidated its position as a hub for flights to Europe, the Americas and places between. Three recent decisions exemplify the problem. British Airways cut Melbourne from its itinerary last year; Austrian Airlines will cease flights from the Victorian capital in March; and just last week, Etihad Airlines, which became the first foreign airline to be granted access to Australia in more than a year, announced it would fly to Sydney.
To add to the sense of abandonment, Qantas scheduling increasingly causes flights originating in this city to stop in Sydney, with passengers from Melbourne to Tokyo, for example, frequently obliged to spend time on the ground just an hour after take-off. Any significant growth in tourism depends on attracting international visitors, both for business and leisure purposes.
Yet here, the Age offers this solution to global warming:
Fly less. Plane travel emits about three times as much greenhouse gas as a train journey.
What’s it to be, Age? More flights or less? Attracting international visitors or appeasing Gaia?
