Is Short-Haul Air Travel the New Tobacco?
by Kathleen McDonald
Is short-haul air travel the new tobacco? It's something to think about the next time you hear people raving about the convenience of flying to Montreal or Ottawa from the Toronto Island airport.It may not be surprising that we at Community Air see the health and environmental risks of short-haul aviation on a par with smoking. But we're far from being the only ones who think so.
Mark Ellingham, founder of the popular Rough Guides travel series, said recently, "The tobacco industry fouled up the world while denying it as much as possible for as long as they could. If the travel industry rosily goes ahead as it is doing... we are putting ourselves in a very similar position to the tobacco industry." Ellingham, who has done as much as anyone to promote ethical, environmentally responsible travel, zeroed in on what he calls "binge" fliers who book a flight "as casually as going to the cinema or going out to a restaurant... Not giving a thought about the consequences of your actions." He's critical of the growing tendency to fly short distances just to shave off a bit of time instead of taking the train. Ellingham says the deal he has made with himself is to restrict his own air travel to one long-haul and two or three shorter flights each year.
For a Canadian perspective, look no further than David Suzuki. Canada's premier environmentalist says short-haul flights are major contributors to global warming. "Short flights produce a disproportionate amount of greenhouse gases because takeoff and landing are the times of greatest energy use. So I take trains between Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa."
With the federal government's announcement late last year of $692 million in new runding for VIA Rail, it looks as though the dream of a high-speed rail link in the Toronto-Montreal corridor might be finally inching toward reality. In the meantime, we say: Be like Mark Ellingham and David Suzuki - Take the train.
Good to read your piece Kathleen, Leida and I stopped flying in 2000. My last flight was for my mothers funeral in Feb. 2002. We travel by train to the LA area once or twice a year and stay there for a month using bicycles.
Life is fantastic. Train travel is 17 times less polluting and 1,000 times more scenic. We travel by bus and train up the coast to Vancouver. Nothing beats the train for those long trips across the contientent. Coffee watching the sun rise, lots of reading and napping. Wine with dinner meeting some of the most interesting people who you will see or sit with again at the next meal time!
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My family moved out of the Bathurst Quay over ten years ago purely for health reasons. My wife had two attacks of pancreatitis and my 10 year old daughter developed shingles. Given that we are so-called 'health nuts' these two health events caused us alarm. We would regularly smell the fumes from the airport and the only conclusion that we could come to was that the airport caused two members of my family to become ill. The airport isn't the only environmental pressure residents in the Quay face, but for us it was the most intense. We moved and have had no reoccurence of these problems.
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