Recent postings from airport enthusiasts suggest that Pearson is going to be so busy that we will really need the Island airport, particularly if Buttonville shuts down first.

That suggestion is based on the assumption that air travel is going to continue to grow and grow and grow.

A study for the Greater Toronto Airports Authority in 2004 states that Pearson is expected to reach capacity at 50 million passenger s year by 2019 (up from 31 million in 2006): see http://www.gtaa.com/local/files/en/PickeringEconomicDevStudyAddendum.pdf, apparently justifyting the need for a new airport in Pickering, god forbid.

Classic use of straight line graphs – much like our brokers used to show how our investments will continue to grow without end. That ended, of course, and the growth of air travel will end, too. Perhaps the economy alone will do it, but it has to end too, if we are to address climate change.

Climate change is a huge issue for all of us, and flying is a fast growing contributor to greenhouse gases.

Yesterday’s Guardian column by George Monbiot (http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/03/17/a-self-fulfilling-prophecy/) stated the problem starkly:

Quietly in public, loudly in private, climate scientists everywhere are saying the same thing: it’s over. The years in which more than two degrees of global warming could have been prevented have passed, the opportunities squandered by denial and delay. On current trajectories we’ll be lucky to get away with four degrees. Mitigation (limiting greenhouse gas pollution) has failed; now we must adapt to what nature sends our way. If we can.

We must, as soon as possible, find ways to stop denying the enormity of the climate change problem, and start taking the measures necessary to solve it. For air travel, that means cutting way back – and opting for the better  alternatives: short-haul flights are readily replaced by fast trains, as Europe is amply demonstrating, and Barack Obama has now recognized, for the U.S..

Brian Iler