Long haul breaks spell bad news for the climate

After the Filofax, the mobile phone, the laptop, the iPod, the taste for sushi and the 4×4, here comes the latest must-have for Britain’s affluent young professional class: the weekend far away.

A growing number of people who have money coming out of their ears but not the hours in the day to spend it – who are cash-rich but time-poor, as the jargon has it – are turning to a new form of relaxation, the long-haul short break.

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But from a green point of view, the story is quite different: the continuing breakneck growth of air travel. The normality of a quick break in a distant location indicates what a thorny political problem is being presented by the environmental consequences of air travel.

The Independent