Polluter pays catches on in Britain

"Britain took the first step on the road to taxing air travel for its contribution to global warming yesterday when the Treasury published a document discussing the idea.

Although such a tax, which would mean a big rise in ticket prices and would hit low-cost airlines severely, is a long way off, the Government's decision to begin talking about it is significant" (story here).

This is something that is an obvious and long overdue solution. As an example - according to this site a return trip from Christchurch to Sydney emits 0.53 tonnes of carbon dioxide - thats about as much carbon as a single oak tree would take up over the first 100 years of its life....if I'm reading this data correctly, so it is not an insignificant amount.