The world’s first commercial aircraft powered partly by biofuel took off from Heathrow yesterday to a storm of criticism from climate change experts, who insisted it was nothing more than Sir Richard Branson’s latest “nonsensical” publicity stunt.
The Virgin Atlantic 747 flew from London to Amsterdam using a 20 per cent biofuel mix of coconut and […]

Why does the UN continue to take Richard Branson seriously when it comes to climate change?
Here is a man whose fleet of airplanes continues to promote transanatlantic travel, who is investing in space tourism for the super rich at the same time as promoting biofuels as the solution to climate change, which will just make […]

Sometimes I wonder if I live in a parallel universe. Today’s news that the Earth’s tipping points could happen much sooner than expected is a serious reminder about how close we are to a climate catastrophe.
Yet we are also now designing aircraft that can fly from Europe to Australia in under five hours – with […]

The EU has caved in to another powerful industry. EU ministers have finally agreed to impose carbon emissions quotas on airlines in an attempt to fight climate change.
However, the start date for the EU emissions trading scheme will be delayed to 2012, a year later than MEPs were asking for. The scheme also faces legal […]

Oh the irony. Airlines stand to make billions of pounds in “windfall profits” from an emissions trading scheme that was supposed to make them pay for the environmental damage they cause.
A UK government report argues the airlines will take advantage of the scheme to raise fares substantially, even though their costs will hardly change.