I love travelling! However, the impact of flying on the environment is devasting, as such I am going to think twice about flying.

There are much cleaner ways of travelling, one of them is trains! Of course it takes longer to travel by train (it doesn't have to take that much longer), but it's much nicer travelling, more space, more movement and overall less stressful than flying.

Rail travel in Europe is amazing! Trains go everywhere, and distances being much less, taking a train isn't that much longer, but trains are expensive in Europe, planes are much cheaper, so people fly (however, many do still take trains there). It's the same here in North America, most people fly, because it's cheaper, and rail options are so poor, it's pathetic!

Train travel can be made much more accessible both in time and money. If countries ran reliable, frequent, high speed trains, with comparable cheap fares (to air), I sure many people would opt to travel by rail.

We have the technology to make trains go very, very fast, but as with everything else, there is no political will to make the right choices in this world.

People are not to blame entirely, give them options and they will use them.

As an aviation industry consultant, I can say with certainty that all airlines are about profit and not even remotely about carbon emission reduction (or safety for that matter). Even Branson's Virgin Atlantic.

If he really wanted to do all things possible to reduce fuel burn / carbon emissions, they would not paint their airplanes - as American Airlines has done for decades. The weight savings are significant and the annual fuel savings would be huge.

Same goes for taking steel cutlery and glass bottles (wine and liquor off aircraft. There are many more such "little" things airlines could do - but won't because it could mean loosing passengers to other carriers that still offer the missing services or items - and have pretty painted airplanes.

The truly concerned people out there should understand that it's all lip service, and rhetoric, no airline is really serious about making real changes to make real differences.