The Kyoto Protocol is the only global agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, though its attempts at reducing emissions and the effects of climate change are limited. The world’s biggest polluter, the United States, has rejected the protocol and it is not binding on emerging boom economies such as India and China. According to the US Environment protection Agency, in 1997, the United States emitted about one-fifth of total global greenhouse gases.

The UK has signed up to the requirements of the Kyoto Protocol and agreed to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 60 percent by 2050. Great news – except that a recent study conducted by Oxford University’s Environment Change Institute for the government-funded UK Energy Research Centre states that CO2 emissions from aviation in Britain are set to surge by between four and ten times 1990 levels by the middle of the century, accounting on their own for two-thirds of the government’s emission target for that year.

Therefore, the study says, the UK government must curb the huge expansion in air travel or risk overshooting its self-imposed target. UK government policy, however, is currently actively promoting airport expansion which could see passenger numbers more than double from 200 million to 470 million a year by 2030. “Unless the rate of growth in flights is curbed, the UK cannot fulfil its commitments on climate change. It has to undertake demand management. Relying on technological fixes alone is totally unrealistic,” said a spokesperson for the study.