"Truly I Say to You, Those Are Not Clouds...."

From an article entitled "The End of Travel," by a gentleman named James Hamilton-Paterson, which appeared in the summer issue of the British literary journal Granta. The article bemoans the shrinking of the globe due to air travel's ever-increasing efficiency and economy, as well as the droves of oxen that have turned once-mysterious contours of the earth into shameful abcesses of tourism.

Aircraft exhaust gases injected at high temperature into those icy regions produce their own clouds in the form of condensation, or contrails. Following the attacks of September 11, when all commercial arliners in the US were grounded, American skies were free of contrails and in only three days scientists noted a change in the mean temperature. The implication is that the cirrus clouds and upper-atmosphere haze caused by aviation trap outgoing radiation and block incoming sunshine, making the planet cloudier and warmer. It is now belatedly recognized that commercial aircraft are a major source of pollution (military aviation--itself a massive source--is never factored into this equation and remains unaccountable). Yet the volume of air traffic is projected to multiply by up to eight times in the next forty years, while aircraft fuel is zero-rated for taxation the world over on the unilateral insistence of the United States. Judging from their ads, BP now wants us to be conscious of our 'carbon footprint' on the ground, but it is notably reticent about our carbon trail in the air. And following the recent test of a scramjet (faster still, higher yet!), futurists are envisioning flying from London to Sydney in two hours. Evidently they live in an environment-free Neverland of their own....

There is pathos in witnessing the genetic inability of a species to curtail its own self-destructive behaviour. The pathos naturally includes the rueful awareness that one is oneself a part of it, doomed to the impropriety of watching the steady eradication of so many species except the one that most deserves extinction.