A Virgin aircraft has made a flight, powered partly by biofuel. Is this part of a sustainable future for aviation?
No. It takes a huge amount of energy to just get an aircraft off the ground. Even the light aircraft in the picture are greedy little fuel gobblers, though things are not quite so bad if you go on a long flight in a straight line.
As a means of mass transport, the days of aviation with heavier-than-air machines are numbered. In fact, I would go further and suggest that the era of cheap travel over distances of thousands of miles is just a short-lived historical aberration.
The Guardian has published a couple more articles against HS2, one by specialist rail commentator Christian Wolmar, and another today by journalist Simon Jenkins. The main arguments in favour will doubtless be wheeled out by the commentators: the need for capacity and the disruption caused by upgrading existing routes. HST itself will severely disrupt services to Euston during the construction period. Capacity can be increased at a fraction of the cost by a variety of measures, provided that it is accepted that the additional traffic will run at existing speeds. It is not generally known that the Midland main line is, or was, four track all the way from London to Trent Junction, between Nottingham and Derby. This is because the additional tracks are separate, having been added for coal trains which trundled down to Brent sidings, on the edge of London, from a collection point at Toton in Nottinghamshire, where the Midland Railway build a huge marshalling yard. Beyond Derby, the main l...
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