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To: op-ed@nytimes.com
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Dear Sir/Madam, A recent 2500 word NYT article on low-fare air travel ("The East Joins the Low-Fare Bazaar") left me wondering whether I was living on the same planet (Spaceship Earth) as its author. It did not contain a single reference to the "sustainability" of cheap air travel, which is a bit like reporting on the economic situation in 1937 Germany without mentioning Adolf Hitler or the Nazis. Given the obvious fact that virtually everyone, once they can afford it, wants to fly for one reason or another, and that currently only a tiny fraction of humanity can afford to fly at all, it should be equally obvious that cheap air travel is fundamentally non-sustainable. Like so much else in the modern world, air travel depends absolutely on cheap oil, which, while we pay for it in dollars, is in fact a "stolen good", stolen from our own children and coming generations, who will not only have to get by without it, but will also have to contend with the climatic changes, environmental damage and social upheavals that our greedy and compulsive consumption of it is causing. The article shows how we are so wrapped up in our own immediate world that we neglect to take serious notice of underlying realities of the wider world, or of where we are heading, i.e. the consequences of climate change, the depletion of Earth's limited natural resources, and environmental degradation. Perhaps this is because we selfishly assume that things are not going to get really bad until after we personally are dead and gone, our motto seeming to be: Live for today and let coming generations worry about tomorrow. We even try making an arrogant virtue of our grossly irresponsible behaviour by expressing confidence in man's genius and ability to cope with all future challenges. Fortunately, we did cope with Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, but it was a very close call which we were very lucky to get away with, after failing to recognise and face up to the danger in good time. If Hitler had not made the mistake of attacking the Soviet Union before finishing off Great Britain, Germany would almost certainly have won the war, with even more horrific consequences than its defeat. Did our ancestors not struggle and toil so that we - their descendents - might have a better future? Their efforts were not in vain, for we, in western Europe and North America, are fabulously well-off. Surely, we owe the same to our descendents.
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