Holding Concorde up proudly as a supreme example of Anglo-French achievement is in fact a classic example of human arrogance and folly, for it points us in the very opposite direction in which if we care about our children and coming generations we need to be going.

While I can understand people's fascination with Concorde, its beauty and technical achievement and the attachment of those who have devoted so much of their lives to it, it is high time we also recognised it as the embodiment of the non-sustainable attitudes and aspirations which are currently leading us towards climatic and ecological disaster.

Technically and aesthetically Concorde was a remarkable achievement, no doubt about it. But we will only be able to give the plane itself, and those responsible for building it, an honourable place in history if we now recognise and accept and begin changing the mistaken values and aspirations upon which it's development and operation were based.