The predicted 100 percent raise in airline passengers for the UK over the next 15 years from the present staggering number of 160 million per annum to an estimated 333 million,  highlights the need for some radical
rethinking of transport policy. (Three Heathrows needed for 100pc passenger growth, 27 June 2000).

Britain, one should remember, constitutes a mere one percent of the world's population!

It should be obvious to anyone who takes a  long,  realistic look at the world, that on a finite planet with 6 billion (in 15 years time, perhaps 8 billion) inhabitants, it is not possible for everybody, or even a small majority of people, to own a car or fly off around the world whenever they wish. Neither is sustainable, no matter how much we optimise the technology.

But current economic wisdom and necessity demand that we continue on our present insane course.

When are our opinion makers (you, dear editor) and decision makers going to wake up to reality and the limitations that a finite planet place on us?

If it is not very soon, we are going to find ourselves in the same situation - only on a vastly larger scale - as Commander James Lovell and the crew of Apollo 13 when an explosion in an oxygen tank seriously damaged that spacecraft's life-support systems.

We too "have a problem".

But unlike the Apollo astronauts, we have nowhere to get back to. We have to sort out our problem - developing a sustainable economy and life-styles that do not threaten Spaceship Earth's, life-supporting ecosystems  - while on board.

At the moment things are not looking good.