traveled in youth and now wants to deny others. Certainly the High Priests of the religion don,t have any conscience traveling the globe while collecting tax payer money.

It's not cognitive dissonance, nor any of the silly things the other commenters allege. Rather it's that we place a high value on visiting places and people. Far from being low hanging fruit, air travel is right at the top of the tree — there's not much we can do to curtail it without significantly adversely affectiing our lifestyles (or business, which is responsible for a lot of econmy class demand). And without international agreement for action, curtailing your own flying is unlikely to have a significant impact anyway.

However there are plenty of low hanging fruit in aviation, and while people fly 14 times as much as they did 40 years ago, the aircraft are far more efficient so the amount of fuel consumed hasn't risen anywhere near that much. And it's still improving.

Since the places people visit (and retire to) are generally warmer than the places they live, clearly the way to reduce holiday air travel is to encourage global warming. Then we can all have sun-drenched beach holidays at home.

Yes J.J., well thought through! Remarkable insight! The whole world should bow to your incredible intellect grasp of the basics!

And a sun drenched India was in the news recently, with thousands dropping off like flies, having too much of a good thing!

Is that what you mean!?
Rhrosty.

There is no need to get over concerned about international air travel, A fully laden modern airliner achieves of fuel consumption per person which is much better than the average car. For example the A380 achieves the equivalent of 72 miles per gallon per person or bit over 3.27 litres per 100 ks (72 mpg-US) and the Boeing 737 MAX-8 achieves 2.04 litres per 100 ks (115 mpg-US). If you are concerned about the amount of CO2 generated you can offset the emissions with any of a number of green offset schemes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft#Example_Values
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_offset#Purchase_of_carbon_allowances_from_emissions_trading_schemes

In my opinion the first step in reducing CO2 emissions is to generate electricity by eliminating the use of coal fired power stations. The second step is to improve efficiency wherever fossil fuels are used. The third step is the ramp up the use of renewable power sources.

Whether jets use less fuel per passenger miles than cars is not the issue. Both cars and jets use fuels that would be better left in the ground for future generations. That is true no matter what your POV is in relation to AGW.

There is undoubtedly a need for high-speed, high-priority jet transport, but going on holidays isn't it.