Restrict air travel

Re: Alicia Ferri's letter, Lower domestic airfares (Castanet March 19 )

The writer suggests Canadians should be flying more to South America rather than the United States for their holidays and that flying within Canada should also be made cheaper.

Presently air travel is contributing 2.5% of CO2 emissions throughout the world. That isn’t that much compared to agriculture (10%) or electricity and heating (34%) of total world emissions but it all adds up.

Long ago, when air travel became more common, it was suggested people should plant or contribute towards the planting of a certain number of trees for every air mile they travel. That seems to be a forgotten suggestion as air travel becomes more extravagant and reckless.

I would like to see more stringent rules enforced with air travel, restricting it to family visitations and business only. I imagine that would be difficult to apply but if we have now taught ourselves to reduce consumption of plastics and put more effort into recycling, I think we could manage this as well.

Frank Martens