I attended my first international negotiation on climate change COP19 in Warsaw last November. To reduce my own carbon footprint I decided eight years ago that I could no longer justify flying. So it was a 23-hour overnight train journey for me - time to catch up on work and get a night's kip - arguably quicker, and certainly more productive and with far lower emissions, than flying.
But why the focus on flying if, after all, it's less than three per cent of global carbon emissions? Well, the three per cents all add up. More troubling is the rapid rate at which aviation is expanding when, unlike virtually all other sectors, there are no technical fixes capable of reducing the sector's emissions in the medium term.
