Flying high.

Plans to expand airports sit badly with the government's green aspirations. Demand for air travel is soaring and the government has decided to approve two new runways for the south-east, the first to be built at Stansted by 2012, the second at Heathrow by 2020. The plan was announced in a white paper published on December 16th. Three years ago, Roy Vandermeer, the government-appointed inspector in charge of the Terminal 5 inquiry, concluded that a third runway would have "such severe and widespread impacts...as to be totally unacceptable". The white paper does not tackle the environmental consequences of unrestrained air travel. Even on the government's own figures, which are less than a quarter of those provided by the European Environmental Agency, the industry is seriously under-taxed. Air passenger duty (APD) currently raises about£ 850m ($ 1.5 billion) a year, barely half the cost of the damage the government estimates is done by aircraft emissions. The Institute for Public Policy Research, a left-leaning think-tank, suggests that, if aviation had to pay tax on fuel and VAT on air fares, it would have to pay another£ 9 billion a year--roughly£ 50 on the price of a ticket. The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution says that, at current rates of growth, aviation will become a major catalyst of climate change.