Health Warnings, Eh?

The smoking ban that has just come into force here in Wales is only the next step in a long line of initiatives to cut down the dangers of secondhand smoke - and of smoking in general. It was, after all, many years ago that we first saw the health warning labels on cigarette packs.

Now, a leading think tank (ippr) is proposing that we do the same for carbon-busting flying and high-emitting vehicles with messages such as Warning: Flying Causes Climate Change.

Provide the information, make it highly visible, make people think and think again. What would be really cool is including a carbon calculation with your ticket, so you know how much CO2 the trip will actually emit. The Alliance Against Urban 4x4s and Greenpeace already have been cheekily doing similar things to vehicles - putting recall notices (failure to consider the environment) and parking tickets (for poor vehicle choice) on high-emitting vehicles. And, of course, taxation increases need to be ring-fenced and massively ploughed back into joined-up rail and bus travel.

Cure the addiction! We could set up helplines for free advice on 'how to quit' and travel low-carbon instead, increase taxes (like they do on cigarettes and alcohol)...there are a whole heap of possibilities! Somehow, though, High-Carbon-Travellers Anonymous doesn't quite have the same ring to it.