DIRTY TALKING

No, I'm not going down the pornography route, but something equally sinister and certainly more deadly in my view.

If, in any country, you look up into the sky on a cloudless day, what do you see? Vapour trails from aircraft. Some people say this looks “pretty” (white against blue); but beauty is in the eye of the individual; from above they are truly ugly, brown excrement!  The airline industry state they contribute “only” 2% towards global warming. Perhaps; I have no way of verifying that claim. Friends in one European country tell me that on one day they counted over 50 aircraft over-flying their part of the country, each leaving their “trademark” behind them. 

What I want to know is what happens to all that brown stuff? The airlines will say (naturally) that it is “dispersed”; but where? Surely it has to come down somewhere? And when it does, what is the effect on those people, animals and plants living where it comes down?

I shall conduct a personal survey in my own area of the number of flights imposing upon my clean air (and that is one huge benefit that I have – at the moment). There are enough poisonous and/or “aggressive” substances living side by side with us in our food and water; I have no desire – even at 69 – to be almost encouraged to die from the stuff that the airlines tell me is “innocuous”. Please do not think of me as someone who wants to return to the “horse and cart” days and live in splendid isolation from each other; on the contrary, I encourage travel of all description as it is a way to overcome xenophobia. What I do ask is for man (who can create ever more clever ways of mass destruction) to turn his skills to making life cleaner for all.

Check your own situation; how many flights cross your sky; how much excrement is being pumped out. What effect is this having on your area?

Until next time (and still in clean air – I hope),

Peripatetic Scribe