Editor's columnThe days are numbered for jet airplanes

There is good news for those of us who have been trying to ban jet airplanes by writing whiny columns about them every few years.

Last year, some entity on the Internet reports, commercial jet fuel consumption was down 10.2 percent, making it the worst year since 1945 for the commercial jet airline industry. And since there weren’t any commercial jet airlines in 1945, that’s really bad.

So, we can celebrate this: Ten percent down, only 90 percent more to go before nobody is flying in those noisy, polluting, confining, human-rights depriving, claustrophobia-inducing, stress-creating, war-sparking, confounded flying machines.

Years ago I based my desire to ban jet airplanes solely on my personal annoyance at occasionally having to fly in them due to a combination of factors: 1) they exist, and 2), family members pressure me to go, to such an extent that I’d rather die in an airplane crash than endure further implorations as to why I must go to a particular destination.

But since the global warming fad hit, I’ve changed my strategy. In recent years I’ve blamed global warming on jet aircraft, based on the fact that God never intended men and women to be flying and burning billions of gallons of kerosene high above Mount Everest. Therefore, God never provided for a self-cleaning mechanism up there. Meanwhile, the Devil, who inspired airplane design with images of carpet bombing dancing in his brain, laughs.

That particular argument never carried the day in this scientific era, but now scientists are catching up with my belief that global warming is caused by jet airplanes. A simple Google search turned up this: “Greenhouse Gas Pollution in the Stratosphere Due to Increasing Airplane Traffic, Effects On the Environment,” which goes on to say: “A greenhouse gas envelope at the stratospheric level is much more effective than one at a much lower altitude, at blocking radiant energy from escaping the earth, it may explain the perplexing phenomenon of substantially higher rates of increase in the atmospheric and oceanic temperatures.” The drift should be obvious: Jet aircraft are destroying the planet!

Now that science and momentum is on my side, it’s only a matter of time before Al Gore thinks to himself, “Hey, maybe I shouldn’t set the next global warming conference in Bora Bora. How about Cleveland, so everyone can take the bus?”

I can feel victory growing nearer in my campaign to ground every jet airline in existence. In fact, I have a lot more evidence, but no time to present it. I have a plane to catch.

Contact Whidbey News Times Editor Jim Larsen at editor@whidbeynewstimes.com or 1-360-675-6611 (ext 5050).

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