Last summer, I was at a debate at the Edinburgh book festival in which one of the participants, an environmentalist, lectured everyone about the perils of global warming and then in almost the same breath started telling us about his latest trip to China.
I sometimes wonder whether accusations of hypocrisy have any effect on many such people; among them the tendency to take long-haul flights seems remarkably widespread.
In this vein, I see that the media look as if they are wising up to this behaviour, with Phil Jones is the subject of a knockabout article in the Mirror:
A controversial scientist flew 20,000 miles to Tahiti and back… to preach about global warming.
Prof Phil Jones’ trip to the Pacific is among more than a QUARTER OF A MILLION miles of air travel he has racked up in the past five years.
The boffin’s fuel-burning flights mean his carbon footprint is so big it would take 95 acres of trees a year to absorb it all, Government figures show.