The idea that could end travel as we know it

Eco-group C40’s desire to restrict air travel to one flight every three years is utterly arbitrary, says Chris Leadbeater

Steve Coogan is not the first person you think of when considering the climate crisis. And yet, earlier this week, I found myself recalling one of his finest sitcom scenes, as I read through a study on how to cut carbon emissions in some of the world’s largest cities.

You probably know it – the six minutes of comic perfection where Coogan’s greatest creation, Alan Partridge, meets BBC commissioning editor Tony Hayers to pitch new TV programmes. The lunch goes badly, and, growing more desperate, Partridge starts throwing increasingly random ideas across the table. “Youth Hostelling with Chris Eubank”, he suggests. “Inner-city Sumo … Monkey Tennis?”

There is nothing about budget travel with retired middleweights in “The Future of Urban Consumption in a 1.5C World” – the 2023 report from eco-group C40 Cities. But then, C40 Cities is a serious organisation, comprising 96 major urban centres on six continents. And its latest dispatch has solid ideas on tackling our carbon habit, including reducing how much clothing we buy, how much electricity we use, and how much meat we eat.

However, its suggestions on aviation are Full Partridge – seemingly muttered at random, in a bid to get something, anything, on paper. By 2023, the citizens of the C40 Cities (and with London, New York, Sydney and Rome part of the club, that means lots of us), it says, should lower their use of aircraft to one return flight, of no more than 1,500km (932 miles) in total distance, every three years.

There is at least recognition that this might be wildly implausible, because it is marked as an “ambitious target”. But don’t worry; there is a “progressive target” too. Which is one return flight every two years. As Tony Hayers puts it, with barely hidden disbelief, when Partridge tries again with “Arm Wrestling with Chas and Dave”, I don’t think so.

Let’s drill down into what it would mean. That’s one summer holiday every 36 months – an exile from Mediterranean shores almost twice as long as that caused by Covid. Mind you, if you are sticking faithfully to that 932-mile limit, you won’t be seeing the Spanish Costas or the Aegean Sea again – London to Malaga is a 2,500-mile round-trip, London to Athens and back amounts to more that 3,450 miles. The best you can hope for, flying from Heathrow, is to hop to Frankfurt and home again – which leaves 12 miles in change.

Now, I like Frankfurt, But its general schtick – significant financial hub with plenty of nice restaurants – isn’t enough to make it one of my top five favourite German cities. And even if it were, I’m not sure I would choose it for one of my 3.3 fly-and-flops per decade.

Not that it would remain a significant financial hub, were this aviation starvation-diet in force. Business travel would cease overnight – because who on earth would spend their precious triennial flight token on a dash to a conference hall overlooking the River Main?

In fact, all air travel would cease, because the airlines would be unable to remain profitable with such wan passenger numbers. The holiday industry would also collapse, without the customers to fill hotel rooms, leading to vast unemployment. And as for connections between the 96 C40 Cities in time for the next conference, forget it.

Of course, C40 Cities is not presenting this as fully formed policy, and certainly isn’t mooting flight rationing as some sort of enforced, authoritarian system. Even so, such pie-in-the-sky thinking does nobody any favours. The air industry does have a carbon problem, but, as the cause of 2.5 per cent of global emissions, it is also a smaller piece of a much bigger jigsaw. Greener fuels, better-designed planes, and yes, perhaps, some of us flying less, are some of the solutions to the pollution it produces. But effectively wishing out of existence something that makes the world go round is about as viable a brainwave as, well, live footage of gibbons playing doubles.

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i No ticket to ride: airlines are unlikely to correct a misspelling on a ticket at the airport due to strict rules regarding passenger watchlists

j If C40 gets its way, we’ll all be booking a fortnight in North Norfolk rather than jetting off to the Med