Tree-Felling Tree-Huggers

"Breathe in. Breathe out. In that time, an area of rainforest the size of five football pitches has been lost forever."

So a piece of literature that I received in the post from the RSPB informs me. "Every minute we destroy 25 hectares of the world's forests," it continues. This set me thinking about how misguided the anti-aviation environmental campaigners are. For, in the next 24 hours, deforestation will release as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as 8,000,000 people flying from London to New York. Or, in the words of Sir Nicholas Stern, deforestation in the next four years alone will pump more CO2 into the atmosphere than every flight in the history of aviation to at least 2025!

So, while deforestation accounts for up to 25% of global emissions of heat-trapping gases (and paper makes up 35% of all the rubbish we throw away) and transport, industry and agriculture each account for 14%, aviation contributes at most just 3% of the total. Yet, the Kyoto Protocol didn't even mention, let alone attempt to tackle, this far greater issue.

Perversely, as a result of the efforts of the global warming fanatics and so-called carbon markets, countries are actually being encouraged to destroy the world's forests — take, for instance, the recent deal between China and the Philippines that could ultimately see 8.8 million hectares of "idle alienable and disposable lands and forest lands" developed for agribusiness and biofuel production to feed China's voracious appetite for fuel, threatening the Philippines' own food security.

When are we going to begin getting a proper sense of perspective on these matters?