MOL fights back at "nutbag" environmentlists

Gotta hand it to him, he doesn’t mess around when getting his point across. Whats more, he’s right!

http://www.finfacts.com/irelandbusinessnews/publish/article_10008617.shtml

In regard to climate change, O’Leary criticised what he termed “middle class angst” about air travel’s contribution to global warming.

He attacked “environmental nutters” for “persecuting” the aviation industry by raising concerns about its effect on the planet.

In a response to his critics, he said: “There’s a lot of bull**** being peddled, mainly by a couple of environmental nutters, that aviation is the cause of global warming, climate change and everything else.

“Air transport isn’t. Every statistical record confirms air transport generates just 1.6 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions – that’s if you believe the Stern Report.

“If you believe EU environmental agency figures it’s 1.8 per cent. Either way it’s less than 2 per cent. So all of the middle class angst and worrying about flying and whether its going to damage the environment is all a load of bull****”

Ryanair has the sixth highest airline valuation in the world, and expects to overtake Lufthansa as the biggest carrier in Europe by the end of this year. O’Leary said that the figures show that air travel compares favourably with other polluters.

Ryanair had recently bought 167 new aircraft and was going to increase its passengers in Europe to over 50 million by March 2008 and double its traffic by 2012.

He said that the way to reduce the carbon footprint from flights was to push airlines to upgrade their planes to new models that create 50 less emissions per seat, 45 per cent lower fuel burn and 45 per cent less noise.

“We believe that governments can take sensible measures to reduce the impact on the environment of aviation, but that means actually targeting the polluters and rewarding the people who are environmentally friendly, such as Ryanair,” he said.

“What you should be doing is penalising the old gas guzzlers, the business class airlines flying around with low load factors and people encouraging connecting travel, which requires people to take two flights to get to their destination instead of one.”

Referring to EU statistics, claimed that marine travel was a bigger CO2 polluter than aviation, yet didn’t attract any of the controversy.

“I have yet to see articles all over the press that we should do something about the ships and the ferries – not a peep out of them. For some reason it’s always the airlines and aviation that seem to be the target for these nutbags,” he said.

“It’s time we had a more sensible debate, preferably illuminated with some facts on the matter. Aviation is not the cause of climate change, nor is it the solution to climate change – it hasn’t been for many years and isn’t now.”