The plane facts

One of the ugliest environmental truths about our modern life, perhaps worse than nuclear waste or even landfills or flotsam of plastic that covers square miles of ocean, perhaps worse than plastic leaching toxics into your bottled water...your next airplane flight. Spewing all that pollution straight into the upper atmosphere.

Nature Reports' website has editorial calling for some serous attention to airplane-originated pollution. You can bet planes aren't going to be limited,they're used by the rich and powerful. And as long as business expenses are tax deductions in the U.S. you can bet that Americans businesses will continue to fly employees all over the planet, pollution be damned. And it's academics and other jet-setters who fly a lot. I have a son who's an archaeologist. He's got a second set of inserted pages into his passport to cover all his international travel, all by airplane. That's ten of thousands of air miles. That's more CO2 than I want to think about.

Worse even than coal-burning plants in China, airplane travel is the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions, says Nature Reports.

Nuclear-powered planes kn our future? Nobody seems to be paying attention to air travel and its inherent pollution. Time for a green tech start-up and tech break-through. "Beam me over, Scotty."