Thank you to Dave Jones for raising the important question of how we manage a reduction in flight numbers in a way that's fair to everyone and doesn't force hardworking families to give up their foreign holidays or businesses to abandon travel to overseas meetings that can't be conducted by video-conferencing (Letters, May 5).

He is absolutely right that cheaper train travel must be part of the answer. He also raises the idea of rationing international flights.

Personally, I think that will be hard to deliver in an equitable way.

Some people need or want to travel abroad more than others and are prepared to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions produced in other areas of their life to compensate, while others will be happy to cut international flights from their plans entirely.

The Green Party believes a fairer way of handling the need to cut our collective greenhouse gas emissions isn't to ration flights, but to grant everyone an "emissions allowance" (which would decrease over time), which they can chose to "use up' on international flights, car travel, eating punnets of imported strawberries in December or whatever else they fancy.

Making these allowances tradeable would give everyone flexibility to adopt or maintain lifestyles that produced higher than average greenhouse gas emissions but they'd have to pay someone who didn't want to for the privilege.

A number of non-governmental organisations, most recently Help the Aged, have endorsed this approach.

  • Caroline Lucas, Green MEP for South East England and prospective parliamentary candidate for Brighton Pavilion