17 July

We don't often think about the gigantic amount of fuel our passion for flying and travel uses. The larger planes, like the 747 or A-380, carry over 300,000 litres of fuel. So when you take one of these and fly to London and back, for example, that's close to 400,000 litres of fuel. That's about 300 TONNES of fuel. Yes, tonnes. There's an argument that efficient jet airliners average to about 2-3 litres per 100km, per passenger. That sounds good, but many modern cars do better than that on highways, and buses do better again. And when you add the enormous extra distance people travel in planes, it's nearly a tonne of fuel *per passenger* for a London round-trip. One tonne of fuel, that's what it takes to get you, as an individual, there and back. Calculating the fuel use to a per-passenger-per-kilometre basis is dodgy maths. It's like saying you're not an alcoholic if you only have a drink every hour, but then drink 24 hours per day, 7 days a week. There are over 100,000 flights per day around the world now, the volume of fuel used is between 500-600 million litres PER DAY. Which translates to nearly 500,000 tonnes of fuel used, per day. Half a million TONNES of fuel, per DAY.