Blue sky thinking...

I scribbled a short piece in the Observer this weekend, a sort of special edition of the regular column of yore, to celebrate my getting airborne again in the airship last week (the spectacular pictures of which you can see here). The article as always is here on the Observer website, but I've also cut and pasted the text below for those of you who are too lazy-assed to click through!

It's been a good few weeks for freelance work too with another interview I did with the heroic Mark from www.seat61.com whilst we travelled in style to Brussels and back courtesy of Eurostar (with Mark sitting in the famous seat number that gave the website it's name). You can find out more about the man and story behind what is undoubtedly the world's best independent rail advice service by reading my full article on the Green Futures website here.

The Slow Traveller, Observer 20.7.08

He went around the world without flying, but thanks to a new airship, last week Ed Gillespie finally got airborne

The gondola rolled gently to one side in a lethargic motion and I swayed uncertainly along with it. No, I wasn't gliding along a Venetian canal, instead I was floating lazily up into a cloudless sky above an Essex airfield. My craft was a bloated blimp captained by the charmingly excitable and exceedingly posh Katharine 'chocks away!' Bord - the world's only female airship pilot.

After returning a few months ago from our global circumnavigation without flying, it was a strange experience for me to be airborne again, in what felt like a posh minibus (it had leather seats) slung beneath the belly of a vast aerial whale. It had been more than two years since I had been on a plane for work - for a five-week climate change assignment in China - and almost six years since my last holiday flight. But the sedate, serene and indeed graceful way in which our balloon rose into the air was a far cry from the rumble, roar and G-force-inducing thrust of your average climate-stewing jet.

'I hog the airship,' trilled Katharine, explaining with genuine passion her affection for the vessel and her reluctance to cede control to her co-pilot. Was it a lucrative occupation, I enquired, as she waxed lyrical about the joy of being paid to 'float around the world', her energetic and enthusiastic delivery in stark contrast to the apparently lackadaisical movement of the balloony beast we were travelling in. 'Well, it keeps me in boots and handbags,' she said.

Similar tourist airships are being launched in several cities around the world, and as London lolled beneath us in the hot July sunshine I pondered the potential of airships to play a genuine transport role in a carbon-constrained future, perhaps offering an alternative to fuel-hungry aviation. Tomorrow's passengers would surely relish the sightseeing potential of airship travel - and it would be a damn sight faster than any cargo ship.

Sadly, my research tells me, in the short term this is not to be. While breathtakingly spectacular, this glorified sightseeing trip over the capital was, frankly, pretty pricey. Like it or not, airships are also still at the mercy of the elements, making their use on regular point-to-point journeys too unreliable to make business sense. It would be a perverse irony indeed if the return of this low-carbon form of flying were to be ultimately scuppered by the very increase in climate turbulence it might do so much to alleviate.

Star Over London's sightseeing flights run until 21 August; trips cost £185 for around 30 minutes (020 7183 3911; www.staroverlondon.com).

Airborne again!

Yesterday I went up in the airship and rolled in the thermally turbulent skies over London at a mere 1000feet. It was awesome and I'll write more about the jaunt later...in the meantime here's some photos to whet the appetite! Just call me Ed Zeppelin!

350 Green Fingers...

Couple of bits of great video activism caught my eye this week. Firstly the fantastic 'Because the world needs to know' international animation from www.350.org, the campaign that is seeking to raise global awareness of 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is THE safe limit and what we should be aiming for (not a messy fudgey compromise that means we probably end up frying half the planet anyway). It's elegant and rather sleek and works fantastically around the world through some deft, visual language. Top work!

The second is a cool piece of viral engagement - The Green Finger project. Paint your finger green, write on your palm what YOU'D like to save from climate change and join in the fun...you can see Futerra's own efforts below:

Third runway nonsense...

As the debate over Heathrow's proposed third runway heats up, with the airlines and the British Airports Authority (BAA) plaintively claiming that the UK economy will implode without it and we'll all be forced to return to a crude hunter-gatherer existence, grubbing out a living amongst the ashes of despair...(well, I paraphrase but its not far from their claims of doom and disaster)...an interesting and viable alternative was mooted this week. The good old train.

In a written Parliamentary answer posed by the liberal question machine-gun that is Norman Baker MP, Transport Minister Jim Fitzpatrick was forced to reveal that 2.5 million transfer passengers at Heathrow arrived on flights from within the UK! So what's the beef?

Well, the pro runway crew argue that the third stretch of tarmac is essential to create new slots in Heathrow's crammed schedules. The counter-point is that most of these intra-UK journeys could be made by high-speed rail, freeing up existing valuable space at Heathrow for long haul flights, and the argument therefore goes that this is where we should be investing public money.

The real agenda at play here is revealed in a quote from British Airways Chief Exec (and the man largely responsible for the hilarity of the Terminal 5 debacle) Willie Walsh who warned that backing high-speed rail at the expense of a third runway would be a mistake as 'there are very few destinations where a rail alternative is feasible from London for passengers wanting to travel and return the same day'. So much for slower travel eh Willie? We must continue the trend for ever more cross-country twanging and the climate be damned.