Spreading their wings ... but can the increase in air travel go on? Photograph: Carl de Souza/AFP/Getty

Jeff Gazzard, of the Aviation Environment Federation, reacts to today's report on emission targets by Oxford University, demanding the immediate introduction of a 'congestion charge of the skies'

Oxford University's Environmental Change Institute today joined the chorus of climate scientists, government advisers, opposition politicians and environmental groups calling on the government to act to restrain air travel.

The institute's comprehensive new report, Predict and Decide, shows how the plans for airport expansion set out in the 2003 aviation white paper are fundamentally incompatible with the government's stated targets on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The government's proposed solution, emissions trading, is too uncertain and too far in the future, the report says, and urgent action is needed to tackle climate change in the meantime.

To be fair, the overview of environmental impacts that accompanied the white paper did admit the problem. In fact, it proved difficult to track down an impact predicted to go down. Not only were climate-changing aircraft emissions at altitude expected to rise - so were noise around airports, local air quality, habitat losses, demolitions of listed buildings, numbers of car-dependent passengers and staff, and severe community disruptions and displacements caused by new runway construction. But there was also the reassuring news that carbon monoxide emissions would be appreciably less, due to better aircraft engine technology. So that's OK then.

Lest any reader thinks all this is just the usual environmentalist bitterness at losing heavily yet again to an industry with a symbiotic relationship with its client ministry, the Department for Transport, here's how the white paper was greeted by the government's own environment protection advisory body, the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution.

In a December 2003 press release, Sir Tom Blundell, RCEP chairman, explained: "The Royal Commission is not opposed to cheap air travel, and has no intention of suggesting that people should not have affordable access to their holiday destinations.

However, the levels of growth predicted in the aviation white paper are simply not environmentally sustainable, and the government needs now to start moderating demand, both by increasing the cost of air transport to a fair and equitable level, and by encouraging affordable and environmentally more benign forms of transport."

This is strong stuff - and has been echoed in similar terms by the Environment Agency, the Sustainable Development Commission, and the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee, both at the time and since.

So what happened next? Precisely nothing. The government airily waved off its critics - whether sandal-wearing or suited, community-based or with access to the corridors of power - with the oft-heard "it's the economy, stupid" mantra.

But this year the government has promised to review the aviation white paper, so now might well be the right time to re-open the debate. Road transport policy is heading in the direction of congestion-charging with the government's blessing. If you want to drive into central London tomorrow, it will cost you £8. This is demand-management. So instead of hoping that a rather large and quite noticeable increase in plane-related pollution might go away, why not look at a fair, reasonable and easy-to-introduce "congestion charge of the skies"?

The sums were done by the think tank Infras. The mechanism would be a distance-related variant of the current air passenger duty. A sum of 3.6 pence per km would be added to the cost of an airline ticket, raising the price of a low-cost flight from Luton to Barcelona, of approximately 1,000 kilometres, by about £36. Travellers heading to Australia can do their own sums.

Now this would surely have an impact on demand - which, frankly, is the only realistic way to reduce air transport's negative environmental impacts. Instead of annual air transport growth of 3%-4%, the introduction of equitable environmental economics to a sector that pays zero tax on its fuel would see growth cut by half, to just 1%-2% in the future.

We know there is some good news, as better aircraft technology and air traffic management systems will make flying less damaging by about the same figure: 1%-2% each year. So our demand-management policy proposal would see growth balanced out by technology gains - as well as removing the need for new runways. This is a fair solution which allows limited growth within strict environmental targets.

Sadly, it won't make air transport environmentally benign, or even sustainable, but at least it would reduce the industry's out-of-control carbon footprint by a size or two. And alongside a substantial "is your journey really necessary?" public information campaign, aimed at both business and leisure flyers, it could help to make people really think about flying less; even a bit less would be helpful.

But is anybody listening? Let's hope the one-every-90-seconds queue of planes landing at Heathrow via Westminster are in super-quiet mode today.

• Jeff Gazzard is a board member of the Aviation Environment Federation.