Just one idea concerning air pollution

Not to put too fine a point on it, the plan is unworkable. The same number of people will want to fly on the day you choose as a no fly day as any other. The same tonnage of freight will need to be shipped. The only effect whis will ahve is aircraft operators laying on more flights in the days before and after the no fly day. If anything it will create MORE emmissions than if the day had not happened. How do i figure? More cars than normal trying to get to the airports...traffic jams with engines ticking over. More aircraft trying to take off from the same runways with no more movement slots? Planes sitting on the taxiways burning up fuel yet going nowhere.

Aviation itself is only 3% of the worlds co2 emissions. Yes, that is too much, and I intend to spend my career as an aerospace engineer trying to reduce that, but compared to shipping it is tiny. Aircraft are the most fuel efficient way to travel on journeys over 250 miles or so. Bigger planes are more efficient than smaller ones. At the moment there are in the region of 16 flights per day between LAX and JFK. And that is for just one airline! If they halved the number of flights but put twice as big planes on the routes they'd be carrying the same number of people, and slashing the fuel burn by almost 25%! Additionally the airports would be less congested so less time will be spent by other aircraft queing for the runway with engines burning fuel or waiting in holding patterns to land with fuel furning, its all cumulative.

The environment is in peril, and there is so much we can do to save it without making our lives less convenient, though some sacrifices must and will be made. Less flights is a way of reducing our carbon footprints but there is much more. Here in the UK we have almost half of Europe's most powerful tidal flows, and relatively cheap turbine technology is being tested at one in Northern Ireland that should allow us to produce at least 25% of our national electricity. New "Intelligent kites" are being developed that will be floated into the jetstream and used to provide continuous electricity enough for most of the world. Any country under a jetstream is sitting on an enormous resource and we may soon be able to tap it for limitless power. In Spain there are new solar arrays in use, there is so much going on!

Hydrogen can be produced with electrolysis. If the electricity used to get it is green, the fuel is green. We can put it into cars and they ca travel as far as they would on petrol, yet not have a carbon footprint, and they wont suffer the drawbacks of battery powered electric cars. And on the horizon? Hydrogen powered airliners. Short haul only immediately, but thats totally green flight...

The solutions are right infront of us if we can only grasp the right ones.