Chartres Pledges Flight-Free Year

The Bishop of London has agreed to go one full year without flying to prove the point he made last year when he suggested that flying to go on holiday was sinful.

|PIC1|The Rt Rev Richard Chartres, one of the Church of England's leading spokesmen on environmental issues, said he would not fly to meetings nor, since he took family breaks in Devon, to go on holidays by plane, The Guardian reports.

Bishop Chartres told the newspaper: "This is not just ... climbing on the bandwagon. It has been a major theme of mine ... I have been trying to look critically at my carbon footprint. We all have to live responsibly. I can see myself spending a lot of time on drafty railway platforms."

God is Green, a Channel 4 documentary that will air next Monday, will show the film-maker Mark Dowd persuading Bishop Chartres to sign a pledge not to travel by air. In a move that is already causing his staff problems rearranging his travel schedule, Bishop Chartres chooses the "gold standard" of no flights at all.

In the show, Mr Dowd, who trained to be a priest, confronts religious members, including an American evangelical who regards as compelling the biblical injunction to be stewards of the earth. Mr Dowd also discomforts the Catholic Church's spokesman on the environment, who says the Vatican causes no carbon emissions because it does not have an airline.

Last July Bishop Chartres was criticised when he claimed the "selfish" choices of flying on holiday and having a large car were "a symptom of sin".