The creators of the Lonely Planet and Rough Guides have confessed to a late access of guilt over having sold so many books over the decades encouraging people to travel. It turns out that all the travelling has poisoned the lonely planet, and they urge us now, instead of signing up for an impulsive few days in a packed Prague, or a fortnight on some sun-kissed, poverty-stricken island, to stay put. Or at least reconsider the benefits of a Network Rail away-break to the Welsh valleys. Peacehaven, which is just up the road from me in Sussex, looks tempting. There's a rattling gale off the Channel just at the minute, but there's plenty of free parking, and anyway, do you want package-tour comforts or do you want reality?

It isn't just selfish holidaymakers who've wrecked the environment of course. There's all that unnecessary business and diplomatic travel too. You do have to wonder why Condi Rice needs to be conducted personally around the cultural entrepot of Blackburn by Jack Straw, when she must surely be able to get the general idea from an online satellite camera somewhere. I myself must have assisted in wiping out a fair few species through undertaking press trips on a virtually monthly basis in the early stages of my career. What was the point of another five-day jaunt round the Languedoc? And the company was mostly Sartrean in its hellishness anyway. It's mostly leisure travel, though, that eats up all the aviation fuel, and carelessly belches its combustion all over the globe.

What should make it really easy not to go anywhere, however, is the thought of never having to get on a plane again. I've become a nervous flyer over the years, not in the sense of having a pussy-assed panic attack at the thought of being so high up with nothing holding you up omiGOD!, but at the hideous treatment doled out to you throughout - from arrival at the mile-long, slowly shuffling check-in queue to the moment of your disgorgement on foreign soil and the start of that long, long wait for your battered baggage to be restored to you. No airline in the world is fit to travel on in Economy Class, owing to the lack of room, the lack of air, the lack of anything worth doing, and the appalling knowledge that, elsewhere on the craft, people are being treated to a seat for each buttock, cashew nuts that have been personally warmed by the captain, and as much Dom Perignon as they can just about hold down before you all enter that all-important period of turbulence.

The era of 99p flights did not bring air travel within the ambit of ordinary people. It was there already. What it did was make flying somewhere seem less of an adventure, and more like something you'd do on a silly little weekend whim. This is a double deception. Firstly, it encouraged everyone to forget about air pollution, environmental despoliation and the insanity of the global oil market. But secondly, it made us all blind to the privations involved in the worst method of transport ever invented.

Wherever you are, stretch out. Walk about. Put your own music on, instead of having to listen to an all-star Beatles tribute. Watch a cool DVD, instead of some crappy thriller with Bruce Willis in it. Open a 75cl bottle of wine, instead of having to fumble in your pocket while seated for a fistful of euros for a three-mouthful mini-bottle served warm from a trolley by a supercilious gay android who already thinks you ought to be restrained. Smile. You're not on a plane.

But then, hey, neither are those poor saps sitting at Heathrow, waiting for further news on the delayed 04.50 Zoo Airlines flight to Magaluf.