ENVIRONMENTALIST and politician Caroline Lucas has admitted she still takes long-haul flights.

The Green party parliamentary candidate said she “occasionally” flies to visit family living abroad.

Quizzed

Ms Lucas, who is standing for Brighton Pavilion, appeared on The Andrew Marr Show yesterday morning and was quizzed about when she last took a flight.

Mr Marr said: “Apart from people who want to vote Green, a lot of people are asking themselves what can I do to live greener and more environmentally friendly.

“People are giving up meat and they are thinking about their travel plans and their lifestyles.

“Can I ask you, when was the last time you flew?”

Ms Lucas answered: “My son lives in the United States and so I do fly.

“Not often but occasionally, I do.

“We all try to make the changes that we can, but I think that sometimes a focus on individual behaviour, important though that is, lets the big fossil fuels companies off the hook and it lets those in power off the hook because what we need here is a systems change.

“It is incredibly easy to pit one person’s behaviour against another person’s behaviour and say ‘you’re not good enough’.

“We are all trying to do our best in a deeply imperfect system and so what we need to be doing, I think, is to be focusing on changing that system.

“Why, for example, is it so much more expensive to take the train from the UK to other parts of Europe than it is to fly?

“There is no reason for that.

“It is because we have chosen not to tax aviation fuel and VAT on aviation, and instead we do when it comes to railways.

“So let’s change those price signals to make it easier for people to do the right thing rather than sitting in judgement on each other.”

Emissions

Caroline Lucas has been the Brighton Pavilion MP since the General Election in 2010, becoming the only Green party MP in the UK.

She was also the Green Party leader between 2008 and 2012.

The party has been vocal in its target of the UK achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2030 and “seeking to reduce the emissions embedded in its imports to zero as soon as possible”.

But an economy-class return flight from London to New York emits an estimated 0.67 tonnes of CO2 per passenger, according to the calculator from the United Nations’ civil aviation body, the International Civil Aviation Organisation.

Ms Lucas’s comments comes just months after the Duke and Duchess of Sussex came under fire for their use of aeroplanes as a mode of transport.

Prince Harry and Meghan, along with their baby son Archie, flew to stay

at Elton John’s French villa shortly after they had returned from a holiday in Ibiza.

The couple were criticised for flying in private planes on both occasions – using far more emissions per

person than a commercial flight.

The pair were accused of “hypocrisy” having both been heavily involved in campaigns to tackle climate change.