While U.S. airlines have for the past few years, taken heat for adding miscellaneous charges on luggage, refreshments, and rescheduling, British airlines are adding changes that eco-minded travelers won't hesitate to pay.

During climate change discussions at the United Nations, world and environmental leaders are brainstorming solutions for funding environmental clean-up, conservation, and preservation. Among these talks, leaders acknowledged that funding for any solution is key to the success of that solution. With a world economy failing, where will this money come from?

Who else? The consumer. A proposal to add a charge to airline tickets will be the funding source for future climate change efforts. That money would be spent in second and third world countries, without access to money, brainpower and technology to grow sustainably.

Think of it as buying your flight's carbon offset at the time of airfare purchase.

According to an article by John Vidal, environmental editor of the Guardian, additional charges would "raise $10 billion a year" and the solution "has been proposed by the world's 50 least developed countries."The Guardian, June 7, 2009).

The proposal suggests that each developed country's charge would be relative to the size of its economy and population, and probably most notably and of greatest contribution, based on the amount of greenhouse gases the country emits.

Here is where real contributions to climate change can happen. While countries convert to green buildings and new energy grids fueled by alternatives, they can help to prevent a leading source of greenhouse gas emissions, transportation. In a way, funding climate change programs offset continuing contributions.

Additionally, many poor countries argue that they cannot afford to grow their economies without cheap, dirty energy like coal power. A solution like this can make growing sustainably more possible. Simultaneously, consumers who do not want to pay additional airfare can push for cleaner technologies adding momentum to the clean energy movement and decreasing global and country-wide fossil fuel consumption.

While agreement is needed and details need to be worked out, this solution is an interesting concept that has some wings. The solution requires big spenders, and thus emitters to pay for their environmental damage and it aids those that can not spend large and presumably emit less through air travel, with ways to prevent emissions from ever being part of that country's energy history. For developed countries, this solution is one amongst a portfolio of green strategies to reduce environmental destruction and mitigate climate change. For undeveloped countries, funding can bring new technologies, and a new working class to build and support a developing economy.

Cross country flight anyone?