| With nearly 60 million travelers in 2007, Roissy-CDG Airport is the second busiest airport in Europe, after Heathrow, but busier than third-ranked Frankfurt. It generates employment for 85,000 people working for 700 companies. On a global scale, air travel is responsible for only a relatively small proportion (3 percent) of the greenhouse gas emissions which cause global warming. But its share is growing quickly, at a rate of more than 5 percent per year. Airplanes produce 13 percent of CO2 emissions related to transportation activities. But their impact on climate change is probably two to four times greater than the amount of CO2 emissions would lead us to believe simply because the impact of emissions at high altitude is greater. Nitrogen oxide from jet engines generates the formation of ozone, another greenhouse gas, and contrails are believed to contribute to the greenhouse effect, too. Air travel is not very efficient, given that the carbon emissions from medium or long-haul flights per passenger/mile exceed those of a gas-burning car by 50 percent. Left out of the Kyoto Protocol, air travel enjoys the use of a tax-free fuel (kerosene) for international flights.
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