HeadDesk

[andrewducker]

From here:

Tony Blair says it is unrealistic to think the tax system can be used to reduce air travel in the UK. The prime minister said it would take a "fairly hefty whack" for people to
cut back on flights in the UK and abroad.

He told the Commons liaison committee that it would be hard to sell, and said he would not be keen on such a move.

Instead, he said, the best way to tackle climate change was to invest in more environmentally friendly aircraft and to invest in other new technology.

Because the government isn't here _precisely_ to look at the big picture in a way that we can't individually do and push us to do the things that actually we ought to be doing.

I can't see how it can possibly be that much harder a sell than the Iraq War, when he didn't exactly have a majority behind him a lot of the time.  If he's willing to do the right thing there, why not here?

Comments

[heron61.livejournal.com]

A commercial airliner uses as much fuel and produces as many greenhouse gasses as if every passenger on a full plane drove to their destination alone in a mid-sized sedan. That's horridly wasteful. I'm absolutely certain that more efficient planes are possible (if nothing else, using turboprops would make a significant difference over jets, although this would also somewhat reduce speeds). I also think that every government should provide strong tax incentives for developing and constructing more-efficient planes, as well as instituting substantially higher taxes on current planes. However, such planes don't exist yet and until they do, finding ways to reduce air travel is an excellent idea. If nothing else, short-term air travel is both common (at least in the US, I don't know about Britain) and could be easily replaced by train travel (often with little or no increase in travel time).

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

as soon as you find a way to drive a car across the ocean

It's called a ship. Or a tunnel. Until we can get aeroplanes running on biofuels, or much more efficient, or something, people might just have to travel by a slower means.

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

viz here for biofuel in aircraft (not jets yet)

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

Ah, someone's removed the comment this was in reply to. Huh.

Oi

[wordofblake.livejournal.com]

some of us are already paying more in tax than the cost of the flight! I rely on the plane to get me home when I need to, the last thing I need is for the Air Tax to go up. How exactly is this the right thing?

It's not as if I fly instead of taking a reasonable alternative, when you dont have a car (which is something congestion charges are supposed to discourage and therefore not having a car is presumably good for the UK) getting the boat to Ireland is not viable

Re: Oi

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

Would it be viable in a world that had a cheap, fast, rail link at both ends?

Re: Oi

[wordofblake.livejournal.com]

more or less. The air trip takes roughly 30-45 minutes. The boat alone is 90-180 minutes, so I'd still lose a day either side if I had to take the boat, but it would be possible at least and if it was alot cheaper then probably worth it

[chillies.livejournal.com]

Actually the passenger air industry has already made their planes more economical in the last decades. The depressing part is that for every advance they make, the price of air fares drops so people fly more and further. The outcome is that the number of passenger miles multplied by pollutants per passenger mile increases. As does the profit for the airlines; a great return on investment for making the planes more economical. Pfah!

[i-ate-my-crusts.livejournal.com]

Because the government isn't here _precisely_ to look at the big picture in a way that we can't individually do and push us to do the things that actually we ought to be doing.

I agree with Tony Blair here, and I agree with you. You're right: It is the job of government to look at the big picture and push us to do the things we ought to be doing. (I'm leaving WELL alone the issue I have with the word "ought")

And Tony appears to have looked at the big picture, and analysed what will work, and has decided that environmentally friendly aircraft will be more successful than trying to price people out of travelling by plane. Although I really, really hate the idea that taxing people won't work, and that people won't lessen their air travel or even recognise the amount of damage it does to the environment, I think he's right that taxing it just wouldn't work, and would instead make a lot of people very angry.

To assess just how much it wouldn't work, look at me. How big would the tax need to be before I would fly to visit Geneva, for example? I'm well aware of the damage caused by plane travel, and it's by far the most environmentally unsound thing I do, and I try to ameliorate the damage by committing money to projects which support and develop sustainable energy, but I still feel really guilty. I'm the ideal person to try and encourage to reduce plane use, because I try to do it anyway...

...and yet I'm currently paying about $400 tax on a $1400 flight each time I travel to the UK. that's about 20% tax, and it doesn't deter me. It wouldn't deter me if it rose to 40% or 45%, honestly. I would still do it as frequently as my budget allows.

Now, taxing to a phenomenally high level would decrease how many trips per year I would take, but ... I'd be more likely to trim the domestic flights in favour of the international, and it would maybe reduce me by 1 trip per year, which is significant, but not significant enough when considered on a global scale, and especially if the UK is the only country that introduces such taxes.

And most travel, I'm sure, is done by commercial rather than consumer travellers, who can factor in and cover those tax increases, and get rebates.

Tony's right, and you're right. Ideally, both encouraging reduced airplane use and increasing investment in less harmful technology sounds like a good combination, but if I had to bet, I'd take the exact same bet that Tony has.

And it's a harder sell than the Iraq war because everyone either travels by plane, or dreams of being able to do it. The Iraq war was about principles, rather than personal goals. Get in the way of personal goals, and particularly *entitlement* mentality, and you'll get whipped at election time.

[andrewducker]

How would you feel about an 'environment tax' that went towards paying for enough trees to be planted to soak up the CO2 you'd produced?

[i-ate-my-crusts.livejournal.com]

I pay one voluntarily now.

:)

Which ought to tell you how I feel about it*. As I say, combination seems like the way to go, for me -- use the taxes to pay for environmental projects, and give tax breaks to business researching environmentally friendly aircraft, etc. Multi-pronged approach. I'm also a weirdo who has no problem in general with paying more taxes for services and infrastructure.

*As a biologist, I know that trees really aren't the most effective way to soak up CO2, except during their initial stages of growth and I'd rather see a diversity of initiatives aimed at reducing greenhouse gases through a variety of means.

[0olong.livejournal.com]

Quite apart from the clearly-insane worldwide tax exemption for air fuel, a big, big reason people are flying so much is because the rail system absolutely went to shit about a decade or so back, and the present government hasn't had the wherewithal or the guts to do half of what's necessary to de-shittify it... possibly because Blair is so ideologically committed to the idea that privatisation is A Good Thing? It's hard to be sure.

Anyway... some things have at least improved; to my surprise, I've managed to get £12.50 tickets between Edinburgh and London on the train three times in the last couple of months. In the past, I felt like crap for flying between the cities - it's not like I even like flying - but just have not been able to afford any alternative, even though I'm only travelling down to see my family a couple of times or so per year.

It's still a crazy lottery every time to get non-extortionate train tickets to go anywhere, though.

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

We need low-cost no-frills train lines. EasyRail, anyone?

[andrewducker]

The current train lines have frills???

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

Good point. Maybe they could charge a premium for grizzling toddlers instead.

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

Megatrain (http://www.megatrain.com/):Megabus (http://www.megabus.com/) :: National Rail (http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/):National Express (http://www.nationalexpress.com/) .

I have a suspicion that we are due for a resurgence in medium- and long- distance bus and coach travel, especially as individual road and rail travel become more expensive; Megabus represents a logical first step in the resurgence as a single operator takes on the incumbent on the most obvious and profitable routes. I've taken Megabus once and it was actually perfectly OK, oddly enough.

With this in mind, Stelios does operate easyBus (http://www.easybus.co.uk/) on a couple of London-based routes already. It might well be that easyBus:2004 :: easyJet:1996 and there are similar progressions over the years, but I'll believe it when I see it.

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

reducing air travel and global warming

[nbrown2.livejournal.com]

I agree that if governments tried to sell reducing air travel the way they sold the War in Iraq, that it would probably help a lot to help prevent global warming from getting worse!

However, the chances of that happening seem about as likely as going back in time and avoiding the War in Iraq in the first place.

Nathan Brown
Four Easy Ways to Prevent Global Warming (http://www.acoolerclimate.com/Articles/HowToPreventGlobalWarming.html)