±«Óătv

Fuel tax on international flights is currently prohibited under international treaties on civil aviation, so that is why it hasn't happened so far. Perhaps some international lawer could comment on whether an emissions tax (CO2 emissions are after all the problem) could be introduced without infringing this.

However, couldn't we also consider putting the tax on take-off slots instead, then auctioning them off to the highest bidding airline? It seems to me this would have the biggest impact on the cost of short haul flights, for which there are alternatives (albeit sometimes expensive). In a recent historical context, fuel prices have climbed a lot recently, and yet this hasn't acted as much of a dis-incentive to air travel growth so far. Similar to petrol prices for cars, it seems that the demand is there to accomodate a very heavy fuel tax burden before it significantly affects peoples' decision on whether to travel. Perhaps G Brown had the right idea with air passenger duty, but just needs the courage to increase it by a factor of 10 or more ... if its really about climate change, it has to be high enough to reduce consumption, otherwise it IS just another revenue raising stealth tax...

This might - or might not - be an interesting point on the tax argument. I'm sure I read somewhere that if we did tax aviation fuel at similar levels to petrol (or indeed, at all), then the airlines would simply fill their planes up in other countries, where the tax didn't apply.

These arguments about using taxation to control consumption are making me insane. Can you imagine the furore if we decided to limit medical care by ability to pay? access to heating fuel, holidays, travel and transport are exactly the same.
How about FAIR alternative. Three simple pieces of legislation. One mandating that car and aircraft engines become X% more efficient within 5 years. Two mandating that all fossil fuel power stations are replaced by Nuclear and Tidal within 15 years. Three mandating super efficient insulation and heat exchange technology on all housing and commercial development within 5 years.
Now in a stroke I just had the UK meet and exceed all it's climate commitments now and in the future. Would Evan Davis like to comment on that or perhaps discuss whether the agenda is something else alltogether?

Evan says "But there is a big difference between higher taxes, and fewer landing slots. If it's a tax, it's the government which keeps the money. While if runway slots are constrained, the airlines who have runway slots win, because they keep the extra fares they can charge."

This wouldn't be the case if the government auctioned the landing slots.

Also Evan doesn't mention the main argument for tradable emissions rights. A well designed scheme should treat all global warming gasses (not just CO2) equally - that is according to how much warming they cause. This is very difficult of course, but doing this allows decisions about which gasses to produce less of and when and where to make the reductions to be made via a market process. This would result in a less disruptive and less costly transition. Rationing landing slots means deciding by government fiat that air travel will be reduced. It is not obvious that this is the best thing to do, and it removes any incentive for the airlines to look into less polluting alternatives.

The practical issue here is that airlines can refuel across geographic borders. So if the UK were to introduce higher duty it would put UK based airlines at a disadvantage or indeed create greater c02 emmissions as carriers diverted empty planes to refuel in lower duty contries.

Tax and VAT are local taxes; whereas flight is international. Planes would simply fill up elsewhere if the taxes were only applied locally, or worse, the UK would be bypassed as the cost of flying to it would be prohibitive.

International agreement is required.

And what about shipping too?

I don't see how traveling to Spain for a spot of shopping for a few hours is 'nuts' - thats just a point of view. If you actually compare pollution figures per mile per head the air industry does not pollute that much more than a family car does.

We're in danger of becoming hysterical to the point of insanity about anything that has the word "green" slapped next to it - a bit of restraint is required.

I suspect that the way to control emissions for the air industry is to cap capacity, not tax the end user. This seems to make the most sense not only from a passenger numbers and flights point of view, but also from the amount of land that needs to be allocated to the air industry.

Unless you push for pan-european tax harmonisation (political suicide in this day and age) what is to stop your Ryan Air's and EasyJet's fueling their planes overseas? This would, of course, lead to aircraft flying around carrying more fuel than necessary and raising emmissions accordingly. For this reason alone, I cannot see any point in compelling airlines to pay a tax on fuel.

If we taxed fuel surely the airlines would look to buy their fuel from countries that didn't apply taxes or lower taxes than ours.

Maybe the best solution is to apply a special tax on the slots at airports for existing carriers that is used in the development of fuels to stop planes polluting. There is too much focus on the stop flying argument when we should be looking to better technology.

The low cost carriers have shown there is demand for flights and regardless of the price people will still want to fly. There is much more emigration now and thus people want to see family and friends that is what is driving demand.

As I see it, people nowadays try to book more than 2 months in advance the flight tickets, so it will be those who are late the ones to pay the most expensive fares.
By increasing Tax on fuel, there will be not cheap tickets, and the starting point will be already on a high (those with lowest income will be affected the most).
Still, I support the idea of increasing the taxes as long as the resources are directed to combat deforestation, or other ecological issues.

Extending Evan's point ... why should pollution from airliners only be charged at the same rate as from cars? If what came out of an aircraft was as clean as modern car exhaust that would be one thing, but the stuff that comes out is actually much more harmful, both to humans and to the environment as a whole.

As for Stansted, the expansion is predicated on a model which takes the growth in air travel over the last ten years (the years which saw the advent of budget airlines) and extrapolates that forwards, thus predicting a need for x amount of additional runway capacity. If this growth doesn't happen - perhaps because the relative cheapness of air travel comes to an end - then the extra runway won't be needed anyway.

Of course, the clever move from the airlines was getting emissions from *international* flights exempted from Kyoto quotas. The science doesn't justify this at all, it was just a clever bit of politics. If a future agreement were to include international flights then the game changes again - and more people will be holidaying in Norfolk as my family do (highly recommended).

The problem with attempting to discourage air travel instead of limiting airports is that we then have a situation like at the moment over Stansted. BAA want to add an extra runway as well as lift the limits on capacity, which begs the question - if this runway was built, and then passenger numbers decrease because of other discouragements, what was the point of building it? We have to limit airports rather than discourage air travel, simply because runway decisions are close at hand, whereas taxes could be years away.

What is needed is to stop airport expansion now, gradually increase taxes at a similar rate to the increased profits caused by lack of supply.

This money could then be pumped into building high-speed trains (like the rest of Europe), so that people can travel quicker by train than they could by plane.

Problem solved. (maybe)

Tax on fuel should be at least European wide, ideally global to cover the points raised about planes refuelling in other contries. That said, long haul flights would always have to refuel in the UK as they would not have enough for the round trip and passengers would pay more to avoid a stop-over.

As for the comment that, per mile, aviation is no worse than other transport, that may be true (Or may not, I am not sure) but what is certainly true is that the average journey made by plane is many more miles than the average journey made by car. One trip for dinner in SPain may be the equivalent of one's annual mileage in a car.

Aviation is still something less than 10% of carbon emmissions, but it is growing fast and the damage is does is greater because of emmssions being at 35,000 feet. Their should be tax on fuel to make flying more expensive and thus less popular.

That's it, tax the poor out of flying so only the wealthy can afford to fly. Problem solved. In the words of ±«Óătvr J. Simpson, in case you can't tell, I'm being sarcastic!

I'm not sure that (to use the figures from the example)an extra ÂŁ25 per flight wouild put people off flying. Cost wise paying ÂŁ150 instead of ÂŁ100 for return trip to Paris for the weekend is still a good deal and the increased fare could be easily recoverd by staying in a slightly cheaper hotel or taking advantage of cheaper shopping at the destination. To stop people taking fligts the govt would have to make the cost realy prohibitive with tax rates of 400 or 500% to turn a ÂŁ50 fare in to a ÂŁ300 fare. I don't think the current tax on motor fuel stops car driving. I wouldn't drive any more if the tax at the pumps was halved or any less is the tax was doubled. Tax rates will only slightly reduce flights and so have marginal climate impact. If the govt wants to prevent climate change then it would need to ration flights (eg give every one a coupon for 1 rtn flight per year) but I doubt it really wants to do that!

Nice crisp analysis as usual Evan, but you miss one key point in your 'tax vs. limit supply' discussion. Yes, with the tax imposition model the government gets to keep the tax AND can hypothecate it to reducing similar externalities. So a minister could, in theory, use the tax revenue from increased air fuel duty to fund 'offsetting' projects like tree planting schemes.

The problem is that life is not quite that simple, and neither is economics. For example, suppose your additional ÂŁ25 tax per passenger on air fuel duty were hypothecated to tree planting. A government could come to rely on that element for a long-run environmental improvements programme of tree planting, only to find that total revenues fall as fewer of us fly when air fuel duty additions feed through to ticket prices. Tax receipts from the duty would fall, meaning that fewer trees could be planted.

Tax doesn't just change behaviour, the changes in behaviour THEMSELVES affect the certainty with which governments can plan longer term investements. Indeed, the problem with environmental taxes is that they can probably ONLY be used successfully to change behaviour, not to provide long term and sustained additions to tax revenue to fund programmes, however worthy.

The current government seems to see it differently. It believes that the benefits of tax raising environmental interventions are that they change behaviour AND raise tax revenue. I wouldn't bank on that being a wise position in the medium or long term.

If slots are scarce, ticket prices will go up, but airlines will use the additional revenue to bid up the prices of slots (licensed by the government?).

Hence slot restrictions / fuel taxing may have the SAME cash effect i.e. more money to the government.

But one difference that you don't mention: scarce slots = fewer flights & lower emmissions?

Actually if aviation is brought in to the emissions trading scheme (ETS) then it is likely that new airlines would be entitled to a 'free allowance' just as existing airlines are. The difference is that for existing airlines the allowance is calculated from historical emissions, whereas for new airlines the allowance would be based upon benchmarks (i.e. standard emissions for the particular aircraft type). This is how it works for industries already in the ETS.

The advantage of emissions trading over taxation is that whereas there is no guarantee that the government will spend the collected tax on measures for reducing future emissions, under the ETS there is a direct financial incentive for operators to invest in low emission technologies (as they will then avoid having to purchase extra allowances, or even be able to sell their surplus).

Two points:

"If fuel was taxed in GB then the airlines would just fill up elsewhere". No, carrying that much fuel around would be prohibitively expensive, and would take up capacity (weight) which can't be sold to carry passengers or goods. Besides, there are international agreements which prohibit taxing aviation fuel, so ultimately it will never be a unilateral decision.

"We can solve the problem with better technology". No, there are no significant technological breakthroughs on the horizon, and while high by-pass turbofans have reduced the fuel consumption *per flight* the environmental effect has been more than cancelled out by increased numbers of flights. Technological advances will be small and incremental, unable to keep pace with increasing air traffic.

The only thing which seems to be able to curb pollution from air travel is terrorism.

I'm a great fan of the principle of contraction and convergence. So reducing emissions of all greenhouse gases in the immediate future (and we no longe rhave the luxury of talking about 10-15 year timescales) has to be achieved through a mixture of contraction ie fewer or less ways of emitting, and converging all countries in the world to a common view of not increasing emissions whilst maintaining economic growth. Soemtimes these will be in conflict with each other. UK airports are in many ways a special case, especially the ones in the south east, as they have been designed to be hubs. As a result, a high percentage of traffic through these airports is in the form of people and goods passing through the UK en route to somewhere else. I've heard that is around 40 per cent off all traffic. It's poosible to argue that the local and national environment is being compromised only for the profit of the operators as far as trans-shipment traffic is concerned. Eliminate that traffic completely and you achieve around 40 per cent availability for growth in UK inbound and outbound traffic without an extra metre of runway. There would be a loss of jobs in the economy that exists on the trans-shipment traffic, but there is slack in the economy, so that would quickly be corrected.

The lack of tax on aviation fuel must be one of the major reasons why flying is so cheap, despite the complex engineering and sheer amount of energy required to fly a plane.
If The UK began unilaterally taxing aviation fuel, surely the airlines would simply refuel in other countries where the tax was lower. This might mean that short haul flights would land in the UK with enough fuel on board to fly out again. For long haul flights it might become more economic to do a short hop to a closer destination first to refuel. Flying with a greater fuel load and additional stops would have the net result of making the flights less fuel efficient.
I think this is the reason that quite a few countries, including the UK have gone down the route of an airport or passenger tax.

Hi Evan

As ever, a thought-provoking article. But you miss from your argument one key issue - whether Britain would lose its economic competitive advantage relative to the rest of the industrialised world by unilaterally constraining air travel (by, as you say, either imposing taxes or deliberately constraining runway space).

Whilst I am all for exploring ways to reduce carbon emissions, it should not be at the expense of the UK economy relative to our competitors in Europe and North America. Raising taxes on fuel or constraining airport space is fine so long as other countries pursue similar policies. Otherwise, international travellers would start flying to the "cheaper" countries and take with them all the secondary economic benefits that the UK currently enjoys.

Chris

I agree with most of what you say, except for two major points.

Firstly, you assume that a 'cap and trade' scheme would simply 'grandfather' the permits to existing carriers. While this reflects the ETS as it currently stands, most economists would argue that the permits should be auctioned. This would level the playing field between new and existing carriers. It would also generate revenues for the government. These could be used to either neutralise the effect on businesses through reducing alternative distortionary taxes (earning a 'double dividend') or could be used to subsidise other forms of renewable technologies.

Secondly, taxing Carbon directly or through the imposition of auctioned permits would generate strong incentives for carriers to invest in energy efficiency and alternative fuels, thereby reducing their Carbon emissions into the future. This is known as 'dynamic efficiency'.

A final thought is that rather than the ensuing price rises being considered as 'additional' costs, in fact such measures simply reveal to the public the true cost to society of their actions. It makes them pay a price that reflects the full resource costs it takes to travel, including the environmental impact. In other words, they are socially just prices, rather than the discounted prices currently being paid at the expense of future generations who will have to pick up the tab.

Quite a simple solution maybe:

Ditch the per customer APD, instead impose a per departure (or slot) tax on airlines, that varies dependent on the pollution caused by the flying aircraft if it was flying fully laden and fully fuelled, over it's maximum range.

This would:
1- Encourage the use of greener more environmentally friendly aircraft.

2 - Incentivise airlines to fly full aircraft to reduce their per-passenger tax liability and therefore reducing per-passenger emissions.

3 - Incentivise airlines to fly longer routes, as tax would be on the basis of being fully fuelled regardless of flight actually flown, meaning the tax "hits" shorter haul (for which rail may be an alternative) more than medium and long haul (for which there is no real alternative)

Not providing sufficent airport capacity is a bad move, as congested airports means more delays means more time flying means more pollution!

There are also much more important steps that the Government and EU should be taking to make real reductions in airline emissions:
- mandating that airport support vehicles are low-pollution / hybrid.
- straightening out aircraft flight paths, ignoring political boundaries, so craft fly the shortest possible route from A-B.
- Ensuring that all airports have sensible connections to public transport networks.
- Ensuring sensible processes (such as Virgin's policy of towing planes to take-off grids) are implemented accross Europe without delay.

"Two mandating that all fossil fuel power stations are replaced by Nuclear and Tidal within 15 years."

This isn't anywhere near possible. it would take 15 years at least to find a site and get planning for a new Nuclear Power station. I think optimistic timescales give Nuclear Power Stations a lead time of 25 years from deciding to build one before a single watt of usable power is generated.

How dare someone suggest that I should pay more to fly. As a UK resident, being over-taxed and over-charged for everything, the only way I can stand living in this country is to know that it is easy and cheap for me to depart every once in a while.

In all seriousness, ease of travel is an important option in a globalised economy. To unilaterally (and it would be unilaterally) impose these charges would undermine our international competitiveness and attractiveness. I may only be able to afford a one way ticket in future.

We need to encourage the airlines to reduce the number of flights they offer. If we made the airlines pay the departure tax for each seat on the plane regardless of whether they had sold the seat to a paying customer, they we automatically, and very quickly, cut down on the number of flights offered. I resently flew to Glasgow and the number of flights offered during the day was amazing, my flight was not full, and I bet none of the other flights were either, I could have gone an hour earlier, or an hour later, and would have done if there was not so much choice.

Evan, in other sectors, the EU ETS allows governments to set aside a number of allowances in a "New Entrants Reserve". I imagine the treatment of aviation will be similar.

What do you mean, I am not going to like it? I have argued for years that aviation fuel should be taxed. Other contributors are right, though, when they say that international agreement - at least at EU level - is needed for this. If the UK alone taxed aviation fuel, aircraft might indeed fill up elsewhere - but apply the tax across the EU27, and they rapidly run out of options. A train to Switzerland or a ferry to Norway to catch a plane to Spain, anyone?

I think this is all getting out of control, we are simply over populating the earth, but not one politician dare introduce population control, I have no children and don't want any, but I'll be forced to pay congestion charges,bin taxes, flight taxes etc because we have uncontrolled immigration and a population explosion, whatever type of pollution you choose to reduce, it always increases another type, so you swap NOx emissionson a car for CO2 emissions etc. Only the other week, the ±«Óătv website had a article on 'how peat bogs emits huge amounts of CO2', on the tv today, animal farming is more damaging than ALL transport CO2 - cue a self important vegan to lecture on how we should give up meat. A question for the readers of this article - how many 'experts' can you list that have been on TV to tell you how to live, only to proved to be talking complete garbage 3 years later - just think of all the hysterical comments about global warming - a whole planet eco system - that we having 'studying' for less time than we have been studying our diet - and we still don't understand how food effects us in anthing other than simple terms.
Apologies for the rant, but global warming hysteria is really getting on my nerves - we don't understand any of it - there are lots of people flying around the world making a fortune out of gibberish.

Taxation is all the govenment knows, they just have no clue on how to effect change any other way, and I am fed up of being taxed to try and control things, making it worse for the poorer section of society..

The real issue is we need to go carbon neutral, which means we dont emmit more co2 than is taken up by plants ect...

So there are ONLY 2 options here,
1) dont emmit CO2, use clean fuels

2) offset emmisions by building more forrests ect...

Now here is one thing that MOST of the public are unaware of, which is the tax on international flights just went up by ÂŁ20, and that is enough to pay to offset the carbon emmitted on a return flight from London Heathrow to Shanghai.

BUT the key thing is, the new tax money is not spent on offsetting OR research into clean fuels...

So ask your MP, why they are not using the new TAX to offset the carbon?

Mr Stevens. You may think travelling to Spain for lunch or a bit of shopping might not be 'nuts' but it is certainly a wasteful and decadent thing to be doing.

Your argument conveniently ignores the importance of distance travelled.

On a per head basis, one round trip to spain is the equivalent of running an average family car average mileage for over 2 months. One round trip on a long haul flight is equal to more than one year's family car use!

Like it or not, aircraft pollute much more than other forms of transport simply because they cover greater distances.

A policy of rationing air travel (or anything else)by price is immoral simply because it disadvantages the less well-off. Unfortunately, other forms of international travel, such as trains or drive/ferries, are more expensive, even for families. And you cannot go overland to the Canaries or Mediterranean islands. Of course, that won't stop the Government finding a way to penalise air travellers. Fairness doesn't seem to be a factor in setting taxes since Gordon Brown's last budget raised income tax for minimum wage-earners and many pensioners while leaving the rich unaffected.

Fuel tax won't work. People will just jump on a short haul to Europe and then long haul, or carriers will get all their fuel elsewhere, thus increasing emissions.

The best approach is airport tax by landing slot. This would penalise short haul, where there is viable alternative transport. Also penalising the smaller, less efficient aircraft, and those are not carrying a full compliment of passengers.

There is no viable alternative for long haul flights. It’s the short haul and less efficient aircraft which need to be targeted.

If we assume that the aim is to reduce avaition emissions then we have 2 choices.

1) Find ways to make planes more efficient such as mandating the replacement of the existing fleet to newer models.

2) Reducing the absolute number of flights.

If our gevernment taxes us more or puts in more rules on UK bases carriers then the UK becomes less competitive and the rest of the world relatively more competitive. This will cost UK jobs and lower the standard of living.

Whatever method is used should be a global initiative. Without the EU, USA and WTO on board any move we make is too small to impact the world. Avaition is a global industry, the solution lies upon the shoulders of all governments not just ours in the UK.

Fuel taxes will increase the price, but we're not going to get international agreement to do it. More importantly for global warming, taxes won't reduce CO2 reductions as fares are so cheap, most people would still be prepared to pay the highest fuel tax any brave politician would dare to impose. Taxes can only work to reduce flights if enough people aren't able or willing to pay the extra.

As to extra aircraft efficiency coming to the rescue, there is only a relatively small amount more that can be achieved with current plane designs. More efficient aeroplanes on the drawing board generally don't have the carrying capacity of current designs, so we'll need more of them to carry the same passenger numbers. Even if major efficiencies are found in design, there are ways an increasing number of flights will contribute to global warming in ways other than through CO2, for example high level cloud cover caused by con trails.

It is only by curbing capacity that CO2 emissions from air traffic will be limited. The market could achieve this better than any unresponsive tax if only the politicians would set a cap on the industry, and stop worrying about who ends up getting the profits from higher flight costs. A reduction in flying slots could do it, fewer runways and carbon trading as well, any of these or several, all would have different consequences, but if CO2 and warming is what it's about, taxes alone wouldn't be enough.

'Sin' taxes do not work, full stop. The same tax that gives Joe Public an incentive not to do something (smoke, drive, drink, fly) makes HMG want him or her to keep on at it!

It is also grossly unfair on the less well-off. Many sin taxes date from times when the distribution of incomes in this country was far more equitable than it is today.

So perhaps the best answer is to get a Carbon-Offsetting fund to auction permits, and use the cash thus raised to do what they do best: offset the Carbon.

Meanwhile, it's probably best to hang fire on the Stansted expansion: the SE is full enough as it is!

As someone who flies for business, I would be very happy to see significant taxing on flights.

Businesses kept running despite the airways being shut following 9/11. And where people do need to fly a ÂŁ50 or ÂŁ100 tax isn't going to make a huge impact, especially on business class flights.

For private travel, air travel is (whisper it now) a luxury. Not essential. Not life threatening. In my, comparatively short lifetime, flying abroad was has been seen as a special event, a large expense. There is no automatic right to flight, and if we see it as a dangerous polluter, we need to peg it back. And in the western world we control things through price.

Simply have the tax on flights reflect the "cost" of the damage to the environment, and the optimum level of flights will occur - then if the number of flights increase it will only be because the benefit of these flights to the individuals concerned (expressed through their willingness to pay) is greater than the cost (both private and environmental).

It is important that this tax is relatively sophisticated - it should depend exactly upon how environmentally damaging a given plane / fuel is. This then creates an incentive for carriers to invest in more environmentally friendly aircraft and fuels to reduce the tax level and thus become more competitive.

As with all environmental issues - people should never have to specifically "choose" to be eco-friendly. If the government is doing its job correctly it should create a system of taxes and subsidies which accurately reflect environmental damage (and other "external" costs or benefits from an action) which means that individuals simply need to act in their own private interest to achieve the eco-optimum. Sort of like a green version of Adam Smith's "invisible hand".

This whole topic of green taxing is nonsense. It's all a money spinner for the government and a new morality for people to soothe their consciences.

Punative taxes do not work, witness fuel and cigarette duties. Limiting landing slots will of course drive up prices making the UK a less attractive place to visit or do business. Taxing fuel will just move carriers main hub or refueling to the nearest low tax regime. Long haul flights will simply stop in France/Germany or middle east to fill up - FAR less fuel efficient but tax efficient. Besides which why does the government need MORE tax? We already have one of the highest tax takes in the world.

But only one person might be riding in a car, while your average airliner carries 200. We're always being told to cram as many passengers as possible into our cars, and transporting 200 people at once must be the ultimate car pool. Imagine 200 people setting off to the south of France every ten minutes! In my opinion we ought to encourage everyone to fly.

What is more important:

Whether poor people can afford to fly or the future of our planet?

I'm concerned that with all this talk of the impact of flying on climate change (which is an important issue and one close to my heart); nobody has yet mentioned the impact of flying on global fossil fuel consumption, which is an equally important issue.

Fuel has been written about at length by journalists such as David Strathan (from the ±«Óătv's money programme) in his book 'The last oil shock' and by former oil company consultant and geologist Jeremy Leggett in his book 'Half gone'. There is also a wealth of material available online on the subject of 'peak oil' (also known as a Hubbert peak or oil shock).

Regarding the point about technology increasing the efficiency of aircraft; as has been said already in these comments, the possible improvements pale in comparison to the growth of demand. This includes alternative designs which are a long way off and alternative fuels which have their own drawbacks. This topic is discussed in depth by George Monbiot in his book 'Heat' and is summarised on his website.

I'm in favour of tackling both our fuel and carbon problems with a personal allowance or ration. I disagree with Graham Dyke (above) in that I think this allowance should be tradeable to allow a market driven incentive for reducing your carbon footprint below the level you are alloted.

Keep up the good work Evan.

The governments own website, lets you compare CO2 emissions for different modes of transport. A plane emits less CO2 per passenger than a car with one person.

Considering that I want to travel from Cambridge to Edinburgh and will not use the trains (the service from Cambridge to the main line is very unreliable) it would be better for the environment for me to fly.

Many commenters assume or demand that increased taxation of air travel should be deployed for other green uses, eg. planting trees.
This is wrong.
Increased government spending on planting trees is a totally separate decision which needs its own mandate.

It's incredible the way the environmental lobby has hijacked the whole subject of air travel and turned it into a thing to be ashamed of. Politicians can not go on holiday anymore without planting a tree as a peace offering to the new religion of "carbon footprints". Air travel accounts for a only a fraction of the emissions and as it promotes business and growth we would be far better concentrating on reducing our carbon from areas where we can have a much bigger impact such as lighting and insulation. As with all these "causes" however it's the emotive class war issues that grab the attention and air travel with it's perceived glamour and wealth is an easy target for the "rent a mob" types - I suppose demonstrating outside someone's house because they don't have cavity wall insulation is just not sexy enough even though it would have a bigger impact on reducing emissions.

Have you been reading my coursework? I just wrote an essay saying exactly the same thing (but obviously less well put)!

There should be tax on aircraft fuel and VAT on tickets, in my view. But raising the cost of a RyanAir flight from ÂŁ50 to ÂŁ75 won't make much impact. It's not so expensive people will decide not to travel at all, and it's still cheaper, quicker and easier than other options.
But if "they" spent the air tax on setting up a simple train-coach-ferry-booking service it might help.
I'm going to France by train this year, instead of flying. I've had to look up, and buy, the tickets to London separately from the Eurostar tickets. And the SNCF site won't let me book until next month. Last year I discovered that the English SNCF site listed fewer trains on the route I wanted than the French site. It just gets too complicated for people to bother.

As As usual both policy and focus are directed at passengers, aka "taxable sheep". What matters more is the importing and transportation of goods - accounting for about 70% of all uk flight traffic, and nearly always trucked around by road once its got here.

Road haulage - far less fuel efficient per mile, plus all the accociated burn from other traffic slowing/stopping across the road network.

Train haulage - more efficient but greater expense and less flexibility.

What is needed is more investment and regulation to make OTHER forms of transport more APPEALING, and a significant chunk of freight and passenger traffic will migrate over to them of their own accord. This as ALWAYS comes down to price.

Its ridiculous that on visiting my parents, it takes just 2.5 hours to travel a London -> Manchester distance on the day by train for around ÂŁ30. To do that here in UK I'd have to fork out enough to holiday Turkey for a week. No wonder people would rather fly, despite the security nightmare and other harassments. I do, it'd cost me ÂŁ100 more JUST to get to where the train leaves in Paris. Beat that, ÂŁ20 airfare. Oh, you have.

The masses need more carrots, not another stick. Some joined-up thinking, ring-fenced investment and incentives please. Plough money inot public transport, bring the cost down and service up on a par with other countries. Give people some realistically viable alternatives while slowly making flying harder, and the transition can happen. Even if it means paying the same amount but less visibly through increased goods/other taxes I think peple would find it more palatable.

And pigs might fly. "If it moves, tax it" is easier, and more popular with the captains of industry pulling government strings.

Until then, *drags suitcase off to Stansted*

Airlines are again being nailed to wall and blamed for the ills of the environment.

The fact is that car users generate significantly more CO2 than contributions by airlines. However, people soon get rattled if there's any talk of them being charged more to drive their vehicle from home to the corner shop. Cue petitions to Number 10, ranting emails to their MP...come on, people need to get some perspective on this issue.

You seem to forget that Company Profits are also taxable and therfore what's good for business is also good for the countries revenues.

Additionally; incresing airfares (by whatever means) will be inflationary. This in turn leads to higher wage demands. The net ruslt will be that relatively speaking the price increase will not be as prohibative as we will all have more to spend.

The issue as with all of these matters is how the government intends to prioritise and legislate to force a change in our behaviour with regards to renewable and greener fuel sources.

To encourage the use of greener fuels the government should legislate what type of fuel can be used; phase out the use of the worst offenders and force all consumers to move to more environmentally sound energy sources. It may not be easy to find a replacement for aviation fuel; however without the will and without putting pressure on the users there will be no incentive to research and find an alternative.

All these protesters most probably took the next flight out for their bank holidays.

Go green and then drive away in your 4x4.
Go green and then fly to Spain/France for holiday.
Go green and then put poor rating electrical fitting in your house.
Go green and leave your computers at work and home on even when not working.

Typically British, moan and then do the same.

Maybe it should be discussed, but considering how incredibly minuscule the "carbon footprint" of air travel is compared to that of rail and auto travel, maybe we should just leave aviation alone?

The idea is not to target certain industries but our own personal behaviour. It's luxury that needs to be curtailed, not one specific kind of travel. In many parts of the world air travel is not a luxury. Perhaps you folks in Britain have a choice of taking a flight or a train or even driving from one city to another, but there are many countries where travel to even the nearest city is either wildly impractical or completely impossible except by air.

Making air travel seem like more of a burden than rail or auto travel is simply putting guilt onto countries where the infrastructure for rail or auto transportation simply doesn't or can't exist.

I commute to work in the UK from France, via Stansted / Ryanair.

It amazes me at how much more expensive, inconvenient and awkward it is to do the same journey via public transport (UK and French trains, underground metro systems and eurostar), not to mention how much longer it takes.

I can understand the call for more tax on air travel, (what-ever the method) since it is more convenient and at present (in my case) considerably cheaper. If it is really less environmentally friendly, a significant increase in the cost of short haul air travel is required to have any impact on my behaviour.

Whilst the UK government does not favour hypothecation, I would welcome paying more to fly, if, most of the additional revenue was re-invested in improving other forms of public transport (ease of booking 'joined up' journeys, higher quality public space on trains and stations etc) and supporting funding research into less polluting fuels (will a non polluting fuel ever be invented) for all forms of transportation.

I do not believe people will stop or reduce their travel; however via a combination of manipulating the monetary impact and convenience / comfort between the different options of achieving the same end (getting from A to B) it may be possible to change their preferred type of transport for travelling.

Having read the other contributions however, I’m now less convinced that air travel is as environmentally “bad” as I had previously believed it to be!

A good article Evan, thanks

There are many salient and challenging points made about the use of taxes. However the fundamantal issue is an Economic one. The profit that polluters make is inflated since they do not bear all of the costs involved in producing their output; they are not charged for the impact on the environment. In this respect the price mechanism in markets fails.

In the absence of any other party governements should step in levy taxes. Otherwise the suppliers will continue to make excess profits at the expense of others. The structure and application of this can be debated but logic cannot. A simpler method would be for governments to apply rationing of resources, as Evan mentioned, to get the saem result.

The purpose of tax in my understanding should be to fund the activites of the state. It is the states responsability to ensure that it carries out only those functions which the majority want of it, and that it raises only enough tax to cover this.
The fact that tax is currently used as a tool to manipulate the behaviour of the public is, I believe, wrong. Therefor attempting to bring aviation tax in line with car tax is also wrong.
It is of course, an issue of much debate as to how tax should be levied. But starting levying tax based on the desire to curb the use of a service, and later deciding how best to use this tax is the wrong basis on which to set it.
If the majority wish to see CO2 reduced, I believe that the goverment should consider how, and then place a tax to cover this. So, if it wishes to reduce CO2 emmisions by restricting the number of flights, it should develop a scheme which fairly restricts the number of flights a person can have each year. A scheme which grants according to a persons needs, so having family abroad might qualify you for more flights each year, and then place the tax burden for this system on the industry, which will be passed onto the passengers. So, the public is paying in a fair way for the system they want.
Infact, people would probably rather NOT have this system in place, because when it comes to facing difficult options such as this, it is easier for us to have our behaviours subtly manipulated by taxes, so that we can then gripe about them.
A strange state of affairs, but I honestly beleive that if you wish to curb the use of a service then fair quotas, rather than just pricing the less well off out of the market is the best way to go.

For some journeys there are alternatives to flying and for other journeys they are not. I find it bizzare that airline passenger duty is lower for domestic and short haul flights than it is for intercontental when for short haul there are more likely to be alternatives.

I am travelling from London to Munich this Friiday evening with my wife and baby and we are going by train (evening Eurostar to Paris and overnight sleeper to Munich). As well as only emiting 11% of the CO2 of flying I reckon we are getting better value than flying although the headline fares are higher

If we flew we would pay about ÂŁ110 each airfare for two adults (this was BA fare from Heathrow when I looked a month ago) and although the baby doesn't get a seat he still seems to attract about ÂŁ30 of charges and taxes. We would then have to travel to and from the airports by train, bus or drive and pay for a week's car parking.

Our train fare is ÂŁ290 per adult (in theory ÂŁ180 fares are available but were all sold out - this is for a private compartment in a coach with showers. If you wan't to spend all night in a reclining seat the fares are about ÂŁ85 return), but the baby goes absolutely free until the age of 5 and we travel city centre to city centre and we get a nights accomodation in a cosy 3 person compartment included each way and two cooked breakfasts (with proper metal cutlary unlike on a plane!) and a 5 hour minibreak in Paris on the way back and there are no security or weight restrictions on luggage (so I can bring home some crates of cheap German beer stacked under my bunk!)

Also Eurostar and German railways have punctulatity in the 90+% region (even the worst UK train company manages to scrape 80%) whereas typical airlines only manage 70 to 80%. Also you don't need a 2 hour check in with a train and you don't have to trust the airline not to loose your luggage.

I am constantly amazed by the number of people who can't see any alternative to flying or who justify the plane over the train on the grounds that it is cheaper whilst failing to look at the total costs, both finacial and time, involved in getting to and from airports. I think that the huge demand for flights isn't completely rational and is just down to habbit and the perception that it is luxurious (not a word I would every associate with london Heathrow).

I admit that a few years ago I was seduced by the idea of flying (7 years ago I flew Bristol-Edinburgh every fortnight) but now that the fun and luxury element has been removed in the name of Value Engineering or security I have fallen out of love with the the aeroplane.

Deepak Chawla: So glad to see that you're not generalising!

I'm not a "greenie" but all this talk of taxes, is, in my view, spurious.

After all, is the money raised from these taxes going to be used to build some kind of mythical "Carbon reversal machine" which will put right the damage done to the environment? Get real.

The only way to reduce the amount of Carbon belched into the air by aircraft is to reduce the amount of travelling Joe Public can do.

So I weould suggest that everyone in the country gets a number of "airmiles" they can use annually. How they use them is up to them - be that business or private.

Before any companies start whining that they could not possible operate without their staff being free to travel - I believe the electronic age has made such travelling less necessary.

Granted, this is an infringement of civil liberties, but as someone else has said, isn't saving the planet more important?

It's the bigoted approach of the environmentalists that drives me crazy. As usual they adopt an irrational and emotional argument against something that is easy to target but in real terms is a minor issue whilst they ignore where the real problem lies. Maybe they should look at how much transport supermarkets use to get produce to the shelves (carrots from Kenya etc.) or how many homes do not use efficient lighting or appliances instead of jumping on the airline bandwagon and basically creating a negative image of cheap flights which is way out of proportion to the actual effect they have. I think these people are guilty about being alive and need a focus, maybe they could all sit at home in the dark and cold and hit themselves with sticks as a punishment.

Seems like these enviro fascists are the same ones that have been at a loss since the cold war ended. Thye should all go back to Greenham Common

Esteban, I agree but disagree.
Influencing behaviour is a well-established and legitimate reason for taxation, eg. anti-smoking, drinking etc..
However, it is not an excuse for spending more, per se.

Of course taxing cars but not planes is equally wrong, by your own logic.

The relationship with train travel is interesting. I was recently charged ÂŁ45 for the honour of a 70 mile trip (140 miles return) to London, during the day.

A business (times not class!) trip to say Edinburgh is just so much cheaper than the train that the train doesn't factor as an option.

So why is it so expensive on the train? With due respect to commenter 64 - it's weekend travel which is always cheap - even so you are still paying nearly ÂŁ600 vs ÂŁ250 by plane. I'd be really interested to see the comparison for a trip during the week.

Airlines like ryain air would trave l minus thecustomer these flights are not comercal flights or customer viable, they are transporting goods ie trade and the passengers help pay fuel costs, ie they would travel any way, so extra tax would do nothing, limiting flights will make goods more expensive so we ALL pay more. how about cows they are more damaging than planes, ask a geographer 25 years ago global cooling was what they were worried about. If we want to help the earth use less electricity insulate your house, get double glazing put on an extra jumper instead of the heat and recycle. also the gov could let us all run our cars on bio deisel this is already possible but we dont do it, because they would lose tax, tax supposedly there to savethe environment. its time to ignore cheap media hacks pedalling propoganda and find out from geographers what we can actually do and need to do. Does no one remember "the hole in the ozone" that was the old excuse, turns out it lets gases out go figure! im sick of munching propaganda pie

This is nonsense. Emissions from airplanes account for approximately 2% of total CO2 emissions. So, even if all flying stopped tomorrow, this would have no impact on CO2 volumes.

Guys,
please, before you argue any further, have a look at the following websites and their links on the right panel.


They are all about the new 'open skies'deal of boosting overseas flights competition. It seems really unbelievable to me that nowhere on these webpages is there a word about the possible huge adverse effects on the climate of a deal like this one. Are the policymakers going crazy? Is this some kind of split personality behaviour?
On the one hand we have ±«Óătv full of articles about global warming being a life-threatening matter, numerous pleas to fight climate change, yet a ruling like this one goes by virtually unnoticed. My question is why?
I guess the positive competitive effects certainly do exist, but on the other hand, poor Tony Blair is even getting criticised for making his holidays abroad and thus emitting greenhouse gasses! Something stinks of hypocrisy here! On both the media's and policymakers' sides.

I despair for the Old Country reading a thread of comments like this. My goodness so many of you have bought the whole Anthropogenic CO2 theory, hook line and sinker.

If you don't wake up and start pushing back you'll end up in a world you don't like very much, and it won't be because its too warm either.

Here we go, emissions have become a scarce resource, and the fight has started to convince the public that "my emissions are more worthy than yours".

Cars are taxed alot because they are a huge cost to society over and above their emissions: they need acres of land (imagine the annual cost of renting the land required for the roads of London), cause countless accidents and a great deal of noise and dust pollution, and drive any other form of transport off the roads. Cars cost society per mile driven, while (emissions aside) air travel costs society per flight. For this purpose, flights are already taxed, they have to pay for the tiny amount of infrastructure they use through airport fees and landing taxes. So by all means find a way of charging for air travel emissions, but please also include charges for emissions from road transport. And while you are at it, for heating, public transport and electricity.

The climate doesn't care what the source of the emissions are, and one source can often easily be substituted for another. For example, popular belief will have it that an electric car causes no emissions, yet generating the electricity required DOES cause emissions. Extracting the aluminium required to make it light uses ALOT of electricity, but probably in a different country. Driving a normal car from London to Edinburgh causes a similar amount of emissions to flying, AND requires a vast amount of land, noise pollution and danger to humans.

In order to avoid emissions simply shifting to other sources, you have to discourage ALL emissions, equally. What's more, you have to fine tune this to gradually reduce total emissions according to targets.

Emissions are a scarce resource. Just like in communist plan economies, allocating scarce resources according to what you think is best, or to those who shout loudest, is not going to work as well as the market doing the job for you. Attacking emissions on the personal level makes about as much sense as everyone doing their bit to control inflation. Leaving it to politicians and eurocrats is even worse: the complexity of the task makes it hugely ambiguous and plays to the temptation to hand out emissions to your favourite cause or lobby group.

The ONLY sensible way is to take this problem away from politicians and create a BoE for emissions. Charge for emissions, all emissions, and nothing but the emissions, and let the market put them to the best use. Gradually reducing supply, emissions become gradually more expensive. Saving the environment will save you money, and reductions will happen naturally.

I think the whole problem is down to flights being too cheap.i have made only one long flight in my life, to Canada in 1973. The charter flight cost ÂŁ75 which was 3 weeks net wages for me, a teacher. If flights still reflected those costs people wouldn't be so prepared to go abroad and endanger our children's future.

Who said that flying prices have to be democratic?

There is no 'fundamental right to flying'. Flying is not a necessity, it is a luxury.

No-one complains because poor people cannot afford to buy organic meat. It is tough, but it is the world we live in. Anything else is hypocrisy.

I think the EU should give huge tax breaks to aircraft companies in relation to R&D for making air travel more "green". This not only drive technological change (albeit long term) but also a great way to subsidise Airbus again!

There's got to be better ways than direct tax. The reality is the majority of the revenue generated wouldn't go back "green" projects. Big companies are the ones that will drive technological change to ensure we have long term solutions through expensive R&D.

More Runways = Richer Aviation Industry = More R&D!!!

This is not something that the UK alone can handle, I have previously taken a train to paris and then got on a plane to the US, it wasn't very good for the enviroment, but it did save quite a lot of money - plus I got to go business class.....

It sounds like we will regress to the days of air travel being the preserve of te rich and famous. Maybe it's time to break out the bucket and spade for the annual holiday to Blackpool.
On a second point politicians must love the whole CO2 emission problem (thought still to be conclusively proved), what an easy way to raise taxes.

I work for an airline, so perhaps I can be accused of having a vested interest. However, I also have 3 children and a greater interest in ensuring that they have a future.
From an engineer's perspective, ought we not address those things which contribute the greatest quantity of emissions, to get the greatest gain the soonest? Doesn't that mean starting with something almost everyone uses, i.e. the car? We try both to ride bikes to work & use cars as little as possible. You get wet at times, of course.

The backward and forward arguments on this highlight one salient point that nobody has specifically mentioned yet.
Any method that tries to address what is a global issue on a regional level is ultimately bound to fail. Tackling the CO2 emmisions of air travel through regional measures in the UK will acheive nothing. It may reduce the CO2 emmisions from the UK, but on a global level it wont even scratch the surface.

Dear Evan,

As always, top notch. As we are revising for our Economics module in Transport, we found this a very useful aid and resource.

We also enjoyed your appearance on Radio 1 a couple of weeks ago, and were interested to learn that you drive a Citroen.

Keep up the good work! Evan for PM!!

If we make the assumption that anthropogenic emission of CO2 is the principal cause of climate change, the solution to reducing emissions would appear to be to incentivise people not to pollute through the use of taxation.

Apply tax at every point where people or organisations emit CO2 (e.g. using a car, operating an airline, generating electricity, manufacturing goods etc.) based on exactly how much CO2 is being emitted (easily measurable).

Manufacturers/service providers would pass the cost of this tax on to the consumer, discouraging them from buying polluting goods/services.

The government would then measure the level of CO2 emission and adjust the rate of tax until this meets our targets.

In this way, companies that were good at producing goods/supplying services that left a small environmental impact (e.g. airlines with more fuel efficient propulsion technology) would then make a larger profit as their cost of production would be smaller (less tax to pay).

Companies could quite possibly end up competing to provide goods/services with the lowest environmental impact.

Questions I think we need to answer first:

1. Is climate change caused by anthropogenic emission of CO2?

2. Is the cost of the potential effects of climate change greater than that of curtailing emissions (by this or any other scheme)?

Until we have unambiguous responses to these questions, effort spent on devising clever systems for rationing and emissions trading appears potentially worthless.

Stuart #76, great posting, I agree on all points apart from calling it a tax. If you turn the question around, and subject all emissions to a permit, which has to be bought on an auction market controlled independently from the government, you remove politicians ability to meddle. All they can do is control the total supply rather than a tax, just like inflation management effectively happens today (the tax system is equivalent to a price and wage control regime for inflation, which doesn't work)

What's more, your idea can be simplified even further, you require these permits at source: bulk sale of fossile fuels for transport/heating/manufacturing/power generation plants. A litre of petrol produces pretty much the same amount of carbon regardless of the vehicle involved. Almost all of the carbon emissions caused by individuals or businesses are covered by this, and there is no need to involve them, as heavy carbon usage will be naturally more expensive. It also has the advantage of allowing for credits: if you come up with a novel way of removing carbon from the atmosphere, you should be given credits that can be sold on the same market.

The current scheme for emissions trading go somewhere towards this, but fail on a few major points: not all sources are included, road, air and transport fuels being a major omission. And it is a cap and trade system: only emissions over and above an arbitrary set "existing" level are subject to permits, which gives no incentives for emitters to reduce existing levels where that is sensible.

Rather than advertising campaigns, scare propaganda and taxing soft targets, the government should focus on improving and extending the emissions trading scheme.

A point on wind energy: Did you know the greenhouse effect of methane is around hundred times that of carbon dioxide? This means converting methane into CO2 by burning it is a great environment saver. Finally a sound reason for setting light to your farts! If only we could get cows and sheep to do the same.. And perhaps a tax on curry restaurants?

Worried about the effect on carbon dioxide emissions on the planet?
I have a simple two-step solution for you.

1) Choose to save the world from quite a few tonnes of them by not having children. There are too many people on this planet, and unfortunately most are too poor/illiterate to understand this.
(vested interest declaration: I have no children nor plans to have any)

2) Please do choose to work and live within the same community or at least the nearest available choice (this means NOT living in Oxford and working in London or commuting daily from York to Nottingham!). I don't care how "environmentally friendly" is the way you get there, doing 50-100-180 miles every day just to work and back, you're wasting energy and creating needless pollution.

When any significant number of people start doing the two little things above, I will happily cut down on my weekends in Paris and twice-yearly long-haul expeditions.
Thank you.

PS: People posting praising train services are making a joke that is not at all funny! Perhaps you should understand that this country actually consists of more than just London.

PS 2: FAO Mr Tim post #64: Lufthansa offer a direct service from London City Airport to Munich. The train from Munich Int'l to city centre does take 45 minutes but it's a comfortable and reliable service. This combination certainly beats running around underground stations with your luggage then trying to understand how SNCF has changed your departure platform and you have found yourself on the bloody local service to Nantes (or simply using the Liverpool-Stansted direct service which takes you there in a mere SIX HOURS).

The air travel that is under scrutiny is surely the ridiculously under-priced transport offered by the low-cost airlines. Surely what is required is that the prices charged for such travel more accurately reflects the true cost involved. Yes, this will mean paying more, and yes this will mean that some people cannot afford to fly (or can only afford to fly less frequently). To those of you who categorise this as some sort of "tax on the poor" WAKE UP! We live in a capitalist society (which, for all it's failings, is the only sort that seems to work). People with more money get to do more stuff. I agree that society needs to redress this balance through providing state funded opportunities for healthcare, education, etc - but since when was air travel some sort of human right? For private individuals it is a luxury, and should not be viewed in any other way.

The comparisons with car travel would seem to be something of a red herring - I very much doubt that anyone who seriously advocates less air travel would not also advocate less car travel. However, reducing our impact on the environment without forcing unpalatable changes on our way of life is about changing behaviour around the margins; encouraging people to take the bike to work a couple of times a week (rather than to sell their cars), insulate their homes properly (rather than spends thousands on ground source heat pumps), buy local and seasonal produce (rather than organic apples from Chile), have a city break in Bath or Edinburgh (rather than Rome or New York). It is the spurious flights which do so much damage that people need to cut down on - not stop flying altogether.

Sadly, there still seems to be a huge body of people who think this is all just a hysterical con. This bewilders me. Say you went to 100 doctors with a mystery illness. You describe your symptoms and 97 say "look, I'm not 100% sure but I really think that if you carry on doing XYZ you could do irrepairable damage to yourself" and the other 3 say "Look, I'm not 100% sure, but I think you can carry on as normal" then what would you do?! Since when did we stop believing the overwhelming opinion of the scientific community and start trusting Daily Telegraph columnists just because they tell us what we want to hear?

I look forward to a strong government legislating to address this problem

If any of the airlines would like to purchase some fresh air from me, I can supply it at a very reasonable price.

Re post # 87

Thanks for the comments about Lufthansa from London City airport.

I can report that the trip to Munich and back by train worked fairy well. The only real problem was with the London underground when we arrived back as they had decided to close 5 lines at the same time for engineering work and yet not publicise this until you have reached the platform (otherwise we would have caught a cab)

On balance having experienced both train and plane I have to say that there isn't a great deal to choose between them. You might have a preference of one over the other but they are both viable means of transport.

I would take the train again if travelling out for a week or so with my family, but probably fly (and offset my Co2) if I went for a single day's business trip.

If the airline industry emissions are the target, then the emissions (or the nearest thing to it) should be taxed. This gives the people in airline & aerospace industry (such as myself) the financial incentives to tackle the problem. Limiting airports size provides a financial incentive to pack as many flights and passengers into the available space. Technically, both solutions are possible.

This is where it would be very useful, if the real environmentalists made clear the difference between themselves and the woolly-headed idealists wanting to live in Cider-with-Rosie-land.

hello i'm kate,
i'm doing a project on stansted expansion & i'm going to need some help so is there anyone who can? ineed to no who is incharge of the whole decision of the new runway, what is actually going to happening to everything, when it is happening & when it will be ready & how are they going to do it?
PLEASE SOMONE WRITE BACK!!
thanks x