The title was from a comment in the London Times on this story about Carbon Taxes on air travel to/from Britain. h/t to Leif Svalgaard.
Passengers face new tax to halt rise in air travel
Tens of billions of pounds will have to be raised through flight taxes to compensate developing countries for the damage air travel does to the environment, according to the Government’s advisory body on climate change.
Ticket prices should rise steadily over time to deter air travel and ensure that carbon dioxide emissions from aviation fall back to 2005 levels, the Committee on Climate Change says. It believes that airlines should be forced to share the burden of meeting Britain’s commitment to an 80 per cent cut in emissions by 2050.
The Times has learnt that it may challenge the Government’s decision to approve a third runway at Heathrow, suggesting that this would be inconsistent with that commitment.
The committee was established under last year’s Climate Change Act. It has a strong influence on government policy and proposed the 80 per cent target accepted by ministers.
…
Industry estimates suggest that the average passenger would pay less than £10 extra per return ticket when aviation joins the EU emissions trading scheme in 2012. This would depend on the price of allowances to emit CO2, which is expected to rise over time.
Read the complete story here at the Times
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New tax?
They have already levied a ‘fuel supplement’ for the last few years. I have been keeping a record with the intention of suing the govt in the small claims court for the return of my money once co2 is off the hook.
Well said one & all. As I commented on previous posts, it is now happening at an ever increasing rate (probably faster than my expert first predicted) the bombardment is coming in almsot daily now with at least one AGW story/day.
I can’t speak for your government in USA/Australia/NZ/SA, et al, but over here in the damper UK, our political masters play that wonderfully taxpayers cash wasting game of creating an group, committee, agency, department, completely independent despite being set up using public funds, who carry out research into issues dictated by government, & low & behold, the report they produce conclude that the governemnt should carry out certain practices, laws, taxation, that just happen to support the governments (bhind closed doors) policies! It was tobacco previously, they won that one, then I sadi to a friend at a party that it would be alcohol next, which it is, but of course they’ve quite class A drugs as they were on to a hiding to nothing in that dpeartment! Of course they never ask the question that why is it under this government so many young people “allegedly” want to drink to excess. AGW is the big daddy of all scares, from which all manner of taxes can be raised, without actually takling this non-problem. I think the people can see what is really going on here.
You can be sure that Gordon Brown will first dither over any decision thus driving up the cost of whatever assinine “solution” he eventually decides on, and then he will (eventually) make what will be the most clearly and patently wrong decision to everyone but his closest colleagues. Its his M.O.
Sadly the Tories, our Government in waiting, also seem to be smitten with a desire to self-harm.
Well, I’m sure that all politicians and members of the media will immediately agree to a death sentence as the penalty for either of their group ever flying to any event, anywhere in the world, ever again.
These are the folks pushing this madness.
Well hit them so hard they won’t recover if they transgress.
Still up for it Mr Miliband?
haha, In the Netherlands the minister of finance came up with a similar tax. Result: People just drove there cars over the border and fly from the nearby airport and making Schiphol airport one of the most expensive in the world. The tax is now reversed.
I saw a car advertisement on TV yesterday where together to the miles per gallon they gave the CO2 footprint!! I was late in noticing it so I do not remember the units.
People are being brain washed with this” CO2 original sin” guilt from all sides.
ADVERT
First world country seeks to exchange places
with third world country.
Please apply to; G Brown
10 Downing Street
London
Great new vacation/lose weight plan:
See France, swim the channel.
The ever increasing avalanche of environmental propaganda is entirely related to the forthcoming climate conference in Copenhagen. The greenies are desperately trying to compensate for an inevitable increase in the number of ‘denying’ scientists attending the conference. I do hope that sufficient will attend to outnumber ‘the warmists’ and pass a resolution rubbishing AGW. At least the MSM would have to report that; or would they?
The ‘Committee on Climate Change’ is a re-run of the ‘Committee to Save the Gay Whales’
Never mind the BBC and Guardian idiots. This is for the “oil is dwindling” “peak oil” and “the oil is running out” brigade:
Another massive oil strike for BG.
BG, the UK-based international oil and gas explorer, said today its Guara oil find in the oil and gas-rich Santos Basin in the south Atlantic contains between 1.1 to two billion recoverable barrels. The latest find by BG in the deep water off Brazil is a “supergiant” field. The Tupi find in the region is reckoned to hold as much as 30 billion barrels, though the recoverable amount will be much less.
…Meanwhile demand for oil and gas plummets.
The UK’s third titan of oil and gas after BP and Royal Dutch Shell said that weak demand for gas worldwide has forced it to cut its targets for 2009 from 680,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day to between 656,000 and 662,000. Demand for gas from industry has slumped because energy-hungry companies in the manufacturing and construction sectors have suffered. Sales of oil, gas and liquefied natural gas fell 28% to £2.3 billion, while its debts have doubled to £2 billion in the past six months. BG has reduced its funding for its Nigerian liquefied natural gas project because its government is prioritising its gas infrastructure for domestic use. BG has shifted its focus, most notably to its lucrative coal seam gas projects in Australia.
Why don’t they do it the Norwegian way? There the food is so expensive (a REFILL for a coke sets you back 8$ in a restaurant) that people simply cannot afford to travel. The government then tells its voters that they are the smartest people of the world because of that, and the people, never having seen anything else with their own eyes, believe it, too.
Go Snoopy – you go get that red baron!
Look, it’s simple.
The peasants shouldn’t be allowed to leave the country, drive their own vehicles, or leave their homes without an official pass.
Only rich people and those employed by Government (Preferably the EU!) should be permitted to travel freely.
Others lack the sense of responsibility needed and won’t do the necessary carbon-offsets.
The big problem is, that when the current bunch of useless idiots are thrown out at the next General Election, the next Government will carry on with these idiotic policies.
jeroen (01:36:50) :
“haha, In the Netherlands the minister of finance came up with a similar tax. Result: People just drove there cars over the border and fly from the nearby airport and making Schiphol airport one of the most expensive in the world. The tax is now reversed”.
jeroen,
The Dutch people and the entire Government have gone mad on climate change.
The Dutch will loose there freedom and their prosperity if they don’t wake up quickly.
The new Delta Plan to defend the country against a sea level rise of 7.5 meters?
Massive Solar and wind projects that will skyrocket electricity prices, etc, etc.
Alan the Brit (01:17:11) :
You’re right about alcohol:
Doctors want booze marketing ban
20 years, they’ll be banning alcohol from pubs. Just you watch.
Has anyone done a study of lunacy since all this AGW business started? I suspect it would show a sharp up-tick in the past 3 or 4 years from the previous 10k years of more or less stable levels of lunacy. Another Hockey schtick?
Re: Mike D. (23:48:13) :
What about the Chunnel? Is there a Chunnel tax? Would that be a Chax or a Chunnax? Arf, arf.
—
Plug the ends, turn it into a CO2 dump. Post-Copenhagen, could be far more profitable than running trains through it. Would face competition from BG’s old gas fields though.
As for more air travel tax, that’s ok, we in the UK love being taxed. As others have said, presumably people travelling to our airports will also be charged for polluting our airspace.
So less people will fly, generating less tax to help pay those poor developing countries. Shame some of those countries are developing tourism, but the tax from unsold air tickets will pay for that, won’t it?
Now I think I’ll give big Al a call and see if there’s a business plan in converting oil tankers to passenger ships..
Australian’s are nominally ruled by the big wheel in British royalty, Betty Windsor who still commands some respect.
However, next in line is her son, Charlie the Chump, a right royal dimwit and whacko in the eyes of most Australians.
Most of us here down under are just starting to realise that Charlie the Chump is not a one off as we fondly hoped but is a full on, compelling example of a the whole of the barking mad British ruling classes.
When Mother finally totters off that throne for the last time and Charlie the Chump takes over, the link to the poms will become very nominal indeed for most Australians with the strong possibility that we will just simply say, we’re outa here mate, and leave the poms to slowly disappear down their own gurgler.
ps; Close to one quarter of the current 22 million Australians are foreign born and have migrated to Australia since WW2.
It’s high time we took the Great off the front of Britain. Governed by knaves and fools, with an opposition not worthy of the name, but with the same policies.
When are we and the rest of the 1st world countries going to wake up and realise that we are on a suicide course?
If you’re not convinced, read this terrific narrative by John Brignell. It’s spot on! It should be required reading for all our legislators. They should all first be reminded of the old maxim “Read Mark Learn and Inwardly Digest”.
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/2009%20September.htm
Have a look at who is behind this: http://www.theccc.org.uk/about-the-ccc/the-committee
Adair Turner: http://www.specialistspeakers.com/?p=202
Professor Jim Skea: Research Director at UK Energy Research Centre
UKERC is funded by three Research Councils and is part of the Research Councils’ Energy Programme. NERC council members include Andrew Watson, UEA, Robert Watson, Chief Scientific Advisor to DEFRA and former advisor to Al Gore.
Professor Michael Grubb is Chief Economist at the UK Carbon Trust, previously Professor of Climate Change and Energy Policy at Imperial College, home of one of the Grantham Institutes.
Dr Samuel Fankhauser is a Principal Research Fellow at the Grantham Research Institute, also on the CCC sub-comittee to advise govt. on mitigation measures, along with Professor Martin Parry, co-chair of IPCC AR4 WGII and Visiting Professor at LSE Grantham Institute
http://www2.lse.ac.uk/ERD/pressAndInformationOffice/newsAndEvents/archives/2008/Grantham.aspx
The London School of Economics and Political Science has received over £12 million from philanthropists Jeremy and Hannelore Grantham to establish the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
The Institute will be chaired by Lord Stern of Brentford, author of the 2006 Stern Review, It will work closely with the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College, London established last year also with a donation of £12 million from the Grantham Foundation. A common advisory board will oversee the work of both Institutes.
The Grantham’s total investment of over £24 million, made through the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment, is one of the largest private donations to climate change research.
Board Members include Carter Roberts, President and CEO of World Wildlife Fund and Fred Krupp, President of Environmental Defense.
So aviation accounts for 3% of CO2 and yet it is the No1 culprit for AGW. So with CO2 at 387ppm aviation is pumping out an enourmous 12 ppm. Now, I know the argument that planes put all this CO2 into the part of the atmosphere where it is alleged it does the most ‘damage’, but even the IPCC report on avaiation admitted it could not differentiate which CO2 came from which source, and had to use projected figures of aviation growth so as to show the threat from avaiation. I can understand to some extent, but no other source of CO2 received this treatment.
So, we have statements like ‘Avaition is the fastest growing source of CO2’ which is said repeatedly without challange or quantification. For example, a couple of years ago Heathrow had a 3% increase in passenger numbers, while only a 1% increase in aircraft movements. So it is passenger numbers that get used to show how bad aviation is, even though this is an indication of moving more people with fewer planes, which for any other mode of transport is considered good.
The number of airliners in the world is around 20,000. It might be 18,000 or 22,000, not sure. The number of road vehicles is around 800,000,000. The world was producing (perhaps not now with the current recession) around 60,000,000 vehilces per year. That is just under 2 a second, along with all the tyres. The worlds road vehicles are projected to reach 2.5 billion. So how bad is a 2% increase in aviation, and is it passengers or flights?
There is an ‘environmental protester’ in the UK called ‘Swampy’, and when challenged about the numbers said “I don’t care about the numbers, it’s the symbolism”.
“Adam Gallon (03:15:46) :
Look, it’s simple.
The peasants shouldn’t be allowed to leave the country, drive their own vehicles, or leave their homes without an official pass.
Only rich people and those employed by Government (Preferably the EU!) should be permitted to travel freely.
Others lack the sense of responsibility needed and won’t do the necessary carbon-offsets.
The big problem is, that when the current bunch of useless idiots are thrown out at the next General Election, the next Government will carry on with these idiotic policies.”
Soilent Green, coming to a city near you.
“Ron de Haan (03:17:36) :
jeroen (01:36:50) :
“haha, In the Netherlands the minister of finance came up with a similar tax. Result: People just drove there cars over the border and fly from the nearby airport and making Schiphol airport one of the most expensive in the world. The tax is now reversed”.
jeroen,
The Dutch people and the entire Government have gone mad on climate change.
The Dutch will loose there freedom and their prosperity if they don’t wake up quickly.
The new Delta Plan to defend the country against a sea level rise of 7.5 meters?
Massive Solar and wind projects that will skyrocket electricity prices, etc, etc.”
This would have nothing to do with the smokes and cakes you can indulge in there aye?
“Archonix (03:27:42) :
Alan the Brit (01:17:11) :
You’re right about alcohol:
Doctors want booze marketing ban
20 years, they’ll be banning alcohol from pubs. Just you watch.”
Will never happen. Too much a tax cash cow for Gummint. In the UK, three things get rooted every tax year, ciggies, beer and………….petrol!
“ROM (03:49:39) :
Australian’s are nominally ruled by the big wheel in British royalty, Betty Windsor who still commands some respect.
However, next in line is her son, Charlie the Chump, a right royal dimwit and whacko in the eyes of most Australians.
Most of us here down under are just starting to realise that Charlie the Chump is not a one off as we fondly hoped but is a full on, compelling example of a the whole of the barking mad British ruling classes.
When Mother finally totters off that throne for the last time and Charlie the Chump takes over, the link to the poms will become very nominal indeed for most Australians with the strong possibility that we will just simply say, we’re outa here mate, and leave the poms to slowly disappear down their own gurgler.
ps; Close to one quarter of the current 22 million Australians are foreign born and have migrated to Australia since WW2.”
British ruling classes (Royalty)? They are German.
Looks like I won’t be visiting the UK any time soon. Time to cash in my extra pounds I had from my last visit.
So let me get this right. The Government here in the UK are increasing taxes to the tens of billions to deter air travel at the same time as expanding airports – Heathrow isn’t the only expanding airport – in order to meet projected future increase in air travel demand.