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
That’s why I’ve stopped regarding the NYT a serious newspaper a long time ago.
Liberal journalist believes China’s Communist Regime is a better Government solution.
http://heliogenic.blogspot.com/2009/09/elitist-liberal-envies-one-party.html
Kevin (00:58:49) :
“Fools – you never set up a committee without knowing what answer it will deliver in advance. Almost the entire English Parliament outsourced their decision-making on climate policy to the Committee on Climate Change and, surprise, surprise – the philosopher kings of the CCC are now wielding the policy whip hand !!!”
The English Democrats party will be delighted to know that their number one objective – a Parliament for England – has now been met. But where does it meet? And who is the leader of the largest party in the “English” Parliament? It’s also good news to know that us Scots no longer have our foreign policy decided by those nice people who meet in Downing Street.
Or was “English” just that typical English slip of the tongue (or pen) when what they really mean is British?
Sound like in the UK you will soon have to apply for and carry a travek permit if you go more than a pre-determined number of Kilometres from your home. I suppose this will generate a whole new class of bureaucrat and police to check that everyone is following the law, a perfect way to ensure full employment.
George Orwell could not have scripted it any better.
Keep rising the prices of air travel and all those uppity proles that want holidays abroad will have to stay at home.
Therefore there will be much less crowding at airports and the really important people who actually matter will be able to get on with their lives without the impediment of the unwashed getting in the way.
It’s really a marvelous suggestion.
/parody
……this was their worst hour……..
There will come a moment in time when the Brits wonder why they ever took the effort to fight the Battle of Britain, beat the Nazi’s keeping the Russians out of Western Europe, let alone fight the Cold War!
I hope it happens before the next elections.
Hi Lucy Skywalker – glad to hear you are taking the debate to the streets. The WA (or was it Australian) Institute of Geoscientists (or some such organisation) recently had a debate in Perth (western Australia) which attracted hundreds.
in the one corner we had a geologist who had formerly worked for the Big Fella (BHP) and converted to AlGorism and politics – Gary Warden. In the other corner we had another geologist, probably known to a few of you – Prof Ian Plimer.
Needless to say all Warden could do was repeatedly point to IPCC quotes and profess a lack of personal knowledge on the subject. Plimer basically tore apart the debate (but politely I might add) on every single point. I wish there was a transcript of the night.
Plimer certainly had some memorable quotes, and if you email him Lucy, I am sure he will be happy to provide some ammunition. I certainly liked the one in which he likened the IPCC to putting climate change on the rack and making it confess to AGW… or words to that effect.
PS> Personally I don’t see that Plimer has a lot of answers either, but he certainly asks a lot of good questions, and that is what science is all about, no?
Might be urban myth, but there is a story from China under Mao that there was a plague of rats. Mao declared that each person would be required to hand in X rat tails a week to a depot and be paid a small fee for them, or a large fine for failure.
In next to no time, entrepreneurial Chinese had set up rat farms, to sell tails to those who had failed to hunt their own. Maybe the rat population increased.
People as a group can invent quite perverse responses to laws they dislike.
On this very theme, what happens to the money that is collected from emission imposts? Why, it is spent by the new recipients on more electricity, more air travel, more cars and car miles – the GHG level scarcely changes unless you do something daring like build a large nuke plant. It’s a scam.
There is a very serious point here. The UK is about to sign up to lowering emissions by 90% from 1990 levels. This is necessary, because the previously proposed 80% was not enough, given the amount that the airline industry is contributing.
So think about it. This is a proposal for having two and only two sources of emissions at some point in the future. We will leave our unheated houses, unwashed since our last weekly bath, and make our way by bicycle through fields plowed by teams of horses, to an airport, where we will fly to a warm country. All around us will be parking lots full of cars which, thanks to their subsidized prices, cost the buyer almost nothing, but which thanks to restrictions on emissions, cannot be driven.
We will have achieved our three objectives. We will have kept manufacturing and selling as many cars as possible, which will ‘save jobs’. The fact that no-one can drive them is irrelevant. We will have kept the airline industry going in pretty much its present form. And we will have reduced emissions by 90% from 1990.
You cannot get there from here. If you really are going to make the kinds of reductions the UK is talking about, home heating in winter is the priority. This means air travel and car travel and the auto industry have to go. Along with a lot else.
Quite why we have to make these kinds of reductions, or what effect they will have if we do, well, that’s a different matter. But it is simply idiotic to think you can make them and still keep the car and airline industries as we have them today.
Some people from the developing world (and developed) world practise the art of walking over hot coals. Surely this must leave a hefty carbon foot print.
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.”
“The Right Charlie of Clarence House.” The British monarchy has in the past shown a tendency to oscillate around Kings “Charles.” Also, “Charles the third” seems to show a striking mental resemblance to George the third.
—-
The Committee on Climate Change has for some time been monitoring the activities of the tooth fairy. They are about to issue recommendations that it be required to reduce its uncalcium emissions by 3004.1% by the year 2025, otherwise the universe will implode to something the size of a ferret’s testicle.
In addition to the current scheme for monitoring the flatulation fairy, an additional group will begin, at the taxpayer’s expense, to monitor the activities of the micturation fairy, with a view to also reducing it’s emissions. This is expected to boost the clothes peg and rubber bung industries, leading to a massive economic recovery.
At present, our brown Prime Minister, oops, sorry, our Prime Minister, Brown*, has been unable to develop strong enough magic spells to tackle the serious problem of Bowel Magic, but the necessary statistics are sure to be “developed” in the next few years.
* Brown by name, and brown by nature.
THEY ARE REALLY THIS CRAZY!
But the trick they will never learn (people who are never wrong never learn) is only to be insane when you want to be!
RE: NGO’s and similar organisations
Although the story is a little old now, it still illustrates how key elements of the “climate crisis” operate in the UK (and no doubt in the US soon, if not already). For the quick version head to page 2 “All aboard the gravy train”
And from a separate story
Greg S (14:43:12)
Orwell was particularly prophetic. In the novel 1984 – written in 1948, cctv was watching everyone. Yet this was science fiction as the cctv didn’t come until the 70’s
Ron de Haan (13:06:23):
Thankyou for links. Scary to see it all together in one place.
They seem to be motivated by elitism and hatred for the rest of the race, don’t they?
Alexej Buergin (02:20:42) :
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.
I give you that food is expensive here, but you are speaking complete nonsense wrt. traveling. Norwegians travel a lot abroad. There is much to criticize the Norwegian authorities for, and especially its climate policies. But what you say is just silly.