The United Nations has brokered a new international agreement which forces airlines to pay for “green” projects. By 2035, the UN expects the deal will siphon $24 billion / annum from the pockets of air travellers.
Aviation pact on global warming wins go-ahead
Airlines back UN accord to offset emissions growth by funding green projects.
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Delegates from nearly 200 nations approved the accord at the UN’s International Civil Aviation Organisation in Montreal in a step the agency’s head, Fang Liu, described as a “historic first”.
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One of the countries that helped push the Paris deal over the line was Canada, where the centre-left government of prime minister Justin Trudeau announced a carbon-pricing plan on Monday that could lead to a tax of C$50 a tonne by 2022.
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Instead of facing a patchwork of measures worldwide, airlines have backed a plan that will see them offset their emissions growth by funding projects that cut carbon pollution, such as wind farms or solar-power plants.
The scheme will be phased in over several years from the early 2020s and cost the aviation industry as much as $24bn by 2035, according to estimates from the UN agency.
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Read more: https://www.ft.com/content/2a9c7f14-8bd7-11e6-8aa5-f79f5696c731
The FT article makes a big deal of how airlines supported the new scheme. It might seem counterintuitive that airlines would support a new tax on their operations, but in the wake of the botched European attempt in 2012 to unilaterally introduce an aviation carbon trading scheme, the mishandling of which saw some airlines operating at a cost disadvantage against their competitors, it is understandable that airlines would support a level playing field, and a measure of protection against some of the more unpredictable green world leaders.
In any case, airlines won’t lose much if any money because of this new tax – they will simply pass the extra cost on to their customers.
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This is appalling. The UN doesn’t have any authority to levy taxes. A bunch of rich, connected, meddlesome, mindless, herd-instinct bureaucrats telling us what to do. Arrrgh.
What makes this insidious is that it isn’t a tax. The money is paid voluntarily by the airlines to avoid being taxed instead. But worse, what they have to “pay” is actually an “investment” in Big Wind and Big Solar. Not hydro or nuclear which are arguably just as emission free as wind and solar and actually work, nor in any other technology which might emerge in the future which makes sense to adopt.
But the worst part is that this scheme opens the door for immense corruption. Who will broker the investment deals between airlines and Big Wind/Solar? The UN? Any chance that someone will game the system like the old “Oil for Food Program”? Of course when caught, the UN will investigate itself and absolve itself of any responsibility.
Or, even worse, the airlines could be left free to cut their own deals with Big Wind/Solar. The airlines are run by astute business people, they’ll look for opportunities to recoup their investments. Rebate schemes and other back door transactions will abound.
I’m kind of in favour of this. The corruption will run wide and deep and the public scandals as a consequence will not be far behind.
“What makes this insidious is that it isn’t a tax. The money is paid voluntarily by the airlines to avoid being taxed instead.”
In other words: Extortion.
Exactly. $600 for a full A320 isn’t going to kill me at perhaps $4 a ticket. But it’s the precedent. If a smallish carbon tax sticks, why not then tax my electricity? Then why not my income – the UNSSR has no shortage of “worthy causes” besides saving the planet.
And they call this The Age of Reason. Yeah… uh-huh…
So long as they use the proceeds of the tax for bread and circuses, it should all end well, right?
/bitter sarc
Nope, they call this the post modern Progressive era. The Age of Reason was the 1700’s.
Ahhh… that explains why none of our politicos are reasonable any more. Thanks, David.
Won’t happen. At least not in the US anyway where it would take an act of Congress to start taxing anything. The UN has no authority over any governments or citizens of any country. Besides….the affect on travel would devastate the travel industry that many countries depend on and the results would be felt immediately. More wishful thinking by the Marx Brothers at the UN….throw it up on the wall and see if it sticks.
I don’t see how the UN can make us pay a tax. Seems to me we should be able to block it and then give a big ‘eff you’ to the UN, leftists, and globalists (is there any difference?).
The author is correct that they will pass on the tax to us. Same with a general carbon tax on everything. What a carbon tax does is get the rich off the hook from paying taxes because so much money will be coming in, there will be no need to tax them.
As a life-long conservative who has nothing against rich people, I think it’s time we eff them with higher taxes. Why? Because they are effing the middle class with taxes so they can preserve their wealth.
“I don’t see how the UN can make us pay a tax. ”
It is not really the UN. ICAO is a worldwide organization which decides how aviation is run – rules on flying, airports, meteorology, etc.
Gerald Machnee commented: “…It is not really the UN. ICAO is a worldwide organization which decides how aviation is run – rules on flying, airports, meteorology, etc….”
It is a “specialized agency” of the UN. And like the UN it is an NGO. It basically coordinates aviation rules between countries. It has no governmental, law, or taxing authority. People need to understand what the UN is up to and what their charter really is. They’ve morphed….. by design I believe …. into a quasi government organization with designs on ruling the world. Read Agenda 21 (if you can stomach the verbiage, repetition, and arrogance) and you’ll get the picture. Bit by bit (a la the EU) they are gaining control with the help of operatives in every country. How do you think AGW got as far as it did today?
I’m also wondering what happens when Canada’s mandatory carbon tax meets the airlines’ UN deal. Will the airlines insist that they get an exemption because they are part of the UN deal? Will Canada then say OK, provided that you only “invest” in Canadian Big Wind/Solar? Will power utilities like the one in Ontario then argue that their province should be exempted from the exemption because they’ve already got so much Wind that at peak they have to pay power utilities in the US to take their power? Or will they instead plow money into Solar despite being in a geo where Solar is useless? Oh, the deal just says the airlines have to invest, it doesn’t say anything about actual production?
A tangled web of deception so entrenched it will take generations to unravel it.
Let’s not forget that Kathleen Wynne’s massive tax hike expected to cost Air Canada alone more than $50-million next year
Of course, sales tax will be piled on tax upon tax.
Wynne’s Ontario is a basket case, and in worse shape than California per capita.
http://www.debtclock.ca/provincial-debtclocks/ontario/
http://www.usdebtclock.org/state-debt-clocks/state-of-california-debt-clock.html
The sooner Ontario goes bust, the better for the rest of us. We just need to ensure we build the wall first, so the liberals can’t just flee West and destroy us, too.
I’m be interested to see how the management of publicly owned companies pitch this to their stockholders. If it is not a ‘tax’ per se ( enforced by law) then it is a donation to some organization or a payment. We will see how this plays out.
And now that they will have a chance to control the internet they will tax that also. By 2035 it will be the largest taxing organization in the world and will be an unelected and unaccountable “world government”. It won’t need to get funding from anyone and there will be no way to shut the scam down. It will be corrupt because most of it’s members are corrupt and it’s programs are even more corrupt. The world will then be completely controlled by dictators and its elites. America and it’s symbol of freedom will long be forgotten. check mate
UN just wants revenue streams.
The ignorance of reality exists just as much with the posters to this site. Take the per passenger fuel consumption of aircraft for example an Airbus 350 or a Boeing 787 and there is no other form of transport that is as frugal on fuel and none that are as safe. Not only that but there is no huge road or rail infrastructure to be maintained just airports at start and end of journey. The fuel wasting plane myth is just as unreal as the increase in droughts and wildfires myths – or the myth of a perfect 1750AD climate. But the myth of extreme CO2 ‘pollution’ from aircraft is unfortunately pushed here too allowing the ‘greens’ a simple win.
Al Gore must be delighted http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/251232
http://www.usnews.com/news/business/articles/2016-10-06/un-agreement-reached-on-aircraft-climate-change-emissions
“The United Nations’ aviation arm overwhelmingly ratified an agreement Thursday to control global warming emissions from international airline flights, the first climate-change pact to set worldwide limits on a single industry.
The agreement, adopted overwhelmingly by the 191-nation International Civil Aviation Organization at a meeting in Montreal, sets airlines’ carbon emissions in the year 2020 as the upper limit of what carriers are allowed to discharge.
Airlines that exceed that limit in future years, as most are expected to do, will have to offset their emissions growth by buying credits from other industries and projects that limit greenhouse gas emissions.”
This is a clear effort to underwrite a failing market:
These were the early scrambles:
JP Morgan:
2008- https://www.theguardian.com/business/2008/mar/27/jpmorgan.greenbusiness
Goldman Sachs:
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/12/goldman-sachs-buys-into-carbon-offsets/comment-page-1/
Barclays:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/barclays-offers-16398m-to-buy-swedish-carbon-specialist-1989900.html
Bank of America-Merrill Lynch:
http://www.environmentalleader.com/2011/10/11/bofa-merrill-enters-california-carbon-market/
http://www.ecosystemmarketplace.com/articles/painting-the-town-redd-merrill-lynch-inks-massive-voluntary-forest-deal/
2013
“Dream turning sour – Carbon desk closures” http://www.fern.org/book/trading-carbon/carbon-desk-closures
“There is increasing scepticism from within the market that carbon holds any trading future. Follow the latest carbon desk closures here. News like this are symptomatic of serious problems within the carbon market. In the article, independent analysts and carbon traders themselves recognize these evident problems. When large investment banks, formerly major owners and supporters of carbon offsets, start to abandon carbon trading, some reflection is due.”
Whilst a Global Carbon Price is the ultimate objective, they are not there yet:
“Global carbon price would have been a Paris dealbreaker” – Figueres http://carbon-pulse.com/14405/
“The UN Paris Agreement on climate change failed to include setting a global carbon price because it did not attract unanimous country support deemed necessary, according to the UN’s [former] climate chief Christiana Figueres.
Rather than impose a single global carbon price, the Agreement, which will take effect from 2020, included provisions for countries to meet their emission-curbing pledges via emissions trading and established a new market-based mechanism.”
I think there are going to be an increasing number of mostly empty planes flying around.
By 2035, there will be very few planes flying around. If you want to ‘go’ somewhere in twenty years, you’ll just log in to VR and rent a drone where you want to go.
This is why the whole ‘carbon tax’ thing is so silly. Fossil fuel use is about to implode, and it’s nothing to do with governments and taxes. Technology is making travel obsolete.
time to reel in the UN.
it’s a bureaucracy out of control
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/303932642_THE_UNITED_NATIONS_AN_UNCONSTRAINED_BUREAUCRACY
The corporate world is giving the climatocracy the knife they are being murdered with
It beats me why they always pick on air travel – a minority means of transport, and therefore the *least* important in terms of CO2 emission!
(The argument seems to go; if everyone does as they’re supposed to and sticks to their climate agreements, the internal combustion engine and fossil fueled power stations will become a thing of the past. Then air travel will be the *majority* CO2 emitter…)
The UN itself has no authority to levy taxes on sovereign nations.
The question arises, “Who will be responsible for collecting / redirecting / misdirecting these billions?”
Just imagine the litigation when the whole global warming scam is finally busted.