France calls for minimum price on European flights
France's transport minister called Wednesday for a minimum price for plane flights in Europe to battle climate change.
A 1000% tax on private jet flights would be nice too tho 🤨
This is exactly what I thought, too.
without looking it up I guess there are more commercial flights than flights with private jets. would you also tax flights of private planes that are not jets?
Emissions per passenger per kilometre.
Without looking it up, how many people does 1 commercial flight carry, and how many people does one private flight carry? How much fuel, therefore, is burned per person on each private flight? A private flight that could've been done on a commercial flight?
We'll sit here until you work it out. Don't worry, we have cheese and a flask of tea
A carbon tax does a better job at incentivizing low-carbon alternatives at all scales, from trains and more efficient airplanes down to e-bikes.
the carbon tax for one kg should be set at 110% the cost to remove one kg, 100% to completely remove it, and 10% to help remove past emissions, which statistically the emitter probably emitted pre-tax anyways
You do not have linear costs of removal. Just letting nature be has no additional costs, but in the amount necessary extreme opportunity costs.
Technical systems might have a theoretical cost, but practically any energy put into removing CO2 from the atmosphere is much better put into not using fossil fuels to produce energy for a different purpose.
Meanwhile the cost estimates for the damages incurred are in regions of 200-500 €/tonne now. So unless we also properly tax imports and other countries also do carbon taxing, it will be the death to any industry.
An increasing carbon tax is an important instrument, but it can only be part of many measures, most importantly ramping up the renewable production by all means.
I think planes or to be precise their fuel aren't even taxed normally
We have the largest emission trading scheme in the world in the EU and it is actually working. The issue is that there are no taxes on international flights nor on kerosine. So flying is made artifically cheaper. That alone basicly would solve the problem.
The other big problem is that train tickets are not generally accepted across EU borders. That is a massive problem if one of your trains is delayed and you miss a connection due to that. You end up not being able to take an alternative train for free and do not get paid the normal fine from the train operator for long delays. There is some cooperation, so this is not the case for all international journeys, but still it is a problem.
The big oil companies support that because it would cost a lot of political capital. That means they can delay it as long as possible
That's true, but a carbon tax is politically more difficult to implement
What are they doing for the train interconnections and low price all over the union ? Nothing.
Oh nice
Instead of trying to lower prices for alternatives (e.g. trains), they just try to jack up prices for existing forms of transport, so that the other transports now seem cheaper. How about taxing the shit out of airlines and using that to get trains down to the price of what airlines charge now?
This is just again getting the mid- and low-income layers to pay for shit.
"I openly call for taxing polluting activities to invest in the ecological transition," said Beaune, adding that the government plans to increase the tax on flights departing France to fund rail investments.
I don't think it's entirely clear what he wants the EU to do, but it really seems like making other forms of transport cheaper is part the goal here.
Hence I think it's likely going to be a reasonable proposal. Making flights more expensive to pay for cheaper trains is a good way to go about it. The money for the trains to come from somewhere and flights are something people can live without.
Yes, if it is done in the right order. Make trains cheaper first, then add to the cost of airlines. Knowing politics it will be "We will now tax flights with an additonal X% and use that for alternative travels". Then, 10 years later, the "alternative travels" will be the same price but flying will be more expensive. I just do not trust politics anymore at all if they do not put the "lowering costs" part first.
Who do you think they will pass on those costs? Basically all Airlines make their money on normal tickets and not on the class 1 tickets. What you really want are instead of 0% tax on Airplaine fuel, ridiculous taxes. That actually increases the COSTS of airlines and those do get passed on more to the rich as they travel a lot more inefficiently. They also can't evade costs, but they can taxes.
You might be misunderstanding my comment: They can increase costs if they want, but they should take the costs away elsewhere. I have no problem with a train ticket being 10€ and a plane ticket being 120€ instead of the other way around.
But this will lead to a plane ticket being (as an example) 80€ and the train ticket continuing to be 120€. While they do make more money off of 1st class and stuff, they still need to make a chunk of the cost off of 2nd class. Especially on more local (e.g. inside the country or just one over), where there often is just one class in the plane (And maybe there is business).
Sounds good! Now just make sure to include a clause that planes below a certain (carbon emission) threshold are excluded, so it actually promotes innovation and change, and doesn't just make it more expensive.
You mean like planes that have no wings and fly roughly 0mm above metal rails on the ground?
a few mm is fine, maglevs are cool
I really can't wait for the internet to learn the reality of trains and get over this obsession, the steel required for tracks is a huge issue before we even get to the logistics and wasted energy involved in running them - a carbon neutral fuel source would make plains considerably better from an ecological perspective then trains for long and medium length journeys - we're already in the process of taking solutions to market and the chemistry isn't especially difficult so it's something that's absolutely going to happen.
I love trains but they're not an ecological panacea.