UK Government Pledges Climate Action, Plans Doubling Of Commercial Aviation - Guardian

[hatrack]

I suppose I should be flattered. In a speech to fellow airline bosses a few days ago, Martin Broughton, the chief executive of British Airways, announced that the primary challenge for the industry is to "isolate the George Monbiots of this world". That shouldn't be difficult. For a terrifying spectre, I'm feeling pretty lonely. Almost everyone in politics appears to want to forget about aviation's impact on the environment.

On Wednesday the secretary of state for communities launched a bold plan to make new homes more energy efficient. She claims it will save 7m tonnes of carbon. On Thursday Douglas Alexander, the transport secretary, announced that he would allow airports to keep growing: by 2030 the number of passengers will increase from 228 million to 465 million. As a result, according to a report commissioned by the Department for Environment, carbon emissions will rise by between 22m and 36m tonnes. So much for joined-up government.

EDIT

No one now pretends that the industry can design its way out of this. The Department for Transport's wildly optimistic figure (a mere 91% of the UK's target) assumes improvements in efficiency that most observers believe will be impossible to realise. Jet engines consume 70% less fuel than they did 40 years ago; now they have pretty well reached their limits, while radical new aircraft designs and new fuels are, at best, several decades away from commercialisation. Even Martin Broughton admits that the airlines' fuel-efficiency gains "are likely to be outweighed by future growth". So the government relies on two other mechanisms: taxation and trading. It knows that neither of them will work.

Gordon Brown announced two weeks ago that he will double air-passenger duty, from £5 to £10. This merely reverses the cut that he made in 2001. In its white paper on aviation, the Transport Department investigated the effect of a bigger levy - a 100% fuel tax. This, it found, would increase the airlines' costs by 10%. But the growth of the no-frills carriers would be sufficient to offset the price rise, ensuring that there was no suppression of demand. Air-passenger duty might begin to bite at 10 times its current level. Is there anyone in government who has the guts to make that happen? Brown's pathetic levy is counteracted by subsidies that he has managed, so far, to keep mostly hidden from public view. It turns out that the government has been authorising "route development funds" to establish "new links from regional airports". European rules permit governments to provide up to 50% of the start-up costs for regional airports and their new connections. Last week, for example, the Guardian reported that Derry City Council has been secretly giving Ryanair £1.3m a year. Our money is being used to subsidise climate change.

EDIT

http://business.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1975207,00.html