Climate Change - taxation on flights

[Tom B]

How much more would a £40 flight to Europe have to be to make people decide not to fly?

£140, £240, £340....?

Or is it better to ration flights to one per person per year/two years?

Surely plans to expand Glasgow/Edinburgh airport over the next 10/15 years have got to be scrapped?

[alan k]

All depends how much the person is willing to pay-different classes of people will be willing to pay more. Dont see rationing flights per year or curbing airport development going down too well with the voting public

[big tony]

i think that to offset global warming the government should start taxing fermers for all the methane that their coos expunge.

but don't panic, they'll get it all back thru the use of rid diesel!!!!!!!

i read somewhere that a herd of a hunner coos can produce enough methane to heat a small toon, thats why you'll always see fermers with rosy cheeks, its no working ootdoors that does it, its heating themselves at the nearest coos erse

thats no a word oh a lie!!!

[dedalus]

Is that "the" Tom Barbour the second most successful athlete in the class of 76?

anyway - I take it tis the Stern report of which you speak

good idea in principle - however politicians are in general too stupid to be trusted with science - mix that with public opinion and economics and you have an unholy mixture that will be a monumental opportunity to screw up on a biblical scale.

- and yes its a scandal that air travel is subsidised and people vilify me for a 4x4 when in fact it pollutes less than a Ford Galaxy. And bono drives a prius when a mercedes S class is cradle to grave less polluting than said prius

[Malky]

Eco-taxes have got nothing to do with climate change - they're just another stealth tax to get money for Gordon Brown's coffers. The beauty of them is (from Gordon Browns point of view), is that people won't want to be seen to be against them as they will be accused of being uncaring about the planet.

Green taxes have a place - ie. the small charge on supermarket bags in Ireland - but they need to be used properly. They shouldn't be used by a government to flaunt its "green credentials".

Malky

[dedalus]

just realised that would have been John Barbour

[Dr Dog]

just realised that would have been John Barbour

I think he left his coat here last time he visited.

[big tony]

see what your doing there dedalous, seeking out some praise for your own athletic abilities, seeing as its your name on the board above the jannies office as top dog for that year, plus i think your highjump and hunner metres times still stand to this day!!

wait till yir wee brother sees that posting, oh he'll no miss and hit the wa, ok he will, his aim was aye rotten.

sorry went off thread, don't hurt me

i refer the member to the comment i made some moments ago, my tiny hands are frozen

anybody got a spare coos erse?

[Mags B]

Eco-taxes have got to have a place in making changes to fuel emissions - but the money raised would have to go on environmentally friendly policies, such as development of the railways, insulation, research into alternatives, etc. Sadly the only way to make some people change their ways is to hit them in their pocket. Flights should be rationed too - who needs to travel business class when you can videoconference?

And how can we explain to our children and grandchildren that we put more importance on a cheap weekend to Prague than on their future? They will only look back in complete disbelief at the way people in the late 20th and early 21st centuries walked about with their heads in the sand about this issue. We cannot go on treating the environment the way that we do now - and you only have to look out of the window to see the grass still growing and the very mild (until yesterday!) weather that we have to see how it is affecting us right now, right here in Argyll.

[Jan]

I sorry, fuel taxes won't work.

Does tax on Fags, stop people smoking?

If you want to be green then the Goverment has to say to the car makers. In two years Every car must do 50mpg at least around Town and all aircraft have to be fuel efficient too.
Do you know that a 747 Jumbo Jet burns 15 Gallons a second at takeoff when fully loaded!

[Tom B]

If a return flight to Barcelona cost £1,000 or £2,000, wouldn't that cut down air travel? Crude and unfair maybe, but isn't it essential?

What is the alternative? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/p ... ec_sum.pdf

[EMDEE]

Good link. The Stern Review should be compulsory reading for those with a head in the sand attitude towards the environment.

[gizmo]

I personally dont fly (bit of a chicken) so price hikes dont worry me, but it seems that pricing the poorer people out of the equation can only be part of it, why should the mega rich just carry on as normal or are their emissions more pleasant than ours... And while Im thinking on it why do they make all these energy saving summits in obscure places that the polititions have to charter jets to get to, couldnt they talk about it on the phone... Has anyone else noticed the increase in people now saying that global warming might not be the case after all..

[EMDEE]

Here's a link that might also be of interest to those who think that global warming is a myth:

http://www.alaska.net/~clund/e_djublons ... ociety.htm

[big tony]

raising fuel prices would take us back to the good old days when only those that have would be ablte to fly, just think how the standard of your holiday would be raised if you didn't keep tripping over a planeload from (insert your least favourite part of glasgow here!!) or a bunch of paunchy barechested tattoed oafs from south of the border

last time i was in portugal we kept coming across a bunch of england fans of an unsavoury nature, everywhere we went, there they were, i think they were trying to pose as tourists ahead of euro championships, but the tattoos were a dead giveaway, wouldn't have minded but they were all chelsea fans.

thats the ticket, keep the poor at home where they belong, sadly at the prices mentioned that now includes me!!!!