Even after the APD reduction, domestic air passengers will still be paying more tax per mile travelled than any international traveler despite emitting less carbon. Whilst extra EU flying is exempted from paying for its carbon, domestic flights have been included in the ETS scheme [Emissions Trading System] for almost a decade, so our domestic passengers will also still be paying for their carbon emissions (about £56 per tonne at current prices).
The projected growth of air travel is the primary challenge in curbing its emissions but unlike international flying, UK domestic airline emissions peaked in 2005 and have steadily declined by 23% since then.
That we must fly less and take the train more has been repeated so often it is now an accepted and unchallengeable truth. But despite the plethora of organisations campaigning to curb air travel, no one seems to have considered what happens if we actually do. I have written before about how poor scientific method and the misuse of statistics have disguised the fact that the emissions of long-distance diesel trains are actually closer to parity with UK domestic air travel. But the majority (60%) of the UK’s air routes cross water and have no rail substitute anyway.
Of the 127 domestic air routes in the UK, only 7 of them (6%) can be replaced by an electric train. Of these services, the railway from London to Scotland is already near capacity and can’t come close to matching the peak seat capacity provided by airlines. It doesn’t take much imagination to forecast what happens if we continue to tax (or ban as many call for) domestic flying indiscriminately. We will generate millions of additional car miles and emit more CO₂ than the status quo. We could, of course, build more track. But the construction of HS2 will take many years and, in its own worse case estimate, will generate 14 million tonnes of CO₂ - more than UK domestic air travel would emit in 10 years.
We will and must find a solution to bring the UK’s transport emissions down by 2030 but we won’t find it without changing our approach to solving problem and thinking more sceptically about claims made by any single-issue advocates – whether they are corporates (like me) or climate NGOs.
Climate demands are frequently loaded with emotion and moral outrage and in a social media inflamed news feed there is little room for nuance, or constructive dissent. People and things are quickly categorised as either “good” or “bad” and for most of us that’s the end of our intellectual engagement with a problem – we revert to heuristics and getting rid of (or taxing) the “bad” thing, getting more of (or subsidising) the “good” thing becomes instinctively correct without further deliberation needed. It is an effective communication tactic and using it, environmental activists have won a significant victory in the monumental battle to move public and political opinion towards accepting the necessity of addressing climate change.
But Barnum-type statements such as “we must reduce (insert the bad thing here)” are both correct and misleading in equal measure. Apart from physical exercise and fruit/vegetable consumption, there are very few things the average European citizen shouldn’t be reducing to live healthier and more sustainably. The fight against climate change involves real-world trade-offs, almost always between multiple unattractive choices which affect disparate social groups and the choices can’t be dumbed down to the binary “good” or “bad” without polarising and isolating the very groups we need to buy in to the solutions.
The biggest challenge in getting to 2030 with 1.5°C still alive is not technical or even financial – it will be about social acceptance.
We must make carbon increasingly scarce in a fair and just way at the same time as billions of earth’s citizens inexorably seek to improve, or at least maintain, their quality of life. We will undoubtedly fail if we make decisions about scarce resources based on shallow and uncritical thinking and fail to understand and mitigate the impacts on those most affected.
