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There is no green alternative. tratong / shutterstock




Political leaders are also unwilling to point the finger at passenger-voters. Indeed, Tony Blair asked as prime minister in 2005 “how many politicians facing a potential election would vote to end cheap air travel?” His answer: zero. The political strategy seems to be passing the buck to the airline industry, and hoping for the best.

Aviation is a golden goose for politicians. In the UK, where sources of future post-Brexit economic growth are hard to identify, the industry looks set to continue its enviable historic growth-rate of 4-5% annually. The main problem for airlines now is finding enough space to accommodate planes at crowded airports such as Heathrow. Airlines’ seductive message to politicians is “If you build it, they will come.”

And the primary reason that they will come is because flying is kept artificially cheap, while trains and cars become more expensive. The main reason for this is the so-called “Chicago Convention”, agreed in 1944 by a then much smaller air industry, which prohibits countries from imposing jet fuel tax and VAT on international flights. Taxes on other forms of transport have increased dramatically since 1944 but thanks to the convention aviation has remained almost unscathed. Things have actually moved in the other direction since the 1990s, when an influx of low-cost carriers led to big cost savings and even lower ticket prices.

What is to be done? Aviation, along with shipping, was given special status and excluded from the Kyoto and Paris climate change agreements. The industry was tasked to come up with its own solutions instead. After much foot-dragging, the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), finally addressed aviation emissions in 2016, proposing a market-based mechanism, the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA).

Under CORSIA, countries’ airlines are given allowances to emit carbon, and if they exceed their allowances (which they will) then they must buy offsets from other sectors. Yet the plan is not nearly radical enough. It doesn’t even come into power for another decade, and it does nothing to stifle demand – unlike a carbon tax.

As we can see, regulating the environmental impact of flying is a complex business. Ignorance and inaction is an appealing reaction to complexity, but we need to act before aviation gobbles up more of the increasingly small wriggle-room for emission cuts. We can try and reduce the number of flights taken, buy carbon offsets for unavoidable flights, and question the broader logic of allowing the industry to grow ad infinitum. Just using a carbon calculator to learn about the carbon impact of our sunny escapades is a good start.

If citizens remain blissfully unaware of aviation emissions, then airlines and governments are unlikely to do anything about them. Alternatively, if governments ever wish to place a global carbon tax on flights, then they will need to create political “buy-in” from citizens who increasingly see cheap flights as a right.