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Aviation
Aviation is the fastest growing source of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions, and accounts for 13 per cent of the UK’s contribution to climate change. Yet instead of adopting policies that can slow the massive growth of aviation emissions in recent years, the government is actively encouraging it through planned airport expansion.
Aviation emissions are particularly damaging because they mostly happen at high altitude, which is calculated to cause an extra warming effect two to four times greater than normal.
If the government is serious about tackling climate change, it must act to halt the growth in aviation emissions, but it is doing the opposite:
- The UK’s share of international aviation emissions is not included in the UK government’s emission reduction targets.
- The government is planning massive airport expansion to accommodate a doubling of air passenger travel between 2002 and 2020.
Aviation emissions are due to be included in the EU’s emissions trading scheme in the next couple of years but this is unlikely to be a solution. British Airways has already worked out that this will only add between £1.20 and £6 to the cost of a return flight, which is not likely to stimulate emissions reduction by the airlines.
Instead, the government should implement a substantial environmental tax on flights and scrap its airport expansion plans. This will have a much better chance of ensuring that increasing aviation emissions don’t wipe out savings in emissions we manage to make elsewhere.
Campaign success
Aviation currently pays no tax on fuel and no VAT, receiving an effective subsidy of over £10 billion a year. In late 2007, following campaigning by WDM and others, the government announced that it would replace air passenger duty with an environmental tax on planes. This is welcomed but the challenge for the UK government now is to set the tax on planes at a high enough rate to halt the growth in aviation.
Find out more
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Flying in the face of the poor |
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Emissions Invisible |
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