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Posts Tagged ‘environment’

The Dutch “green tax” on aviation, which I’ve blogged about here and here, is already negatively affecting Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, according to a report:
Some 50,000 fewer passengers are expected to use Amsterdam Schiphol airport, one of Europe’s busiest, this summer on account of a Dutch environmental tax on flights, it was reported Saturday.
“We’re expected zero [...]

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Lots of interesting testimony at today’s Senate Commerce Committee hearing on climate change and transportation. Discussion subjects ranged widely, from surface transportation to the possibility of shipping in the Arctic. “The transportation sector accounts for approximately one-third of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions,” announced committee chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii). He added that GHG emissions from transportation [...]

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As I see it, one of the problems of responding to climate change is the need for a response coordinated across industries and countries. Lots of industries like to trumpet what they are doing on their own to reduce their carbon footprints, but what if these reductions simply shift the climate change contribution onto another [...]

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News came out today that the U.S. embassy in London has responded harshly to plans by HM Treasury to change the Air Passenger Duty into a per-plane tax at great expense to airlines and, ultimately, travelers. Air Passenger Duty was last raised dramatically in 2006 as an anti-climate change measure. Then-chancellor (and current prime minister) [...]

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Greenhouse gas emissions from domestic commercial aviation have fallen 13 percent between 2000 and 2006, according to recently released figures from the Environmental Protection Agency. I blogged about a USA Today article on this report last week, and I finally tracked down the original, cleverly obscured on the EPA website. (The aviation-relevant sections are here [...]

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According to an article in USA Today, an EPA report indicates that the U.S. commercial aviation industry, despite having expanded substantially since 2000, has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 13 percent. I’m trying to track down the EPA report (which is not readily available online) to probe these numbers further.
These findings dovetail with [...]

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The House Aviation Subcommittee is holding a hearing today on the environmental impact of aviation, especially emissions. I won’t be able to cover the entire session, but I’ll give you what I can.
Representative Jerry Costello (D-Ill.) offers his opening statement. He emphasizes that the need to reduce emissions is a corollary of the need to [...]

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The Internet is abuzz about the latest example of “eco- scandalous” airline behavior. An American Airlines flight from Chicago to London flew February 9 with only five passengers, using — reportedly — 22,000 gallons of Jet A. Why is this causing an uproar? The advocacy group Friends of the Earth considers it an “obscene waste [...]

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“Higher P, lower Q.”
Hat-tip to Daniel Hall, who writes: “I think Tyler is being cheeky here.”

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My exchange with Daniel Hall earlier this week made it onto The Economist’s Free Exchange, which was in turn picked up by Megan McArdle’s Asymmetrical Information.
The Economist writer brings in the intervention dimension:
[S]o politicised an industry as air travel need not fear dislocations in any case; governments would react incredibly quickly to pull back on [...]

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