Climate change activists to travelers: stay home

Climate change protesters are now putting their retro-radical tactics to use at airports. Protesters clashed with police over the weekend near London’s Heathrow airport, where a planned (and needed) third runway has raised the ire of environmental activists. Aviation, they say, contributes 2 percent of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide and therefore needs to be limited, or stopped altogether–and certainly not encouraged with airport expansion. Britain has an aggressive anti-aviation coalition, from traditional NIMBY protesters and think tanks to “plane stupid” advocates and no-fly pledgers. While the NIMBY folks have the best cases–we bought our homes here long ago; BAA said it wouldn’t expand Heathrow anymore–many members of the coalition want to end air travel altogether, grounding the British and world economies too.

The latter groups and people don’t just want airports in their backyard. They’re NIMPies–Not In My Planet. They don’t want people flying at all. They detest low-fare carriers like easyJet and Ryanair–one of the only airlines scrappy enough to fight back–for making air travel cheap. Aviation is not just an industry that pollutes; no, to fly is an act of “ecocide,” and travelers and airlines are climate criminals. The NIMPies surely realize the effects of killing aviation. They also know that no matter how drastic Britain’s actions, airplane emissions in China, India, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and other growing economies would offset any reductions. The NIMPies would sacrifice modern standards of living for . . . nothing.

So a complete ban on flying or new airport construction won’t work. What else is on the table?

• David Cameron’s silly idea of an annual flying allowance above which travel would be taxed, based on misapprehension of how Britain’s working class travels today.
• A “FLYING KILLS” warning on airline ads. (In Britain, cigarette packs are labeled with a giant message like “SMOKING KILLS.”) This would be about as effective as the surgeon general’s warning.
• The preferred plan seems to be including aviation in Europe’s emissions trading scheme. But cap-and-trade has been rightly criticized elsewhere as promoting rent-seeking and stifling competition. Imagine: currently operating airlines get allowances based on their current flying. Any new entrants would have to buy allowances, often at prohibitive cost. Airlines can sit on their allowances free of competition. This sort of system governs airport slots at places like Heathrow, with similar effects on competition. If any airline wants to enter Heathrow, it has to acquire slots from an incumbent. Such policies keep inefficient and costly airlines in the business longer than otherwise, inhibiting competition that drives down fares and improves service expectations. But then the climate change activists would prefer high fares and bad service, if only to get people off planes.

If the British government deems it necessary to curtail carbon emissions, the best way is through a tax, such as its Air Passenger Duty. Its climate change related increase has already had an effect of cutting travel. Whether an increase is a good policy or not is a separate question, but increased taxes are the fairest way to cut down on air travel.

The other development is cleaner, greener, better airplanes. The Boeing 787 is a good example. But these airplanes are very expensive to develop and require healthy airlines to buy them. Without airlines lined up with cash, no one will engage in the costly R&D that will yield real improvement in aerospace technology. To get better airplanes tomorrow, we need profitable and growing airlines today.

You tell me who’s “plane stupid” now.

Heathrow protest reaches its climax as peaceful protest turns to clashes with riot police [Independent]
Air travel latest target in climate change fight [Christian Science Monitor]

See also: Hapless over Heathrow