Emission Control

Britain introduced an Air Passenger Duty on November 1st. Now supposedly this Duty is to offset the environmental damage of air travel’s carbon footprint.¬† A carbon footprint reflects how much carbon monoxide a product, unit or individual releases into the atmosphere.

While still a controversial issue in much of the US, in Europe, Australia and other parts of the world governments are moving ahead on the conception that there is a price to pay for each of us living on earth. We use resources and abuse the environment, and now we can buy absolution from our environmental crimes.

Well the UK government took it already one step further by making it mandatory in for example the airline industry. Britain has made it clear that the controversial Air Passenger Duty that took effect Nov. 1 will not be rolled back; actually it will be doubled by 2011. And all destinations are affected by the carbon tax. The duty is touted as an environmental measure aimed at taxing aviation’s carbon emissions, a questionable move, considering the enormous fiscal shortfall the UK government is experiencing.

Under the new rule, the British government has a four-tier banding system, with the duty amount based on the distance between London and the destination’s capital city.
The system places for example the Caribbean Islands in Band C (4,001 to 6,000 miles from London), making the tax on flights from the U.K. to the Caribbean more expensive than the tax on flights to U.S. destinations, including Hawaii. U.S. destinations are in Band B (2,001 to 4,000 miles from London).
Prior to Nov. 1, the U.K. slapped a tax of $62 on each economy ticket to Caribbean or non-European destinations ($130 in premium classes). The duty on air tickets from the U.K. to the Caribbean now is $82 in economy and $164 in premium classes. In November 2010, those fees will jump to $123 in economy, $247 in premium classes.

In the already battered economies of the Caribbean Islands, tourism officials are claiming unfair practice. In a wave of political correctness they claim not to be against the tax, but are protesting the increase as being inherently unfair and not particularly green. At the very least, they want to have the Caribbean region designated as Band B, the same as the U.S.

Well yes that make sense to me. A flight from London to Honolulu would be charged less in pollution tax than a short hop  flight from London to Bermuda. Ludicrous.
It seems that the UK government has as many idiots in their line up than the US federal government when it comes to writing new laws and inventing new taxes.

Allen Chastanet, St. Lucia’s minister of tourism and a feisty fighter as I remember him from my Caribbean years, intends to fight what he describes as an illegal tax increase. Chastanet said that a paper has been submitted to the British government requesting that Caribbean countries be viewed as a group, so that the tax for flights to the region is calculated on the distance between Britain and Bermuda, which is the closest island to London.
Caribbean ministers plan to bring up the matter at the next meeting of the International Civil Aviation Organization.
“We are going to try everything we can to show that this is not the way forward,” Chastanet said.

I’m glad someone picks up the fight against stupidity and randomness. If we all agree that it is fair to charge for carbon emissions, that’s one thing, but why make it complicated by inventing 4 bands while we can use the time-zone system as the measuring stick for the amount of tax. We’ve already invented that system a long time ago as a workable solution to time and distance. Why 4 bands with the arbitrary allocations of the destination’s capital? Case in point is here the previous example of a flight from London to Bermuda versus Honolulu. Absolutely and utterly idiotic.

Besides, personally I think this whole carbon transmission tax provides just another excuse to not constantly be improving technology and environmental responsibility. The public’s reasoning will be: “we are already paying taxes so someone else can clean up the mess after us”.

I have actually heard someone claiming something similar here on Amelia Island’s beach after I confronted him with polluting the beach with bottles and plastic. His response to my remark: ” The city has people employed to clean the beach. I don’t want to make their job obsolete.”
Amen