Except translation, this story has not been edited by achinews staff and is published from a syndicated feed.
The private jet tax must be popular, a slam-dunk of manifesto policy from the Scottish Greens, promising a £1000 per person levy slap on passengers.
After all, who among us doesn’t feel some green envy or just plain anger at the trail of greenhouse gas emissions left by these planes as they transport the rich across the planet?
The percentage of the global population who have or use these planes is small, mainly businessmen and celebrities, but also world leaders including Rishi Sunak, and even, recently, Keir Starmer. When the leader of the Labor Party took a flight from Wales to Scotland, following the general election, he described it as ‘essential’ – as many do when defending the use of jets.
Private jets are also on our minds following Taylor Swift’s departure from the UK, speeding through sequined skies in her 16-seat Dassault 7X, complete with kitchen, dining area and beds. But Swift, which has become a key private jet target, is actually not the worst with its 178,000 miles of flights last year.
She’s not even on the top 30 list compiled by Myclimate Carbon Tracker and topped by Travis Scott, Kim Kardashian, Elon Musk, Beyonce and Jay-Z, and Bill Gates: and many of them don’t even have the pretense that they are caught up in the highest grossing concert tour of all time.
Global inequity
Another virtue of the Green Party’s higher tax on private jets in Scotland is that it’s not just about greenhouse gas emissions – it’s about inequality. Slap that policy together with their other main idea of abolishing the monarchy and what has been created is a message close to class war.
But aviation is also part of a wider story of global inequality. 80% of the world’s population have never flown, so have 22% of Britons. For them, it is also possible for those of us who have gone to the sky, maybe annually, or more often, that 1%.
It is not, in other words, just about private jet users, but people who fly a lot – and the Scottish Greens manifesto also calls for solving another inequality, a frequent flyer levy, which would target, says, “the 1% of people cause 50% of global carbon emissions”.
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Notably, air travel accounts for a huge fraction of the emissions of the richest 1% of EU households. According to one report before 2020, aviation was responsible for 2/5th of their carbon footprint, which is 22.6 tonnes of CO2 each.
Yes, private flights are responsible for a lot of emissions, about 5.3 million tonnes of CO2 according to Greenpeace, in Europe over the last three years, but general commercial passenger flights last year produced closer to 780 million tonnes, and half of them were from frequent flyers.
That said, someone like Swift is in a whole other category. Compare the flight he made to the Super Bowl in February 2024, which, according to Forbes magazine, would probably have created 41 tonnes of CO2. Considering the global average emissions per person at 4.6 tonnes, that’s a single trip equivalent to the annual emissions of nearly ten people.
No quick technofix
This would not be the first tax of its kind: Switzerland already has a private aviation levy. The policy is also particularly relevant in the UK, which has what could be called the private jet problem.
We are sixth in the world – after the United States, Brazil, Mexico, Canada and Germany – in terms of the number of private jets based here. Last year, it was reported that one in ten departures from UK airports were private jets, up from 7.5% pre-Covid.
The private jet levy is just one of a portfolio of aviation measures introduced by the manifesto, which include removing tax breaks on aviation fuel, phasing out short-haul flights where high-speed rail routes are available, and amend the airspace change. process.
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That kind of attention to aviation is particularly appropriate given the recent news about Scotland’s failure to meet its greenhouse gas emissions targets for 2022 – with much of it, it turns out, due to “an increase in emissions from international aviation and shipping”.
It is also relevant because aviation is a sector for which there is no quick technofix yet. I’ve covered some of the progress on Loganair’s hydrogen flight tests and, while the technology is exciting, it’s clear to me that zero-emission flights to Malaga aren’t on the horizon, even if we see’ n see a Scottish island no-hopper. air travel emissions by 2027.
Double the credit
I return to Taylor Swift, who, we learn, has bought more than double the carbon credit quota for the emissions of her flights. Keir Starmer also said, after taking that private jet from Wales to Scotland, “We offset the carbon, we always do whenever we use air transport”.
Are we convinced that those carbon credits let them off the hook?
Hardly. Still highly controversial, even when attached to good quality projects that actually reduce emissions, the main problem with credits is that they create the impression that it is possible to eliminate emissions by offsetting them.
But there is a further problem for those who rely on carbon credits – and that is the squeeze that could come in a few years when airlines are forced to mitigate their growth in emissions.
The Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA) is expected to be mandatory from 2027 and will increase demand for carbon credits to such levels that demand, says market solutions provider Abatable, could reach seven to fourteen times the supply.
(Except translation, this story has not been edited by achinews staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
source link https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/24410647.taylor-keir-rishi-greens-private-jet-days-numbered/?ref=rss
