Will hitting airline passengers with higher ticket prices help raise awareness of the real cost of airline growth?
The United Kingdom is studying the possibility of creating a specific tax for air transport, a carbon charge to offset airlines’ carbon dioxide emissions that would be passed on to passengers.
The proposal illustrates a key variable: the cost of growth. Globalization, deregulation and the low-cost revolution changed what was once a business directed at a wealthy few into something we can now all afford and that we see as perfectly normal, even if we claim to hate flying. The result has not only seen the aviation grow, but also tourism. But the cost to the environment has been enormous, and now we need to do something to mitigate it.
Who pays for the cost of growth? Do the math. We’re all paying with our health, and very soon, with our viability as a species. Mitigating the environmental cost of airlines means making their engines more fuel efficient, optimizing routes, using more sustainable fuels such as biofuel, etc., but also reducing growth by taking a more rational approach that would also provide obtain revenue for issues ranging from improving more sustainable transportation infrastructure such as trains, along with technologies to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and in the hopefully, not so long term, electric…
