I've stopped flying to conferences for climate change reasons

Re:I've stopped flying to conferences for climate change rea... by pessimizer on Monday June 03, 2019 @11:08AM (#20083915)

It's not business travel that's the problem, it's burning fuel that's the problem. If the 1% are the only people who can fly, that's a lot less fuel being burned. Heavily taxing 10% of fliers (who can easily afford it) is a no-op when it comes to reducing the buring of fuel. Now you have exactly the same amount of fuel being burned, and a tax yielding revenue that if anything motivates the recipients of that tax to encourage more flying.

If you massively raise prices for everyone to fly, less fuel gets burned, and the people burning the fuel are paying into a pool that ideally would be used to alleviate inequality on any other front.

If you want to tax the rich, just tax the rich based on them being rich; don't greenwash it.

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Re:I've stopped flying to conferences for climate change rea... by oytis on Monday June 03, 2019 @11:18AM (#20084055)

> If the 1% are the only people who can fly, that's a lot less fuel being burned.

I agree. The question is who are these 1% of people. Carbon tax means that they are the richest 1%. I hope our society has enough imagination to consider other options.

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Re:I've stopped flying to conferences for climate change rea... by criddell on Monday June 03, 2019 @12:11PM (#20084790)

I haven't heard of any carbon offset program that results in only the richest 1% being able to fly.

Targeting airlines might be the wrong place. Perhaps the fuel vendors are the ones that should bear the cost of removing all of the CO2 that's going to end up in the air from every bit of fuel they sell.

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