The UK Conservative Party has a
bright idea on the carbon-tax front: a tax on air flights which is directly
linked to that flight’s carbon emissions. At the moment, the taxation system
gives airlines no real incentive to be carbon-efficient, even though emissions
from airplanes are particularly harmful from a climate-change perspective. The
UK’s opposition Conservatives want to change that, and propose a tax which gives
every UK citizen one "free" flight per year, after which carbon taxes
start kicking in.
This week, London mayor Ken Livingstone, who is at least as far to the left
as the Tories are to the right, supported
the proposal, which has, inevitably, been attacked
by the airlines as a "tax on fun". Maybe the trick, at the outset,
would be to make the new carbon tax lower, in aggregate, than the £10
to £80 Air Passenger Duty it is designed to replace. If it can be spun
as a tax cut, it might garner less opposition. Then, as a "sin tax",
it can always be raised later.