To think we need to increase taxes on flights. If you fly more you pay more.

[ThereWillBeAdequateFood]

Just that really. I think something like 70% of all flights are taken by 30% of people.

I think we need to move to a system where the tax increases the more you fly. Something like (per year)

10% tax for the first 1000 miles
20% tax for the next 1000 miles
30% tax for the next 1000 miles
40% tax for the next 1000 miles (etc).

AIBU? Should we tax flights more?

As for having children later there are several factors. Delaying parenthood reduces the overall fertility rate at a population level - Finnish study.

Yes. But what you said is that it's better to have 3 kids in your 40s than 2 kids in your 20s.

Population growth is affected by several factors one of which is the generation time and it is this that means delaying parenthood has a positive

Yes, but the pattern of generational compression/having children early, all other things equal, has a finite/linear impact on population growth, whereas the pattern of having 3+ children but having them later has a geometric impact on population growth.

It's shortsighted in the extreme to say it's better to have 3 kids in your 40s than 2 kids in your 20s. Perhaps its predicated on freeloading on the projected far-off dip on population growth, which I think is estimated after 2050, but it's freeloading just the same.

What I don't understand is that people on here ask questions like should I have a third child when they are the contributing to the environmental disaster that is currently happening without a thought to the children they already have.

The way the world is going the children today will have a far more difficult lives than us with the rising occurrence of natural disasters, less water less flood and resulting less jobs. Look at a 1 degree change in temp has already brought us - rising sea levels, deadly heat waves, wetter hurricanes, droughts, costlier disasters, bigger wildfires, and more illnesses, to name a few impacts, and these effects are only going to compound.

Nobody says it enough but the only way to deal with the environmental catastrophe is for their go to be less of us. Taxing flights, recycling eating vegan won't stop the tidal wave, having less of us is the only thing that may help but even that may be to late as they were saying this 20 years ago. Less of us means less energy used, less flights, less rubbish, less meat eaten.

As others have said I think there needs to more cost effective options than flights, for example it’s currently cheaper for me to fly from London to Manchester than to get the train which is ridiculous.

It's more like 70% of flights are taken by 15% of people. I think a frequent flyer levy could be a good idea, but I don't know how feasible or practical it would be. People with family abroad might find it unfair.
I think it's harder to increase tax on aviation fuel as planes operate internationally. It's usually much cheaper to fly than take the train, sometimes even within the UK.

@BarbaraofSeville thing is a)you don't want to encourage people to have fewer than 2 children per family or the population age gets skewed, plus taxing families with too many children would have a detrimental effect on the lives of children on poor families with too many kids. Imo it's much more ethically problematic than taxing flights. (Totally agree people shouldn't have such big families though - looking at you Wills and Kate )

Sorry, the taxing big families but should have been b)

What if the meat and cheese locally made is intensively farmed?

Intensive farming is never good, luckily there is very little of that at the farms I am thinking of as the demand is much less than in other countries. I don't know which would be better - local and intensive or further away and free range.

According to this the CO2 impact of 'one fewer child' (I can't find what they mean by this - compared with 2 per couple or something else? is 58.6 tonnes of CO2 per year.

Yes, and what I think this misses out on is the load beyond childhood/as adults adults and their childbearing, which means that 58.6 tonnes is an understatement in orders of magnitude.

I struggle with the 'should I have a 3rd kid' threads for this reason - I can't believe we're still having this discussion, but I guess it's just like anything, people are in their own bubbles and some bubbles haven't woken up to the reality of dwindling resources.

I agree about the ethucs, however there is going to come a paintbrush this has to be done it We don't want millions to die due to climate change.

I think it’s a good idea . The idea of a progressive tax increasing the more you fly won’t prevent most people from having an annual trip abroad . Anything after that is a luxury and should be discouraged .

@GhostsToMonsoon that's a good point about frequent flier tax rather than taxing aviation fuel. Would have to work out a business flights equivalent too.

ethics point not paintbrush how predictive text got that

On the surface this sounds like a fantastic idea, but looking at it a little deeper reveals a lot of details and exemptions that would need to be written in. As someone from the Channel Islands, this would absolutely destroy a lot of our accessibility and industry. Our flights are already very expensive compared to most, with an absolutely abysmal ferry service. A blanket flight tax would scupper our finance industry, which is our biggest sector, as well as prevent people from going to university and moving abroad if they want to visit family. Considering people are always wanting to leave because of our housing and license system, this would also discourage teachers, doctors, and other essential workers from moving here. I imagine there are several other islands and remote areas that this would be hugely detrimental to.

While on paper a one or two child policy might sound great on paper there is a consequence of people might make certain choices if the child is in their wrong the wrong gender. Best case you will see a rise in one or the other gender such as in china where this one child policy lead to there being more men then women for that generation.

Having a higher tax on flightes just seems the easier problem to fix.

The market adapts to such scenarios, channelislander. If industry were to suffer from flight taxes (I don't like to think of it as a tax, because it's not - it's remediation), then either it dies out (creative destruction) or pressure is brought to bear on alternative technologies.

While on paper a one or two child policy might sound great on paper there is a consequence of people might make certain choices if the child is in their wrong the wrong gender. Best case you will see a rise in one or the other gender such as in china where this one child policy lead to there being more men then women for that generation.

Sorry to sound callous, but... who really cares?

Does anyone really care about anything more than the population exceeding 11B?

You always hear people talking about how bad the one child policy was in China, but never do you hear people wishing that there were another half billion people on the planet.

Only if international fuel duties/taxes are agreed. Otherwise we'll end up with the similar situation to lorries filling up with fuel before they cross the channel to avoid buying it in the UK.

We live near a channel port. Many years ago, in pre-euro days, we could make big savings by going to France for the day and doing a big shop. It was either £10 or £20 for the day trip, and we always went with a near empty tank, so we could save more than that by filling up with cheap fuel before we came back.

A blanket flight tax would scupper our finance industry, which is our biggest sector

I'm not sure an economy based around tax avoidance industry is really something to rely on given the global strides being taken to stop offshore tax avoidance.

@EntropyRising so you would be happy to see possibly hundreds of children abandoned or aborted because they are the wrong gender? it just opens a whole can of worms that could border in the unethical

You always hear people talking about how bad the one child policy was in China

It was really bad. As far as overpopulation goes I’m hopeful education and contraception can reduce the birthrate. Probably too little too late though.

If people stop flying to holiday destinations what happens to the people who work there
They have no job, no benefits to support their families
Example
People stopped going to Egypt & Tunisia, Sri Lanka & other places

You always hear people talking about how bad the one child policy was in China

It was really bad.

You forgot the second part - but you never hear people wishing there were another half-billion people on the planet.

@EntropyRising even ignoring the (massive) ethical issues, China's one child policy was not a success. I imagine Chinese policy makers do wish they had quite a few more working age adults than they currently do.

www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/02/china-population-control-two-child-policy?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard

Taxing flights or flyers is vastly preferable.

You forgot the second part - but you never hear people wishing there were another half-billion people on the plane

I know entropy just because the outcome is a good one it doesn’t mean I can approve of the means.
The sudden death of a billion people over one harsh winter would probably be a good thing for the environment. But I’d still struggle to look on the bright side faced with that.

There are plans to provide the 'common man' with zero gravity space experiences

I expect in the future there will be holidays on the moon & other floating space stations

Aeroplanes are just the beginning of mankind's explorations of space & other planets
Plenty of carbon emissions, until somebody invents something better