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?

@helpneedshoes it was implied I had too many children

You implied that it's OK to have more kids where it's a blended family. Obviously if you're just re-organising the same number of kids under different roofs there's no marginal ecological effect. Otherwise, no one really cares or wants to give you a free pass for your family circumstances.

Unfair to families who live in different countries. Yes it is a lifestyle choice but many people move because they need work and can't get a job in their home country, or have been priced out of their area and can't afford to live their anymore. DH and I both had decent jobs before we left but were in our overdraft every month because rent and commuting costs were so high.

We are now in Europe and more than half the cost of our flight back to the U.K. is already taxes. Are your proposed percentages on the cost of the original flight with or without the taxes we already pay? So if [major European city] flight to Heathrow costs £100 and the taxes are £100, how much is the 20% tax, £20 or £40? Flights are already expensive where we live so we would basically see even less of our families. Does the 1000 mile limit apply to one way or return flights? Many flights to Europe are around the 500 mile mark, so for a return flight lots are already tipping into the 20% bracket.

My husband and I have both made flights to visit our dying fathers in the last three years, if I'd had to take a train (10 hours) I wouldn't have seen my Dad before he died. I flew several times that year due to deathbed visit, funeral and other family things, but hadn't flown between 2014 and 2017. We rarely fly on holiday.

Who are you to decide that only rich people get to see their dying relatives?

Maybe a fairer way of taxing people would be to calculate all their carbon emissions and tax accordingly? So if you don't have children, eat meat or avocados you could afford to fly home to see family?

I find the Eurostar pretty good with the DC & have used the TGV a number of times.

How do ferries compare to planes?

Surely in order to make a difference everyone has to suffer a bit whether that's not having so many holidays, paying more for them, using more public transport, less meat etc.

I would support this as part of a wider environmental impact based tax to encompass other lifestyle choices that have a large footprint. I don't think it would be fair to penalise only flyers (and I say this as someone who hasn't flown for about 20 years) but we should look at all goods and services which are luxuries or where a more environmentally-friendly alternative exists, and tax them accordingly.

But taxes won’t stop the rich. Allowances will.

But taxes won’t stop the rich. Allowances will.

I don't understand this line of thinking. Of course the rich are able to ignore taxes, is this some kind of personal punishment for being rich or a means of collecting money to remediate environmental damage?

Money is the reason that we have lots of iPhones and private jets and so on, but it's also the reason that we have investment in battery technology and wind power and nuclear fission and meat grown in labs and all the other things that might just save the planet while not sending us back to the 1500s.

The plastic bag 'tax' has been quite successful, though. The majority of people bring their own bags to the supermarket now although (based on what you see on the checkout) they could almost certainly afford to pay for a few disposable bags.

I don't think that you can put flying back into the ' box' of pre aeroplane days

In some countries planes are much cheaper & quicker than trains or cars

Why would someone do a journey of 8-10 hours in a car, when they can fly for 1 hour & fly cheaper ?

If you fly outside any bank or school holidays and book in advance, flights can be excellent prices

The plastic bag 'tax' has been quite successful, though. The majority of people bring their own bags to the supermarket now although (based on what you see on the checkout) they could almost certainly afford to pay for a few disposable bags.

Absolutely, most middle-class people I know would rather stick pins in their eyes than take a plastic bag at the checkout counter.

They are actually banned in Kenya if I'm remembering correctly, which has resurrected a previously forsaken cottage industry: sisal/jute bags.

Maybe a fairer way of taxing people would be to calculate all their carbon emissions and tax accordingly? So if you don't have children, eat meat or avocados you could afford to fly home to see family

Fairer but seriously hard to manage. Whereas taxing flights is more doable.

I do actually have family 1000s of miles away, I’ve never met my nephew and will possibly never meet him.
I don’t however have a right to see him.

But Entrophy the rich are the worst re air miles. Either you want to lessen the damage from flying or you don’t. If you do you need to find a way to actually stop the rich causing the damage they do instead of just paying more.

Maybe a fairer way of taxing people would be to calculate all their carbon emissions and tax accordingly? So if you don't have children, eat meat or avocados you could afford to fly home to see family

This could be done so much more efficiently, with far less corruption, and without resorting to a planned economy (!) by trading carbon/pollution rights.

10p for a plastic bag is a world away from extra money on flights that are already expensive. Making those that do one flight a year pay more will not curtail the real culprits.

They are actually banned in Kenya if I'm remembering correctly, which has resurrected a previously forsaken cottage industry: sisal/jute bags

Why don't they ban plastic bags here?

Surely we should all have a carbon allowance and when it’s gone it’s gone. You need to actually stop people from doings things not dig deeper.

But Entrophy the rich are the worst re air miles. Either you want to lessen the damage from flying or you don’t. If you do you need to find a way to actually stop the rich causing the damage they do instead of just paying more.

Flying is here to stay. We're far better off deploying the power of free trade to punish pollution/reward green technology than coming up with some backwards rationing scheme that is straightforwardly a planned economy.

To repeat myself, we'd be nowhere near as far as we are with battery technology and renewable energy in the absence of the frenetic pace set by the free market.

Maybe a fairer way of taxing people would be to calculate all their carbon emissions and tax accordingly? So if you don't have children, eat meat or avocados you could afford to fly home to see family

Or you could add an environmental tax to meat, imported fruit and veg, plastics and so on. Cars already have emission-based taxing, don't they? Not sure what you'd do about children, but taxing the things that contribute to their footprint would help.

Why don't they ban plastic bags here?

I'd love this, but even my cynical self is pretty impressed by the progress the West has made on plastic. I think we're getting there.

The best way to reduce the birthrate is to educate girls and provide free contraception. The more educated a woman is the fewer children she has and the later she has them (and having 3 DC in your 40s is less harmful for the environment than having 2 in your 20s). Plenty religious groups are against one or both of those.

People really don't want to give up flying. MIL turned up at our house with a bamboo coffee cup. Refused to use any of our ceramic cups (all older than the bamboo cup) because her bamboo cup was good for the environment but when I told her that flying was the most polluting thing she did she didn't want to hear, this is a woman who has done at least 1 long haul and 1 short haul every year I've known her. Taking our entire family to Italy this year (first time DC had ever flown) used up less carbon than just one of her long haul flights this year. We won't fly again for another couple of years but she'll keep travelling as long as she can, her family is across the world and she wants to spend time with them. Even though 50 years ago she travelled half way round the world to be with FIL expecting to not be able to see them regularly. I think the internet has actually increased her desire to see her family, she talks to them regularly (phone calls use to be very expensive) and so her relationships seem closer and more immediate now than 20 years ago when they communicated by letter and the rare phonecall.

There are lots of things we need to do to reduce carbon and while any discussion descends into 'well I'm greener than you' nothing will be actually done. Everyone internally justifies their own behaviour: ''I have a windmill and ground-source heating and an electric car so if I take a holiday on another continent that's OK', 'We recycle and never fly so it's OK to have 3 DC', 'I don't have DC so I can have several long haul flights a year' etc, etc. It's all bullshit. The big changes will not be made by individual but by governments and corporations. Over half our electricity in this country is now non-carbon sources. Very few people on here will have had anything to do with that. And yet that is a far bigger impact than where any individual chose to go on holiday.

Not talking about getting rid of flying just making it fairer. Why should those with money just get to carry on making pointless trips and causing such damage. Nobody needs more than a couple of holidays a year by plane. We are moving into unchartered territory. Don’t think you can say anything is here to stay to be honest.

I work, I pay tax
I have a car, I pay road tax & tax on fuel
I fly, I pay tax
Some destinations, that I've visited, I've paid a tourist tax

Putting more tax on flights will not stop me flying

Why don't they ban plastic bags here?

If this did happen, it would be much easier now that people are in the habit of taking their own bags, than it would have been in the era of the free supermarket bag.

The more educated a woman is the fewer children she has and the later she has them (and having 3 DC in your 40s is less harmful for the environment than having 2 in your 20s).

I've read this before and I don't buy it, it's absolutely nonsensical. Do you have a link?

I'm also not crazy about waiting for some of the most backward countries in the world, which are also the most populous, to raise the standard of eduction for girls in order to get a hold of their birth rate. I understand the reasoning, but it misses the sense of urgency.

@EntropyRising hopefully soon they will