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France to tax flights from its airports, airline shares fall

reuters.com

291–300 of 578 posts

Re: France to tax flights from its airports, airline shares fall

#291

> Want to do something about climate change? Start with yourself I really dislike this line of thinking. I don’t manufacture millions of tons of concrete or millions of single-use plastic shampoo bottles. Our current path is irreversible if drastic shifts in disposable consumerism don’t occur soon.

> if drastic shifts in disposable consumerism don’t occur soon.

Now the question is how to achieve the drastic shift. The popular opinion is that we need to vote in the right politicians and the change should come from the top. I used to think this way for a long time. I've changed my opinion recently. Think about any significant societal change in the last century or so. Women suffrage, civil rights movement, anti-war movement, gay rights. None of these changes have come from the top. None were initiated by the parliament. They all started as a popular rebellion, direct action and civil disobedience.

Re: France to tax flights from its airports, airline shares fall

#292

About time. Traveling is killing the planet. One of major causes of climate change. We need to take it seriously. I'm glad France is willing to take a bold and brave step to support the environment.

Flying is 5% of CO2 emissions.

This 5% is released by a small minority of people. What is interesting is not how much flying consumes, but how much of one's emissions is generated by flying.

Re: France to tax flights from its airports, airline shares fall

#293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Business travel is killing our planet. All the family vacations in the world can't compete with giant companies constantly shuttling thousands of employees all around the globe to attend meetings and conferences.

Yuppies hunting for “experiences” is killing the planet. Leisure travel dwarfs business travel: https://www.statista.com/statistics/207103/forecasted-number... .

Locked behind a paywall for me.

Re: France to tax flights from its airports, airline shares fall

#294
post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh wait, for some reason I was under the impression that the Bering Strait would still dry up or freeze during some parts of the year allowing to reach America going east without taking a boat or a plane. My bad. But even taking this into account, I'm not sure I understand your latest comment (the one I'm replying to right now). EDIT: ok, after reading your comment for the umpteenth time I understood. I just have to…

I hope I got you to look at a map. Maps are great. As a prize for admitting how bad you are at geography, here's a political map in Waterman's butterfly projection. - https://www.jasondavies.com/maps/waterman-butterfly/full.png

Well that's... different :)

For a moment I thought it was one of those map which for some reason don't include NZ, then I noticed it's actually on the top left.

As far as I understand, different projections are more "correct" ways of laying out the globe on a plane, so while I have your attention I'd like to ask what advantage does this has over other projections?

Re: France to tax flights from its airports, airline shares fall

#295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a constant war of words here: are individuals responsible for cleaning up their footprint, or are corporations responsible for their dirty practices, or are governments responsible for putting policies to guide the economy? The answer is: we need all three. We will not tackle climate change without strong change on the personal, corporate, and governmental levels.

If you could only pick two out of those three, which would you choose?

individuals and government. Corporations don't exist in a vacuum.

Re: France to tax flights from its airports, airline shares fall

#296
post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It says right there in the article that business class will be charged more than economy.

Sorry yes. The article says 18 euros is the cap for business international, not the starting point. This is still very small potatoes when a business class ticket isn’t going for less than $3k. Interesting that they are also not taxing transits, meaning if you just transfer through CDG, you aren’t paying the tax.

And a 3 euro flat tax for economy is small potatoes too.

The original argument was that this would really hurt the poor. My counterargument was that flying is still a luxury, and the poor do not fly or fly frequently enough where this would actually be devastating to them.

If anything the tax is too small to change anyone's behavior.

Re: France to tax flights from its airports, airline shares fall

#297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why we can’t have nice things

We can’t have nice things because people in the US live in an almost continuous band of mid-density urban agglomeration from Boston to DC, and it’s hard to reach most of the population through just a few stations. The most noticeable thing about European cities, to my American eyes, is how they just... end. Drive from Munich airport to the city, and it’s farmland in between. Drive from Dulles to DC, and it’s strip ma…

I noticed that on the Eurostar from Paris to London. Less than 30 minutes after leaving Gare du Nord it looked like I was in the Tennessee countryside. Except for the bend through Lille, it stayed that way until we entered the tunnel.

Re: France to tax flights from its airports, airline shares fall

#298
post #243
post #192

The UK already taxes flights in a similar way. Whilst this does feel like progress, it would be much better to tax the fuel instead of the passengers. Virtually all other fuel is taxed, so it's strange that jet fuel is exempt. The problem with taxing passengers instead of fuel include: - it doesn't encourage improving the efficiency of planes - airlines can't fill their planes with really cheap seats, and empty seats…

> Virtually all other fuel is taxed, so it's strange that jet fuel is exempt. "Without any international agreement on taxing fuel, it is highly likely that moves to impose duty on international flights, either at a domestic or European level, would encourage ‘tankering’: carriers filling their aircraft as full as possible whenever they landed outside the EU to avoid paying tax. Clearly this would be entirely counterp…

It is highly inefficient to make an additional landing to fuel up. The tax would have to be obscene to make the numbers work out for an airline to tanker.

Re: France to tax flights from its airports, airline shares fall

#299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting to CDG...by train...is pretty easy. Traveling by train through Paris is a PITA as it often involves a station transfer via bus.

You can always do the transfer via metro (and there will be at most one change). The metro isn't very well suited if you travel with a lot of luggage though.

When I was transiting in Paris from Lausanne to Lyon, there was no metro connection between the Gares. That was 2006, things could be different now.

Re: France to tax flights from its airports, airline shares fall

#300
post #212

It's surprising the government didn't start with that instead of abruptly raising gas prices. Both are eco-friendly moves, but this one targets the rich more than the poor. Maybe it would have prevented months-long Yellow Vest protests.

I am also surprised by how much this seems to be an answer to that movement, yet it comes a year after this apparent deadlock and all this fighting.
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