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France to tax flights from its airports, airline shares fall

reuters.com

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

#151

Post by Freak_NL »

kaycebasques wrote: post #136
keiferski wrote: post #48

I am actually surprised that short-distance flights aren't taxed more in Western Europe. The train infrastructure in France is world class and can get you from Paris (North-Central part of the country) to Marseille (Southeast), a distance of about 500 miles, in 3 hours. For Americans, this would be roughly equivalent to go from Boston to Washington D.C. (a trip that takes 7-10+ hours)

Is the carbon footprint for train travel significantly lower than for plane travel?

Yes, about ten times as low.

See (for one): https://www.seat61.com/CO2flights.htm

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

#152

Post by dsfyu404ed »

joyjoyjoy wrote: post #67
sbergot wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using a train.

When was the last time you took a train from Paris to New York?

> When was the last time you took a train from Paris to New York?

Right after I sold my beachfront house in Arizona.

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

#153

Post by rocgf »

perfunctory wrote: post #105
caymanjim wrote: post #38

This is simply rent seeking. It won't reduce flights, it's too small to incentivize any fuel efficiency changes, it's passed on to the consumer so it won't alter airline behavior, and while the article claims the revenue will go towards financing trains, it doesn't state how that will be implemented. Are they going to reduce fees on trains accordingly? Are they going to improve train efficiency? Are they going to bui…

> I just don't see how this helps. Just curious, what would be your favorite solution(s) of the climate crisis?

Ideally, with absolutely no loss of comfort, no extra taxes, while maintaining our current wasteful lifestyles. We can barely get people to sort their trash into plastics/glass/paper before throwing it away and we say stuff like "I just don't see how this [measure that introduces taxes which would make people less likely to book flights] helps". And this is in a place like Hacker News, which is supposed to sort of towards the tail end of the human intelligence distribution.

Day by day, I'm starting to think we are royally fucked.

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

#154

Post by ceejayoz »

crumpets wrote: post #43
Bayart wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flying takes a pretty heavy toll on the environment, it should be discouraged as much as possible. If people want to travel, the continent's already covered with roads and rail.

Which road do you take to Iceland or NYC from Paris?

Which definition of "discouraged as much as possible" means "prevented entirely"?

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

#155

Post by ggreer »

frenchman99 wrote: post #121
ggreer wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the source you're citing is Oxfam's report on Extreme Carbon Inequality [1][2], which was widely reported as saying that the world's richest 10% produce half of global carbon emissions, that is incorrect. If you read the PDF, they're only looking at estimates of "lifestyle consumption emissions", not total emissions. From the PDF: > Emissions associated with consumption by governments, capital and international tr…

Thanks for linking the PDF, which says this: > Around 50% of these emissions meanwhile can be attributed to the 10% richest of people around the world, who have average carbon footprints 11 times as high as the poorest half of the population, and 60 times as high as the poorest 10%. The average footprint of the richest 1% of people globally could be 175 times that of the poorest 10%.

Again, that's "lifestyle consumption emissions", not total emissions. The poorest 10% make less than $2 per day. Of course they're going to be a rounding error in terms of "lifestyle consumption emissions". And before you get upset about super wealthy people burning lots of fossil fuels, remember that to be in the richest 10%, you only need to have an income above $16k/year.[1] If you make more than $100k/year, you are in the top 0.1%.[2]

1. https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/get-involved/how-rich-am-i/?...

2. https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/get-involved/how-rich-am-i/?...

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

#156

Post by yongjik »

buboard wrote: post #24
frenchman99 wrote: post #22

I think there is this thing called the train.

Immigrants cant train to algeria

But if France (and the rest of Europe) fails to cut down carbon emission, it's Algeria that's going to be hit harder. If France can reach 45C, imagine what will happen to Algeria.

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

#157

Post by toomuchtodo »

boudin wrote: post #150
kaycebasques wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the carbon footprint for train travel significantly lower than for plane travel?

I guess it depend if the train is running on electricity or diesel, but in France I had read an article in a french newspaper stating that the carbon footprint of train was 10% of the one from planes. This article seems to have the same numbers: https://www.seat61.com/CO2flights.htm

France is primarily nuclear powered, so electric trains there have extremely low carbon impact.

https://www.electricitymap.org/?wind=false&solar=false&page=... (ElectricityMap.org: France)

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

#158

Post by keiferski »

vonmoltke wrote: post #147
keiferski wrote: post #48

I am actually surprised that short-distance flights aren't taxed more in Western Europe. The train infrastructure in France is world class and can get you from Paris (North-Central part of the country) to Marseille (Southeast), a distance of about 500 miles, in 3 hours. For Americans, this would be roughly equivalent to go from Boston to Washington D.C. (a trip that takes 7-10+ hours)

> For Americans, this would be roughly equivalent to go from Boston to Washington D.C. (a trip that takes 7-10+ hours) Half of which is stops... I would love Amtrak to start a service that is just BOS NYC WAS.

In a perfect world it would be an hour between each stop: DC > Philadelphia > NYC > Boston

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

#159

Post by gns24 »

kaycebasques wrote: post #136
keiferski wrote: post #48

I am actually surprised that short-distance flights aren't taxed more in Western Europe. The train infrastructure in France is world class and can get you from Paris (North-Central part of the country) to Marseille (Southeast), a distance of about 500 miles, in 3 hours. For Americans, this would be roughly equivalent to go from Boston to Washington D.C. (a trip that takes 7-10+ hours)

Is the carbon footprint for train travel significantly lower than for plane travel?

Yes. This graph from "Sustainable Energy – without the hot air" is a good summary: http://www.withouthotair.com/c20/page_128.shtml

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

#160

Post by Freak_NL »

hrktb wrote: post #59
cameronbrown wrote: post #10

I don't really understand what the purpose of this tax is. There's no alternative to burning fuel by energy density on an airline, so why go after flights? What do they expect them to do? If you're taxing petrol cars you'd expect electric cars to become more economically viable. Either way I disagree with carbon taxes. They're regressive, and ignore the fact that regular people are being badly hurt by them whereas th…

The purpose of the tax is to recover the external cost of flying. Ideally there are alternatives to flying, but it's not a requirement: as long as flying has an environmental price, recovering it through tax is a decent logic. We can discuss the offered price, or how the tax could be structured, but I don't think the approach is unreasonable on its face.

Also, expect more European countries to follow. The Dutch government is intent on doing this too; either on their own, or (preferably) on a European scale.
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