> Private jets will enjoy an exemption through classification of "business aviation" as the use of aircraft by firms for carriage of passengers or goods as an "aid to the conduct of their business", if generally considered not for public hire.
> A further exemption is given for "pleasure" flights whereby an aircraft is used for "personal or recreational" purposes not associated with a business or professional use.
Surely they can afford it more than everyone else flying?
I don't understand the business aviation exemption at all. Why does it matter that the flight is being conducted to "aid to the conduct of their business"? And how is that different from other passenger flights?
What about ICE, do companies also not have to pay the Ökosteuer (green tax) on gas in Germany?
Unlike what the mass outrage here makes you believe, this is a reasonable exception. Because non-commercial flights (business and hobby) already pay local taxes like VAT and excise on the fuel.
The thing is that fuel commercial aviation is exempt from tax due to historic regulations. The EU is proposing to change that by taxing jet fuel for those users. So it makes total sense that they exclude those that already pay tax on their fuel from this new tax.
Differs per country, especially excise can vary a lot.
The proposal is for a minimum tax on jet fuel for commercial flights to still start at zero and then increase the minimum tax every year. So I'm expecting it to be below VAT + excise.
That and it's also the most wasteful use of fuel, because you're lifting an entire jet and crew for more than likely a single rich jerk who feels too special to fly passenger jets like everyone else. On a carbon-per-person metric, private jets are literally the worst.
The energy in rocket fuel has to come from somewhere. If it doesn't come from renewables, it's probably from fossil.
For instance, most hydrogen production currently comes from heating up methane and steam for a CH4 + 2x H20 -> 4x H2 + CO2 reaction. So current hydrogen is just gas with extra steps.
Oh, but they do. New Shepard uses liquid hydrogen, which is not a fossil fuel per se, but in practice hydrogen is currently made from fossil fuels. SpaceShipTwo uses HTPB which is a hydrocarbon oligomer, basically synthetic rubber, definitely a fossil fuel. Falcon 9 first stage engines use RP-1, a fancy type of jet fuel. The Starship first stage uses methane, a fossil fuel (although it could be made renewably as well). The Atlas V core stage uses RP-1 and the boosters HTPB. The Delta IV and Ariane 5 core stages use liquid hydrogen.
A quick google says it took 2.90652E11 joules ~= 80MWh to get Saturn V to the moon. That seems like it'd actually be quite doable to do with renewables if you didn't need to fly too often.
I think that must be something like imparted kinetic energy rather than chemical energy of the fuel it burned. This puts Apollo 16 fuel at 4.19E13 joules:
Still doable with renewables though. Assume 11639 MWh of fuel energy and 60% efficiency converting electricity to fuel. About 19,400 MWh total. That's 8 days of output from a 300 MW wind farm operating at 1/3 capacity factor.
If the only ones allowed to emit net positive CO2 where those rich enough to afford private planes global warming wouldn't be an issue because there are not enough of them.
It is still a evil corrupt practice to except the rich like this though. The same laws need to apply to everyone, which means my time on an airplane counts for as much as anyone else even though I can only afford to fly at all because I buy one seat on a commercial plane once in a while. Either everyone can't fly, everyone can, or at least the same rules apply.
It is either government, or C level executives in large companies. Nobody else can afford to fly private jets. Even if you fill your private jet with others it is still cheaper to fly first class commercial. I've looked into it, engineers can't afford it unless their company is paying for it.
I follow Formula One drivers on social media, and they regularly posts photos of themselves on private planes. Well technically these are charters, but at the end of the day it's just them and their friends/family on each of these flights.
Got a citation, or are you just being a know-it-all?
Sure, at the end of the day their paycheck is money that came from their sponsors, but I'm pretty sure they mostly pay for the flights themselves. Many drivers live in Monaco, so they've even shared a chartered private jet going to some races and back.
Or I've even seen a driver take his wife and kids to vacation from Switzerland to Finland, on a private plane, with no sponsors being tagged in the Instagram story (but well, let me guess, you're going to tell me I'm being advertised to in other ways).
Though sports figures are more likely to take private planes in general. [When] They have the high income to support it, they also have a need to get between many different cities fairly quick, and not all those cities have good commercial connections.
Thus racers are rich enough to support private planes - via their sponsors. Most people don't have that kind of income.
I'm fairly certain that dominating costs of a private jet besides the initial purchase price are the maintenance and employing a flight crew.
Fuel price is probably a rounding error in comparison (they get a few miles per gallon). Edit - some quick Googling suggests that jet fuel costs $1.96/gallon in the US at the end of last week.
Jets aren't cars, you can't just change the oil every 3 months and have it run for years.
thanks for this, it's an interesting data point, but I would be willing to bet that the 99.9% who don't own private jets don't care because if you can afford a private jet you can afford the taxes for that private jet and should include them in your purchase decisions.
If you’re interested in having the same laws apply, airline fuel is already exempted from most taxes in most jurisdictions. (It is in the US.) I think this proposal is trying to align business aviation to the same taxation as commercial, not to give business aviation a specific tax break not enjoyed by others.
Who talks about jets or crews? This doesn't affect billionaires, but private and recreational use of mostly small propeller planes. Flying is expensive, but it isn't a privilege of "rich jerks". You want to make it a privilege for the elite, then go ahead and tax it to death.
> Private and recreational flying is explicitly exempted from the tax too. So I don't think it affects them.
That was my point. Most of the comments hammer down on "oh, the corrupt elite wants to cheaply fly to Davos", ignoring that flying - while a very expensive hobby - is an aspirational and achievable endeavor for many people including an attached industry and jobs.
Small props use barely any fuel per nautical mile, the actual extra cost here for a recreational pilot is absolutely tiny. A large 4X4 has a slightly smaller tank than a Cessna 172 and has nowhere near the range.
The outrage is misdirected. We are talking about negligible increase in cost here for general aviation.
Thank You. This makes a lot more sense. But I assume owner of recreational planes could be exempt and Private Jet, mostly for billionaires and business could still be taxed?
I tried to find numbers. This seems to give some context [1]: Look at page 8 and 9 and compare flight hours vs fuel consumption of single engine planes vs turbo-jet.
So there's a gray area that can be addressed in the future. Same goes for "should business build consumer electronics in Asia and fly it in" or "build it locally". But that wont change overnight either.
Nonetheless the regulation is a start, and as with any regulation I don't expect it to be perfect on day one or in cynical, bad faith.
I know it is cool to hate on rich people these days but the amount of CO2 pollution created by handful of private jets is miniscule compared to the rest of the aviation industry which is still miniscule compared to general transportion, agriculture and meat industry.
Just keep the magnitude in context, I think it is still an issue but our focus needs to be appropriately allocated.
Should we also care that rich people take up more room in the airplane than the rest? Business class should be abolished?
Me dumping a bunch of tyres into a nearby river would be absolutely negligible compared to global pollution, yes it's still not allowed. A single private jet flight is incredibly polluting yet we allow it to be exempt from pollution tax because......on a grand scale it's nothing? Hmmmmmmm.
I guess I struggle with the hypocrisy around that fact that if we really want to curb CO2, there is a bigger fish to fry. For example, millions of people travel for pleasure on airplanes. From one point to the otherside of the globe. No one gives a damn about that, but hey! Look, rich people on fancy airplanes.
Even just today, GitHub copilot Twitter thread was full of “Rich people (Microsoft apparently) get to ignore licenses but us poor plebs have to abide by them”
Christ. I feel like I’m witnessing a mob without reason, logic and rational.
It makes sense to consider things on a per-capita basis as well as an in-total basis, because there needs to be some measure of fairness in how we do things.
People like when things are fair. To get those big wins you’re gonna have to either make things look fair or use force (i.e. guns). You won’t be able to change human society into a kind of minmaxing superintelligence.
"For example, millions of people travel for pleasure on airplanes. From one point to the otherside of the globe. No one gives a damn about that, but hey! Look, rich people on fancy airplanes"
Erm, that is exactly the point of the "mob".
The common people do have to pay the tax, while flying crowded and therefore somewhat efficient - and the rich people with their own fuel wasting private jets should pay no tax at all AND have the privilege of luxery? Where is the reason for this?
"Christ. I feel like I’m witnessing a mob without reason, logic and rational. "
So maybe I am missing something, but the mob reaction seems to be very much based on logic.
So what I was missing is, that apparently commerzial Airliners do benefit from tax free fuel - but private jets do not. They have to pay taxes and a lot more than this tax is going to be initially.
So it seems the whole thing is a weird backward way to take back a bit the tax excemption on tax free airliner fuel?
I don't think anyone flies to the other side of the globe for fun anymore since Corona. And I don't think this activity will be back any time soon. Holidays where possible will be a lot more local.
> I don't think anyone flies to the other side of the globe for fun anymore since Corona. And I don't think this activity will be back any time soon. Holidays where possible will be a lot more local.
I disagree, people are very very eager to start traveling again. I know that a lot of people around me are literally going to bolt off the second they are allowed to, preferably to the farthest away destination possible. Not that there's anything wrong with that in any case (especially considering how good the vaccines are)
Private jets are completely irrelevant to global warming because there are not enough of them.
They’re a convenient distraction from the problem that actually curbing global warming will require huge changes in the lifestyle of the global middle class. Not just the super-rich.
If we could put together a job retraining package and general middle-america bailout package together we could avoid that.
But the Democratic constituency is isolated now geographically and across occupations so that they don't get any votes from something like that, and the Republicans will be happy to allow the pain to happen while preventing any support and milking the resentment.
So yeah, that's probably what will happen because of our dysfunctional government, but by no means is that an economic certainty.
> Private jets are completely irrelevant to global warming because there are not enough of them.
They probably are irrelevant, so why exempt them?
> actually curbing global warming will require huge changes in the lifestyle of the global middle class. Not just the super-rich.
I'm of the impression that "middle class lifestyle" itself isn't a big contributor to global warming but rather the manufacture and supply chains. If we electrify industry and transport, the bulk of the problem goes away (as I understand it) and the effects on the middle class are pretty transparent apart from choices to fund the transition to clean energy (e.g., to what extent does the middle class pay for the transition rather than the super rich). In other words, the average middle class lifestyle isn't significantly impacted by whether their goods are manufactured, refined, transported, etc with clean energy or dirty energy.
I get the distinct impression that the "middle class lifestyles will change dramatically" is frequently a euphemism for "we must go full-vegan" by people who are anti-meat. But meat production in the US accounts for only 8% of (co2-equivalent) emissions and those emissions are largely methane and nitrous oxide which dissipate quickly relative to co2 (12 years for methane vs 300-1000 years for co2).
A significant portion of the super-rich believe they are super-rich because they scrutinize bills and are thrifty/smart with money. "If only everyone else was as smart with their money they could be as rich as I am..."
Interestingly enough the reverse is true: not being aware about your expenses is a surefire way to make sure you don't get rich. But scrutinizing bills in itself is not sufficient that get rich.
I don't think this is even true. Lots of people get rich on luck, i.e., inheritance or other connections to wealthy people, or else they happened to come into stock (e.g., employed at a startup) that beat the odds significantly. Of course, one has to spend less than he earns to stay rich, but even that doesn't demand scrutinizing one's expenses--one could simply be content or conservative or minimalist.
Maybe I give them too much credit, but I have to think that this is a caricature of the super-rich. Specifically I have to think they understand finances enough or at least pay people who do to know that tax on their private fuel is negligible. Maybe I'm naive.
> itself isn't a big contributor to global warming but rather the manufacture and supply chains.
Manufacture and supply chains (and services for that matter) that provide to the middle class. At least that's my interpretation of the parent's point.
No, they doesn't care, but "middleclass lifestyle" is only available for a fifth of the world, and the remaining four fifth want to partake to. And they slowly do.
The total installed renewable electricity capacity was greater than the totla installed fossil capacity for the first time in 2020. It was not replacing old fossil capacity, it was just added to the mix. And capacity != production, so i guess it's even worse than that.
It’s even worse than that because we not only need to replace existing electrical energy production but we need to electrify sectors that aren’t electrified at all i.e. heavy industry and transportation.
You're right except, they will when the price goes up. I think that's the implication here - middle class would have to adjust their lifestyles to good/services that are no longer cheap.
That’s the “who pays for it?” political decision I was alluding to in my original post. Besides, today our economy is optimized around the assumption that pollution is free—as we learn to optimize around a carbon constraint, we will find some efficiencies here and there which will reduce the “cost” of sustainability (“cost” is in quotes because pollution is just cooking the books and it’s weird to characterize “not fraud” as a “cost”). Moreover, even if you’re of the persuasion that wealth redistribution doesn’t really work and the costs will still trickle down to the middle class, that’s still better than runaway warming.
Yes, they are probably irrelevant, but how people are going to accept to change their lifestyle when the wealthiest do not, the message sent to the population has not an irrelevant effect I think.
Fairness and the perception of fairness is not a distraction. If anything, behavior now, where the most privileged who can pay insignificantly more are given a pass, is terribly damaging.
It portends a future where only the lower classes shoulder the burden of reductions in quality of life to manage climate change.
> On a carbon-per-person metric, private jets are literally the worst.
Depends what you consider a "jet". There are a lot of aicraft in GA aviation that consume fuel at the same amount/km as a car, while not contributing to carbon emissions by sitting in traffic. Many of them also burn regular gasoline as fuel.
General aviation is essential to the aviation ecosystem, particularly for the training of pilots and technician. People rich enough to buy afford a jet wouldn't be phased by a jet fuel tax, but a tax affecting very small carriers and general aviation will reduce the available talent pool. Either directly by reducing a venue through which people learn to become pilots and technicians, limit their job opportunities in periods of downturn of the rest of the industry, but also indirectly by making the field even less accessible.
At what point will we stop acting as if the government legislates to represent the interests of the constituency who voted for the politicians and not the elites who fund its politicians?
Yes, there is a tangle of 5000+ Air Services Agreements which, as international treaties, supersede national laws. Almost all agreements include mutual tax exemptions on anything not unloaded at a destination, including fuel.
This doesn't appear to be the case (as of Oct 2019) ...
> members of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), including the United Kingdom, are prevented from taxing international aviation fuel, or any proxies for fuel, under the Chicago Convention.
To me, this just drives home the point that it is more about control than about anything scientific. The wealthy class want their perks and privileges while corraling the plebeians so that we won't use "their precious resources" or ruining their enjoyments.
It's control of the global commons. The elites (or "folks", lol) want to preserve their ability to engage in forms of consumption which put a burden on the climate's ability to absorb CO2 while excluding the rest of the world from it as much as possible.
I really doubt any 'elites' are worried about their access to jet fuel vs anyone else. Any 'elite' who thinks about that for a second or two knows they'd win that just by the nature of economics.
I think they (and those who take their money) would just rather not pay more if they don't have to.
The West has been consuming fossils to fuel their industrial revolution for centuries, but now that is time of the East to use energy and grow, we tell them that energy is bad for the environment and that they have to pay tax or buy expensive energy (renewables)
We don't tell them they have to pay, we tell everyone that we should all pay. Your reasoning is just "we benefitted from X bad thing in the past so now we should let others do it too".
So we should be okay with the massive pollution now because they're entitled to it because we did it in the past? I think it would be better for developing countries to try and skip as much of the dirty bits as possible and leapfrog to the best we can get from modern technology.
I think that every country deserves a fair opportunity to grow with cheap energy. We took advantage of it, and in the process we created huge externalities. We should clean after our mess first and then try to lecture the developing countries.
By that exact same logic, the next generation of people in every country should be allowed to use as much polluting energy as the last one, because the established generation did so and they are the developing generation.
By the same logic, the next generation of people should have access to the same intact climate as the last one.
Obviously though, you can't have both. The difference here is that rich countries are rich, and can afford to take on the extra financial burden via the very same finances that they obtained via cheap energy.
Yes it's extremely unfair that the West used up what turned out to be the planet's entire carbon budget. But it doesn't change the fact that humanity has to stop emitting carbon.
Where do you get the idea that renewables are expensive energy? Utility scale onshore wind and solar PV are the cheapest form of generation[1] by a long shot.
And because of this, 90% of the global electricity generation capacity added in 2020 was renewable. There wasn't a single coal burning power plant built in the US last year, despite political support for coal - it's just too uneconomic. This isn't coercion, taxes or anything - it's simple economics and it's happening everywhere - developed and developing countries.
Using old/outdated technology doesn't fuel growth in developing countries. Just because the industrial revolution in the west was powered by coal and steam engines, doesn't mean it makes any sense for a modern developing country to start building steam engines to power a manufacturing base.
Lazard's analysis is bad at best, but that is a separate discussion.
The main issue is that renewables have huge upfront capital costs combined with 0 storage &transportation capabilities (cannot put your wind energy in a tank). Of course these are not issues for the West, but I don't know how you can go to an isolated Indian village and tell them that they need to spit 20k per household to install solar panels.
Combustible fuels are pay as you go. Want heat tonight? Use some wood just for tonight. Want to move your motorcycle? You need only a jug of gasoline.
What do you mean the analysis is "bad"? It's widely referenced and they explain their methodology in detail and their data sources. If there's an aspect of the methodology you think is bad, I'd be interested in hearing it. Their results are pretty much in line with other independent studies of the same thing.
I don't understand why you'd compare the capital cost of utility scale electricity generation against that for a wood burning domestic stove or a small motorcycle. Isolated Indian villages are not expected to fund utility scale electricity generation? I mean you could try to argue that candles are better than solar-powered flash-lights, I guess? But I don't see the relevance.
The fact is that for utility scale electricity generation, the combination of solar PV or onshore wind with idling peaker natural gas capacity blows all the competition out of the water in terms of cost. The only thermal generation currently viable in the modern world is combined-cycle gas and even then it's unlikely to maintain touching distance in a world where wind turbines continue to fall in price by 10% a year while PV panels are falling at an even faster rate.
You just have to look at what's actually happening globally - both developed and developing world. Like I said 90% of worldwide newly installed grid scale generation capacity added in 2020 was renewable. The simplest explanation for this is the one which agrees with all the analysis from various sources - it's happening because it's far cheaper.
The analysis is completely wrong for a country that is not in the West.
Their first assumption is low interest rates for business loans and availability of investment capital. Again, we take these two for granted in the West, but they are not.
Second big assumption is the existence of distribution grid and storage. The fact is that we have almost 1 Billion people off grid and by making fossil fuels more expensive to them pretty much we decide that they need to stay impoverished for many generations to come.
Regarding your comment on renewable energy added in 2020, you failed to mention that the bulk of it comes from China, where the Party has made the strategic decision to do so regardless of cost.
It assumes a blended cost of capital of 10% which is very reasonable for utility infrastructure projects even in developing countries. The World Bank charges rates of about 3% for infrastructure projects.
I don't get the capital cost argument, both onshore wind and solar PV have between a third and a quarter the capital cost per KW capacity compared to a modern coal plant for example. As I said combined cycle gas is currently competitive but the price trajectories mean that solar and wind will not only be cheaper over their lifetimes but the capital cost will be less.
Nor do I get the grid argument which is an argument against all utility scale generation, not just solar or wind. Storage or more commonly idling gas backup is required to support fossil fuel generation also.
Repeating the claim that deriving more energy from solar and wind or hydro will impoverish people doesn't make it true. To support the claim you need to show that it's a more expensive way of providing electrical energy to people compared to alternative fossil fuel based generation. I've read no analysis which would support such a claim.
"It assumes a blended cost of capital of 10% which is very reasonable for utility infrastructure projects even in developing countries. The World Bank charges rates of about 3% for infrastructure projects."
- I invite you as an investor to go to a developing country's bank and ask for a 10-million-dollar loan with <=10% interest rate to build anything. I don't know where they get these numbers (they conviniently say "Lazard estimates"). They are plain wrong.
"I don't get the capital cost argument, both onshore wind and solar PV have between a third and a quarter the capital cost per KW capacity compared to a modern coal plant for example. As I said combined cycle gas is currently competitive but the price trajectories mean that solar and wind will not only be cheaper over their lifetimes but the capital cost will be less.
Nor do I get the grid argument which is an argument against all utility scale generation, not just solar or wind. Storage or more commonly idling gas backup is required to support fossil fuel generation also.
"
- Had they had the access to cheap capital (or any capital) to build a grid they would have done so.
What you propose is for them to starve for some generations until they can build a grid. And even when they do, you will want to sell them more expensive equipment (electric cars, batteries for their grid etc).
Fossils can work without a grid, and they can already improve dramatically life and productivity to enable later public investments to infrastructure.
It is renewables that require huge initial capital investment to work without a grid. Fossils are pay as you go. You only need for example fuel oil in winter to warm your house with a couple of heaters. That is a cost of < $500 USD / year. To run two electric heaters (~10kw), you will need a big enough solar panel and battery to keep it running at night. So now you are in the tune of $20,000 USD.
*
"
Repeating the claim that deriving more energy from solar and wind or hydro will impoverish people doesn't make it true. To support the claim you need to show that it's a more expensive way of providing electrical energy to people compared to alternative fossil fuel based generation. I've read no analysis which would support such a claim." *
The wealthy class are, presumably, wealthy enough to pay the carbon tax and still enjoy the perks and privileges of private jets though? It's not like they're being exempted from a ban on flying private jets, but rather a tax on them. Their wealth itself was already their ticket to perks and privilege, because it lets them pay the tax.
GP is right. The real point of carbon-tax (and the heavy promotion of global warming) is not to address the underlying issue but to extract wealth from the 99.9% and redirect it to the riches. Any other occasions will be used as such: for example recently the covid was used to kill small businesses and fed the big corporations, which stock rised hugely.
Its been the same with lockdown. Enforce totalitarian restrictions and tracking on the plebes, whilst the rich and connected routinely ignore or are excluded from the rules.
Its possible that Lockdown is a ploy to distract from the trillions of dollars of money printing that has gone on during the pandemic, to suppress the inflation generated, as well as to normalise location and biological data collection and arbitrary interference in personal liberty and private businesses.
It seems unlikely that the motivation is really the health of the populace, when deaths and ill health from air pollution and obesity, and from the interrupted medical treatments during Lockdown itself, are routinely ignored.
You can follow the same logical pattern for all the other major issues of our time. Are the massive migration inflows of violent military-age males into Europe from MENA really about humanitarian aid, or about injecting cheap labour into the continent and providing justification for giant intelligence agencies, tracking and banning of encryption?
The same for critical race theory - is the goal the betterment of humankind, or to set the working class against eachother and to distract from insane wealth capture of the 1%?
I don't understand people who think that, at hundreds or thousands of municipal and state levels, political leaders were secretly in meetings with robes nodding excitedly over the opportunity to oppress the masses. Or that an unknown, highly contagious respiratory disease causing hospitals to overflow with no vaccine available didn't warrant some kind of mandates against public interactions.
It boggles my mind what kind of conspiratorial, Truman-Show-like mentality people must have to find bad faith so common in life.
It is the party of those in America who were against lockdowns, masks, vaccines, or any kind of precautions who are also against any kind of regulations or limits on the causes of obesity or climate change or pollution. So your comment about "why do 'they' care about the virus but not pollution" is moot.
Correct. That was wrong of him to do. However, do you think that because of that, it is impossible for the directive to limit public events was completely without justification or public health benefit? Could it be that he was a wanker, and it was a good decision?
There was no hospital overflow. I live in Ukraine and even with a totally rudimentary health system and routinely ignored lockdowns, the health system functioned like any other flu outbreak. The temporary hospitals setup in the USA and UK were never used.
If anything I am quite sure that the few lockdowns we did have worsened the spread of COVID, or at least concentrated it over a shorter timeframe, since people were now packed into shopping centres at reduced hours, were forced to socialise in smaller 'speakeasy' venues, and had a greater interaction with grandparents given the closure of schools. Without lockdowns, the virus would have spread slowly and steadily, and been concentrated in younger groups who have more social interaction with eachother, like influenza each season.
Even under a 'best case' scenario for Lockdown, and using Sweden as an example, we have spent about 50 months in Lockdown in order to save 1 month of life - statiscally for someone of advanced age and with serious existing health problems:
Well, you're factually wrong that hospitals weren't at the breaking point - several in the United States were, as well as healthcare systems in Italy. The relative lack of use out of notable expansion sites was due, IMO, to mis-steps in the bureaucracy and prep, not in the lack of help that additional beds could provide.
Just flipping through your source of "50 months of quarantine", and without (yet) reading the entire article, it is citing an extrapolated number from a hypothetical, which you cite as a statement of fact. Covid has been around for 18 months. You are being misleading, or English may not be your first language.
In any case, I'm not saying certain measures or lockdowns were overkill. I believe governments and experts, in a transparent fashion, should be discussing what went wrong and right at all levels, and how we can do better, quicker, safer the next time a pandemic hits.
I strongly reject the notion that this was a massive conspiracy to test the reach of government restrictions.
Believe it or not, this is exactly what happened. I'm lucky enough to live in a country that didn't went with the lockdown madness (Japan), so I know for a fact an alternative way was possibly. It's sad to read people so brainwashed they defend the ruling class who robbed their liberties (and which didn't followed the rules themselves, as shown in France with ministers going to secret restaurants in Paris[1]).
I disagree with GP's conspiracy theory, but still I can see how it could be theoretically possible. Those "hundreds or thousands of municipal and state levels, political leaders" they are not necessarily a part of real elite. Instead, they are brainwashed during their college years to think what they masters need them to think. And then, when the actual pandemic happens they simply do not have enough critical thinking skills to reject the official narrative. Also, it is safer for their political careers to just go with the flow.
I hate this kind of rhetoric. Frankly that sounds like: "A proposed solution A to problem X has another problem Y, which proves that it was never about X, and consequently I will refuse to acknowledge problem X - if anyone doesn't like it, it's their fault for not being able to create a perfect solution that gets my approval."
Well, although taxes are usually effective, they affect more the low and middle classes than the rich, as they can opt to pay and enjoy life as usual. Exemption to activities that are mostly enjoyed by the rich is quite absurd.
People will be more thoughtful and less cynical when the rich take a serious attitude at ecology and inequality.
You raise a good point, but I think one can criticize the proposed law without painting the whole endeavor as some kind of conspiracy.
Because, when you think about it, climate change will also affect the poor way more than the rich - so some unscrupulous riches do have a vested interest in keeping people cynical, because it's not they who will suffer the consequences - they can retire in some nice mansion in the Arctic.
Their point was a bit more subtle, it meant that EU carriers would effectively be penalized relative to non-EU carriers operating in the EU, because other agreements precluded applying the tax to those (non-EU) carriers.
Means they need another tool.
The exception for private jets seems hard to defend though, whether business or pleasure.
A TL;DW is that biofuels are unscalable and worse for the environment than standard fuels. Hydrogen is not yet viable, and would require entirely new aircraft designs. Electricity will likely never be viable for all but the smallest low-range aircraft. E-fuels (fuel made using carbon capture) is not yet viable, but may be a viable long term option.
Most of the worlds farmland is used to feed the worlds population and farm animals.
The worlds use of fuel is many times greater in terms of calories than use of food.
That means if we want to use farmland to grow fuel, we're going to need a lot more farmland. We already farm most of the land that's viable for farming. So there isn't really much more available without destroying a lot of ecosystems and chopping down rainforest...
The energy put into the process to grow and ferment the plants or algae is high enough to outweigh the offset use of fossil fuels. It's an energy negative process.
I'll defer to the 15 minute video- the creator is an engineer whos credentials exceed my own, and he goes into why it's unlikely to ever become viable.
The exemption for cargo appears to be because they lack the means to enforce it for carriers operated by non-EU carriers within the EU, due to other existing agreements.
If some things need air freight, and can't offset the carbon tax, why are we bothering? Maybe flying short-date crops from tropical climates shouldn't be a thing. If you really want those sugar snap peas, get ready to pay to ship them.
Nothing less would be expected from the European Commission. Not once have they declined to brown nose big business.
Then they have the gal to accuse others of being corrupt.
Exactly. Taxes for thee, not for me... they are one of the most privileged class in Europe. Unbelievable amount of privileges even most local politicians or bureaucrats do not have.
I think its pretty nice that they care enough about normal / poor people to be willing to try and prevent global warming as long as those same normal / poor people pay for it and the rich are not inconvenienced.
Just goes to show fighting climate change is nothing but a power grab that makes life more miserable for regular people and making them more dependent on the rich and government.
I downvoted you. Fighting climate change is very important, and not just a power grab. People need to rise up and protest against things like these, so that power grab wouldn't happen.
Just to clarify, perhaps my point is not obvious. We want to have carbon taxes because they address the problem of economic externality in combusting fossil fuels. Different example of a similar tax, that aims to solve a similar problem: road tax; it's supposed to help finance maintenance of the road, which gets slowly damaged by each passing vehicle.
Now imagine somebody will lobby for a law that exempts certain vehicles (that rich people use) from the road tax. Would you then conclude, well, road maintenance is nothing than a power grab anyway, and we shouldn't do it? That doesn't make any sense to conclude that, and similarly, it is wrong to conclude that fighting climate change is just a power grab.
Before stealing more from my money by making me pay even more taxes, go call out those criminals who go on private jets to a conference so they can tell me and you to not use plastic straws or eat less meat, or to abuse a little kid and use her to "stare down trump" so they can score political points, like we're in a freaking 3rd grade puppetry show, the earth and climate we'd be okay. Go research who's paying for these embedded ad campaigns in news reports about how "it's cool and healthy to eat bugs" and how it's mostly my fault the damned cows are farting. Go demand removal of those benefits to people with electric cars because manufacturing those batteries is as bad, if not more dangerous considering what happens when they explode (lookup exploded tesla cars). Go ask what happened to the ice sheets? Around 2010s it was all what media talked about, now no one even mentions it anymore. I guess they didn't melt. Go ask about why it was called global cooling, then changed to warming, then changed to climate change. This is ALL political. There's nothing scientific about this, alas some thug-researchers being paid by the same corporations who are the ones actually hurting the environment
> We want to have carbon taxes because they address the problem of economic externality in combusting fossil fuels.
I think unified carbon tax with rebates (to be revenue neutral) is what we need to fight climate change.
OTOH, specific taxes for some kind of consumption (like jet fuel tax) is just a power grab by valuing different consumptions in a different ways, regardless of how much CO_2 they emit.
Yes, I would be in favor of unified carbon tax and dividend (which should be distributed evenly to everybody), but that is a nuance that we can discuss. I suspect such proposal would actually negatively affect super-rich even more, because they have sky high real emissions.
To clarify, I was specifically addressing GP's point where they said "fighting climate change is a power grab", not those specific consumption taxes as opposed to general carbon tax.
Except I don't own a vehicle. I use public transit, walk, ride a bike, carpool - do all of the things that the government "wants me to do" but I don't get a rebate or any kind of exemption. I pay the same amount of road tax as my father who drives a Ford F150 an hour to an from work everyday, and my step-mother that drives an SUV even though she has zero need for one. I probably actually pay _relatively_ more because they "consume" more of the road at the same cost (ie. do more damage to it by engaging in activities which cause more wear and tear on the road).
We're just lucky that the government just not fighting climate change is the obvious choice here.
Imagine if the world was just a little more complicated than that, and rich government elites were also representing the interests for downplaying climate change and doubling down on fossil fuels.
It might mean regular people died in unprecedented heat waves and got their houses burned down by wildfires. All while billionaires convince them that all carbon pricing is awful and corrupt, careful that they don't know too much about the option of revenue-neutral dividends.
The EU has been completely bonkers for the last few years.
Just staggeringly stupid policy I mean look at them literally banning encryption and then this I'm confused but the ppl running the eu are more confused
The EU (especially the Eurozone) was designed when neoliberal paradigm was in fashion (1980s-1990s). That's why currently its core institutions are less democratic than they should be.
I would say the main deciding factor for that was the rejection of the Treaty for Establishing a Constitution for Europe (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_establishing_a_Constitu...), which would have given the European Parliament far more power, in plebiscites in Belgium and France, causing other countries to bail on theirs.
They didn't ban or plan to ban encryption, that was just a super misleading headline / article. It wasn't even a proposal or a draft, just research into what are possible options to fight child pornography online. And I'd rather they do their research than implement random stuff.
I've noticed there's a recent trend of grossly mispresenting this stuff in the worst possible light. It seems if any EU whitepaper even just mentions encryption it somehow gets twisted into EU encryption ban being imminent.
I urge people to always read or at least glance at the actual documents when claims about new laws/proposals/etc. seem outrageous.
I love it. They don't even care now, do they? Private jets are the most obvious targets of carbon tax because they are completely unnecessary, and the politicians decided to carve out the tax only for them. The world we live in is truly wonderful.
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[ 0.25 ms ] story [ 233 ms ] threadhttps://web.archive.org/web/20210708074814/https://www.argus...
> A further exemption is given for "pleasure" flights whereby an aircraft is used for "personal or recreational" purposes not associated with a business or professional use.
Surely they can afford it more than everyone else flying?
What about ICE, do companies also not have to pay the Ökosteuer (green tax) on gas in Germany?
The thing is that fuel commercial aviation is exempt from tax due to historic regulations. The EU is proposing to change that by taxing jet fuel for those users. So it makes total sense that they exclude those that already pay tax on their fuel from this new tax.
How do the numbers compare?
The proposal is for a minimum tax on jet fuel for commercial flights to still start at zero and then increase the minimum tax every year. So I'm expecting it to be below VAT + excise.
Were the worst.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_tourism
For instance, most hydrogen production currently comes from heating up methane and steam for a CH4 + 2x H20 -> 4x H2 + CO2 reaction. So current hydrogen is just gas with extra steps.
https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/35155/what-rocket-...
Still doable with renewables though. Assume 11639 MWh of fuel energy and 60% efficiency converting electricity to fuel. About 19,400 MWh total. That's 8 days of output from a 300 MW wind farm operating at 1/3 capacity factor.
It is still a evil corrupt practice to except the rich like this though. The same laws need to apply to everyone, which means my time on an airplane counts for as much as anyone else even though I can only afford to fly at all because I buy one seat on a commercial plane once in a while. Either everyone can't fly, everyone can, or at least the same rules apply.
Is the fuel taxes such a big part of the cost of flying a private jet?
Is it just that those people hate paying taxes on principle (and manage to lobby for it)?
Sure, at the end of the day their paycheck is money that came from their sponsors, but I'm pretty sure they mostly pay for the flights themselves. Many drivers live in Monaco, so they've even shared a chartered private jet going to some races and back.
Or I've even seen a driver take his wife and kids to vacation from Switzerland to Finland, on a private plane, with no sponsors being tagged in the Instagram story (but well, let me guess, you're going to tell me I'm being advertised to in other ways).
Though sports figures are more likely to take private planes in general. [When] They have the high income to support it, they also have a need to get between many different cities fairly quick, and not all those cities have good commercial connections.
Thus racers are rich enough to support private planes - via their sponsors. Most people don't have that kind of income.
Fuel price is probably a rounding error in comparison (they get a few miles per gallon). Edit - some quick Googling suggests that jet fuel costs $1.96/gallon in the US at the end of last week.
Jets aren't cars, you can't just change the oil every 3 months and have it run for years.
So, not a rounding error, but it's still only 20% of the cost. The fuel estimate I had in my comment was for a smaller jet though (7 or 8 passenger).
Private and recreational flying is explicitly exempted from the tax too. So I don't think it affects them.
That was my point. Most of the comments hammer down on "oh, the corrupt elite wants to cheaply fly to Davos", ignoring that flying - while a very expensive hobby - is an aspirational and achievable endeavor for many people including an attached industry and jobs.
The outrage is misdirected. We are talking about negligible increase in cost here for general aviation.
Or am I missing something?
So there's a gray area that can be addressed in the future. Same goes for "should business build consumer electronics in Asia and fly it in" or "build it locally". But that wont change overnight either.
Nonetheless the regulation is a start, and as with any regulation I don't expect it to be perfect on day one or in cynical, bad faith.
[1]: https://download.aopa.org/hr/Report_on_General_Aviation_Tren...
Just keep the magnitude in context, I think it is still an issue but our focus needs to be appropriately allocated.
Should we also care that rich people take up more room in the airplane than the rest? Business class should be abolished?
I guess I struggle with the hypocrisy around that fact that if we really want to curb CO2, there is a bigger fish to fry. For example, millions of people travel for pleasure on airplanes. From one point to the otherside of the globe. No one gives a damn about that, but hey! Look, rich people on fancy airplanes.
Even just today, GitHub copilot Twitter thread was full of “Rich people (Microsoft apparently) get to ignore licenses but us poor plebs have to abide by them”
Christ. I feel like I’m witnessing a mob without reason, logic and rational.
Maybe I’m looking into this too much, but to me it’s unavoidable observation.
Especially when that wealth was achieved on the back of the labor, the consumption, and (increasingly) the attention spans of the mob.
Erm, that is exactly the point of the "mob".
The common people do have to pay the tax, while flying crowded and therefore somewhat efficient - and the rich people with their own fuel wasting private jets should pay no tax at all AND have the privilege of luxery? Where is the reason for this?
"Christ. I feel like I’m witnessing a mob without reason, logic and rational. "
So maybe I am missing something, but the mob reaction seems to be very much based on logic.
So what I was missing is, that apparently commerzial Airliners do benefit from tax free fuel - but private jets do not. They have to pay taxes and a lot more than this tax is going to be initially.
So it seems the whole thing is a weird backward way to take back a bit the tax excemption on tax free airliner fuel?
I disagree, people are very very eager to start traveling again. I know that a lot of people around me are literally going to bolt off the second they are allowed to, preferably to the farthest away destination possible. Not that there's anything wrong with that in any case (especially considering how good the vaccines are)
Except for climate change ...
But I also really would like to travel again, far away, so what to do.
They’re a convenient distraction from the problem that actually curbing global warming will require huge changes in the lifestyle of the global middle class. Not just the super-rich.
Except it won't.
It will cause some large industries to cease to exist though.
Hence, lots of lower-to-mid timeframe unemployment.
But the Democratic constituency is isolated now geographically and across occupations so that they don't get any votes from something like that, and the Republicans will be happy to allow the pain to happen while preventing any support and milking the resentment.
So yeah, that's probably what will happen because of our dysfunctional government, but by no means is that an economic certainty.
They probably are irrelevant, so why exempt them?
> actually curbing global warming will require huge changes in the lifestyle of the global middle class. Not just the super-rich.
I'm of the impression that "middle class lifestyle" itself isn't a big contributor to global warming but rather the manufacture and supply chains. If we electrify industry and transport, the bulk of the problem goes away (as I understand it) and the effects on the middle class are pretty transparent apart from choices to fund the transition to clean energy (e.g., to what extent does the middle class pay for the transition rather than the super rich). In other words, the average middle class lifestyle isn't significantly impacted by whether their goods are manufactured, refined, transported, etc with clean energy or dirty energy.
I get the distinct impression that the "middle class lifestyles will change dramatically" is frequently a euphemism for "we must go full-vegan" by people who are anti-meat. But meat production in the US accounts for only 8% of (co2-equivalent) emissions and those emissions are largely methane and nitrous oxide which dissipate quickly relative to co2 (12 years for methane vs 300-1000 years for co2).
Because not exempting them may make it harder to pass the bill?
Manufacture and supply chains (and services for that matter) that provide to the middle class. At least that's my interpretation of the parent's point.
The total installed renewable electricity capacity was greater than the totla installed fossil capacity for the first time in 2020. It was not replacing old fossil capacity, it was just added to the mix. And capacity != production, so i guess it's even worse than that.
Every amount of pollution counts, otherwise we could also claim that a single individual makes 0 difference.
If we consider such number small enough to be rounded to zero we are implicitly allowing homicide.
It portends a future where only the lower classes shoulder the burden of reductions in quality of life to manage climate change.
Which is, of course, what's going to happen.
And the same people probably have several yachts that burn even more fuel per hour.
Depends what you consider a "jet". There are a lot of aicraft in GA aviation that consume fuel at the same amount/km as a car, while not contributing to carbon emissions by sitting in traffic. Many of them also burn regular gasoline as fuel.
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/10/20/last-tree-cut/
Honestly, I hope some private jets get blown the hell up in the future.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_control#Customs_area
Presumably they already signed aviation treaties that do not allow for this.
> members of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), including the United Kingdom, are prevented from taxing international aviation fuel, or any proxies for fuel, under the Chicago Convention.
https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN00...
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/rates-and-allowances-for-air-pas...
Control what though?
It's a carbon tax on jet fuel. Makes sense to me that some folks with some connections could get themself exempt (even if unfair).
But I don't see anyone else paying any more or less under "control"... those folks are still going to travel.
Hilarious, that's corruption, plain and simple.
I think they (and those who take their money) would just rather not pay more if they don't have to.
Obviously though, you can't have both. The difference here is that rich countries are rich, and can afford to take on the extra financial burden via the very same finances that they obtained via cheap energy.
And because of this, 90% of the global electricity generation capacity added in 2020 was renewable. There wasn't a single coal burning power plant built in the US last year, despite political support for coal - it's just too uneconomic. This isn't coercion, taxes or anything - it's simple economics and it's happening everywhere - developed and developing countries.
Using old/outdated technology doesn't fuel growth in developing countries. Just because the industrial revolution in the west was powered by coal and steam engines, doesn't mean it makes any sense for a modern developing country to start building steam engines to power a manufacturing base.
[1] https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-...
The main issue is that renewables have huge upfront capital costs combined with 0 storage &transportation capabilities (cannot put your wind energy in a tank). Of course these are not issues for the West, but I don't know how you can go to an isolated Indian village and tell them that they need to spit 20k per household to install solar panels.
Combustible fuels are pay as you go. Want heat tonight? Use some wood just for tonight. Want to move your motorcycle? You need only a jug of gasoline.
I don't understand why you'd compare the capital cost of utility scale electricity generation against that for a wood burning domestic stove or a small motorcycle. Isolated Indian villages are not expected to fund utility scale electricity generation? I mean you could try to argue that candles are better than solar-powered flash-lights, I guess? But I don't see the relevance.
The fact is that for utility scale electricity generation, the combination of solar PV or onshore wind with idling peaker natural gas capacity blows all the competition out of the water in terms of cost. The only thermal generation currently viable in the modern world is combined-cycle gas and even then it's unlikely to maintain touching distance in a world where wind turbines continue to fall in price by 10% a year while PV panels are falling at an even faster rate.
You just have to look at what's actually happening globally - both developed and developing world. Like I said 90% of worldwide newly installed grid scale generation capacity added in 2020 was renewable. The simplest explanation for this is the one which agrees with all the analysis from various sources - it's happening because it's far cheaper.
Their first assumption is low interest rates for business loans and availability of investment capital. Again, we take these two for granted in the West, but they are not.
Second big assumption is the existence of distribution grid and storage. The fact is that we have almost 1 Billion people off grid and by making fossil fuels more expensive to them pretty much we decide that they need to stay impoverished for many generations to come.
Regarding your comment on renewable energy added in 2020, you failed to mention that the bulk of it comes from China, where the Party has made the strategic decision to do so regardless of cost.
I don't get the capital cost argument, both onshore wind and solar PV have between a third and a quarter the capital cost per KW capacity compared to a modern coal plant for example. As I said combined cycle gas is currently competitive but the price trajectories mean that solar and wind will not only be cheaper over their lifetimes but the capital cost will be less.
Nor do I get the grid argument which is an argument against all utility scale generation, not just solar or wind. Storage or more commonly idling gas backup is required to support fossil fuel generation also.
Repeating the claim that deriving more energy from solar and wind or hydro will impoverish people doesn't make it true. To support the claim you need to show that it's a more expensive way of providing electrical energy to people compared to alternative fossil fuel based generation. I've read no analysis which would support such a claim.
- I invite you as an investor to go to a developing country's bank and ask for a 10-million-dollar loan with <=10% interest rate to build anything. I don't know where they get these numbers (they conviniently say "Lazard estimates"). They are plain wrong.
"I don't get the capital cost argument, both onshore wind and solar PV have between a third and a quarter the capital cost per KW capacity compared to a modern coal plant for example. As I said combined cycle gas is currently competitive but the price trajectories mean that solar and wind will not only be cheaper over their lifetimes but the capital cost will be less. Nor do I get the grid argument which is an argument against all utility scale generation, not just solar or wind. Storage or more commonly idling gas backup is required to support fossil fuel generation also. "
- Had they had the access to cheap capital (or any capital) to build a grid they would have done so.
What you propose is for them to starve for some generations until they can build a grid. And even when they do, you will want to sell them more expensive equipment (electric cars, batteries for their grid etc).
Fossils can work without a grid, and they can already improve dramatically life and productivity to enable later public investments to infrastructure.
It is renewables that require huge initial capital investment to work without a grid. Fossils are pay as you go. You only need for example fuel oil in winter to warm your house with a couple of heaters. That is a cost of < $500 USD / year. To run two electric heaters (~10kw), you will need a big enough solar panel and battery to keep it running at night. So now you are in the tune of $20,000 USD.
* " Repeating the claim that deriving more energy from solar and wind or hydro will impoverish people doesn't make it true. To support the claim you need to show that it's a more expensive way of providing electrical energy to people compared to alternative fossil fuel based generation. I've read no analysis which would support such a claim." *
- Covered already.
A few weeks ago the same Sanchez said that we Spaniards should eat way less meat by the year 2050. Obviously that won't apply to him.
Its possible that Lockdown is a ploy to distract from the trillions of dollars of money printing that has gone on during the pandemic, to suppress the inflation generated, as well as to normalise location and biological data collection and arbitrary interference in personal liberty and private businesses.
It seems unlikely that the motivation is really the health of the populace, when deaths and ill health from air pollution and obesity, and from the interrupted medical treatments during Lockdown itself, are routinely ignored.
You can follow the same logical pattern for all the other major issues of our time. Are the massive migration inflows of violent military-age males into Europe from MENA really about humanitarian aid, or about injecting cheap labour into the continent and providing justification for giant intelligence agencies, tracking and banning of encryption?
The same for critical race theory - is the goal the betterment of humankind, or to set the working class against eachother and to distract from insane wealth capture of the 1%?
It boggles my mind what kind of conspiratorial, Truman-Show-like mentality people must have to find bad faith so common in life.
It is the party of those in America who were against lockdowns, masks, vaccines, or any kind of precautions who are also against any kind of regulations or limits on the causes of obesity or climate change or pollution. So your comment about "why do 'they' care about the virus but not pollution" is moot.
It'd be hard to come up with a more obvious scenario.
If anything I am quite sure that the few lockdowns we did have worsened the spread of COVID, or at least concentrated it over a shorter timeframe, since people were now packed into shopping centres at reduced hours, were forced to socialise in smaller 'speakeasy' venues, and had a greater interaction with grandparents given the closure of schools. Without lockdowns, the virus would have spread slowly and steadily, and been concentrated in younger groups who have more social interaction with eachother, like influenza each season.
Even under a 'best case' scenario for Lockdown, and using Sweden as an example, we have spent about 50 months in Lockdown in order to save 1 month of life - statiscally for someone of advanced age and with serious existing health problems:
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/lockdown-effectiveness...
Is there a health problem in the West? Yes, and its from obesity, which is heavily correlated to negative COVID outcomes:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8...
Sweden and Ukraine far below lockdown countries for deaths per capita: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deat...
Annual deaths in Sweden 2020 only 6% higher than 2018, and even then only after a weak 2019 flu/death season:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-...
The COVID death spike in Sweden basically aligns with a once-a-decade flu variant:
https://swprs.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/sweden-monthly-...
So is this conspiratorial? I am using all of the available data to create this attitude.
Just flipping through your source of "50 months of quarantine", and without (yet) reading the entire article, it is citing an extrapolated number from a hypothetical, which you cite as a statement of fact. Covid has been around for 18 months. You are being misleading, or English may not be your first language.
In any case, I'm not saying certain measures or lockdowns were overkill. I believe governments and experts, in a transparent fashion, should be discussing what went wrong and right at all levels, and how we can do better, quicker, safer the next time a pandemic hits.
I strongly reject the notion that this was a massive conspiracy to test the reach of government restrictions.
[1] https://apnews.com/article/paris-europe-coronavirus-pandemic...
People will be more thoughtful and less cynical when the rich take a serious attitude at ecology and inequality.
Because, when you think about it, climate change will also affect the poor way more than the rich - so some unscrupulous riches do have a vested interest in keeping people cynical, because it's not they who will suffer the consequences - they can retire in some nice mansion in the Arctic.
> The commission is worried that taxing fuel for cargo-only flights would adversely affect EU carriers.
Adversely affecting the aviation industry is kind of the whole point you gits.
Means they need another tool.
The exception for private jets seems hard to defend though, whether business or pleasure.
A TL;DW is that biofuels are unscalable and worse for the environment than standard fuels. Hydrogen is not yet viable, and would require entirely new aircraft designs. Electricity will likely never be viable for all but the smallest low-range aircraft. E-fuels (fuel made using carbon capture) is not yet viable, but may be a viable long term option.
The worlds use of fuel is many times greater in terms of calories than use of food.
That means if we want to use farmland to grow fuel, we're going to need a lot more farmland. We already farm most of the land that's viable for farming. So there isn't really much more available without destroying a lot of ecosystems and chopping down rainforest...
https://www.svebio.se/en/our-mission/is-there-enough-land/
The same creator has a 15 minute video on that topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpEB6hCpIGM
Now, for Private Jets? Yeah that's ridiculous.
Just to clarify, perhaps my point is not obvious. We want to have carbon taxes because they address the problem of economic externality in combusting fossil fuels. Different example of a similar tax, that aims to solve a similar problem: road tax; it's supposed to help finance maintenance of the road, which gets slowly damaged by each passing vehicle.
Now imagine somebody will lobby for a law that exempts certain vehicles (that rich people use) from the road tax. Would you then conclude, well, road maintenance is nothing than a power grab anyway, and we shouldn't do it? That doesn't make any sense to conclude that, and similarly, it is wrong to conclude that fighting climate change is just a power grab.
Before stealing more from my money by making me pay even more taxes, go call out those criminals who go on private jets to a conference so they can tell me and you to not use plastic straws or eat less meat, or to abuse a little kid and use her to "stare down trump" so they can score political points, like we're in a freaking 3rd grade puppetry show, the earth and climate we'd be okay. Go research who's paying for these embedded ad campaigns in news reports about how "it's cool and healthy to eat bugs" and how it's mostly my fault the damned cows are farting. Go demand removal of those benefits to people with electric cars because manufacturing those batteries is as bad, if not more dangerous considering what happens when they explode (lookup exploded tesla cars). Go ask what happened to the ice sheets? Around 2010s it was all what media talked about, now no one even mentions it anymore. I guess they didn't melt. Go ask about why it was called global cooling, then changed to warming, then changed to climate change. This is ALL political. There's nothing scientific about this, alas some thug-researchers being paid by the same corporations who are the ones actually hurting the environment
I think unified carbon tax with rebates (to be revenue neutral) is what we need to fight climate change.
OTOH, specific taxes for some kind of consumption (like jet fuel tax) is just a power grab by valuing different consumptions in a different ways, regardless of how much CO_2 they emit.
To clarify, I was specifically addressing GP's point where they said "fighting climate change is a power grab", not those specific consumption taxes as opposed to general carbon tax.
People who consume more, should pay more. Period.
It's still a power/cash grab at my expense.
Imagine if the world was just a little more complicated than that, and rich government elites were also representing the interests for downplaying climate change and doubling down on fossil fuels.
It might mean regular people died in unprecedented heat waves and got their houses burned down by wildfires. All while billionaires convince them that all carbon pricing is awful and corrupt, careful that they don't know too much about the option of revenue-neutral dividends.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Staines
"Keep in mind messenger's political leanings. Ignore politicians' hypocrisy!" ?
If the proposal regarding "pleasure" flights stands, then the EU is no better than UEFA or IOC.
Is that really the message that the EU wants to send i wonder.
It also reflects poorly on Slovenia that is currently holding the presidency, but i suspect they don't really care.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_of_the_Council_of...
EDIT:
Having read another source it doesn't seem clear that pleasure flights are exempt.
https://www.transportenvironment.org/sites/te/files/publicat...
I've noticed there's a recent trend of grossly mispresenting this stuff in the worst possible light. It seems if any EU whitepaper even just mentions encryption it somehow gets twisted into EU encryption ban being imminent.
I urge people to always read or at least glance at the actual documents when claims about new laws/proposals/etc. seem outrageous.
This did not happen. Only extremely stupid people who uncritically swallowed extremely dishonest headlines without further research believe it did.
Thank you for letting us know you're a fucking idiot.