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Some air travel may be essential to civilization, most of it isn't. We don't really have a way to determine which is which on a societal level. The best we can
by morsch 4y ago
Some air travel may be essential to civilization, most of it isn't. We don't really have a way to determine which is which on a societal level. The best we can do is price in the externalities (and deal with income disparity, but that's an orthogonal issue).
- samatman 4y agoAir travel itself is essential, it's one of the defining abilities of the modern world and can't just be shut off. It would be corrosive to try and separate the essential from the frivolous, I agree with that. I favor carbon taxes that dig an industries grave for it: such as taxing coal to build nuclear, wind, solar. That's not feasible with air travel yet, which leaves a consumption tax, those are regressive.
- morsch 4y agoYou can tax air travel to encourage travel by other means where applicable, or alternatives for work trips, or local tourism, or slow tourism, all kinds of things. Air travel itself may be defining and I don't envision getting rid of it; but the weekend trip to Vegas or Mallorca or Delhi is a defining feature of the present that is not sustainable in the future. Taxing dirty electricity generation is regressive taxation, too; like I said, it's an original issue. A first step would be to pay out all the generated carbon taxes on a per capita basis.
- toma_caliente 4y ago> You can tax air travel to encourage travel by other means where applicable. This would never happen in America because it would require Americans addressing their views on transit and addressing their pitiful consumer rail or even consumer bus industries.
- uoaei 4y agoInflation and corporate profiteering re: oil prices are having much the same effect anyway.
- toma_caliente 4y agoIs it? I see one side blaming Biden and the other side blaming corporations but neither side is saying we need better public transit.