This thread is full of a frustrating amount of poorly thought out convictions (someone actually said they would rather see 10 flights with 1 passenger than 20 f

This thread is full of a frustrating amount of poorly thought out convictions (someone actually said they would rather see 10 flights with 1 passenger than 20 flights full per day. Really? Are you totally mental???) None of the environmental people on here are taking into account any benefit from these flights and none of the economics minded people have done a good job explaining why this is a bad idea, so here it goes: The correct answer, as always is to price pollution properly with a carbon tax or cap and trade because then the most efficient providers can kill off the less efficient and provide more per the same unit of pollution. They don't want to do this because that inefficient provider is air france and the air france equivalents and those are sacred cows. A tax or cap and trade would also apply to other inefficient pseudo government sacred cows like state owned energy companies, etc. By putting in a minimum price on a narrow set of polluters they can then target stuff they don't like rather than preferentially hurt the worst offenders (which are often the government!) And they can make us all much poorer by artificially limiting consumer choice (which should never be the goal of pollution regulation. The goal of pollution regulation should be to limit pollution to an acceptable amount while maximizing benefit to consumers and the best, cheapest, easiest way for that to happen is by pricing the pollutant and letting consumers tell us what they want through their purchases at the new price. Its pretty much never achieved by government mandate because government cannot know your personal preferences across all of society.