Oh nice
Instead of trying to lower prices for alternatives (e.g. trains), they just try to jack up prices for existing forms of transport, so that the other transports now seem cheaper. How about taxing the shit out of airlines and using that to get trains down to the price of what airlines charge now?
This is just again getting the mid- and low-income layers to pay for shit.
“I openly call for taxing polluting activities to invest in the ecological transition,” said Beaune, adding that the government plans to increase the tax on flights departing France to fund rail investments.
I don’t think it’s entirely clear what he wants the EU to do, but it really seems like making other forms of transport cheaper is part the goal here.
Hence I think it’s likely going to be a reasonable proposal. Making flights more expensive to pay for cheaper trains is a good way to go about it. The money for the trains to come from somewhere and flights are something people can live without.
Yes, if it is done in the right order. Make trains cheaper first, then add to the cost of airlines. Knowing politics it will be “We will now tax flights with an additonal X% and use that for alternative travels”. Then, 10 years later, the “alternative travels” will be the same price but flying will be more expensive. I just do not trust politics anymore at all if they do not put the “lowering costs” part first.
Make trains cheaper first, then add to the cost of airlines.
Then you have a gap regarding financing. I.e. also a problem. Hence I really don’t care about the order here. Both trains becoming cheaper and plains becoming more expensive are things that need to happen asap. I would prefer both to happen tomorrow, but if one happens later or not all all that’s still better than nothing happening.
Who do you think they will pass on those costs? Basically all Airlines make their money on normal tickets and not on the class 1 tickets. What you really want are instead of 0% tax on Airplaine fuel, ridiculous taxes. That actually increases the COSTS of airlines and those do get passed on more to the rich as they travel a lot more inefficiently. They also can’t evade costs, but they can taxes.
You might be misunderstanding my comment: They can increase costs if they want, but they should take the costs away elsewhere. I have no problem with a train ticket being 10€ and a plane ticket being 120€ instead of the other way around.
But this will lead to a plane ticket being (as an example) 80€ and the train ticket continuing to be 120€. While they do make more money off of 1st class and stuff, they still need to make a chunk of the cost off of 2nd class. Especially on more local (e.g. inside the country or just one over), where there often is just one class in the plane (And maybe there is business).
What are they doing for the train interconnections and low price all over the union ? Nothing.
Is this secretly taxing the poorest again, while the richest feel no change?
So you want to price more people out of living good lives and being able to travel? What percentage of people do you want to be too poor to have a holiday?
A carbon tax does a better job at incentivizing low-carbon alternatives at all scales, from trains and more efficient airplanes down to e-bikes.
We have the largest emission trading scheme in the world in the EU and it is actually working. The issue is that there are no taxes on international flights nor on kerosine. So flying is made artifically cheaper. That alone basicly would solve the problem.
The other big problem is that train tickets are not generally accepted across EU borders. That is a massive problem if one of your trains is delayed and you miss a connection due to that. You end up not being able to take an alternative train for free and do not get paid the normal fine from the train operator for long delays. There is some cooperation, so this is not the case for all international journeys, but still it is a problem.
the carbon tax for one kg should be set at 110% the cost to remove one kg, 100% to completely remove it, and 10% to help remove past emissions, which statistically the emitter probably emitted pre-tax anyways
You do not have linear costs of removal. Just letting nature be has no additional costs, but in the amount necessary extreme opportunity costs.
Technical systems might have a theoretical cost, but practically any energy put into removing CO2 from the atmosphere is much better put into not using fossil fuels to produce energy for a different purpose.
Meanwhile the cost estimates for the damages incurred are in regions of 200-500 €/tonne now. So unless we also properly tax imports and other countries also do carbon taxing, it will be the death to any industry.
An increasing carbon tax is an important instrument, but it can only be part of many measures, most importantly ramping up the renewable production by all means.
France is trying to set up something like that for electric vehicle.
They want to stop subsidizing electric car from China, but with European regulation they can’t add a tariff according to the country.
So instead they the government will subsidize only electric vehicle that emitted less than X kg of CO2 for its production.
The problem is that for fossil fuels, there is no good way to “completely remove” them. Most of the “carbon neutral” ads are plain greenwashing. But taxing it would be a good step nonetheless.
Most of the “carbon neutral” ads are plain greenwashing.
Well, there’s some issues with carbon offsetting and the promises made by the involved companies. But that’s more of a regulatory issue.
For now you can indeed offset your emissions very cheaply by paying NGOs like atmosfair (i.e. one of the NGOs that has working programs). What they do is finding issues where emissions can be avoided cheaply and then funding projects to avoid these emissions. Obviously, that wouldn’t work if everyone (or even a large enough share) of people tried to offset their emissions, but right now and at the margin is a very efficient way to decrease emissions. Hence I wouldn’t be too critical of it. Offsetting won’t safe us in the long run, but it will buy us some time to implement sustainable solutions.
No, just massive tax privat jets fuel.
I regularly hear people say stuff like “I would like to take the train, but the flight was cheapest”. “You know, i’d take the train, but with switching twice and 8 hours… and the flight was only a bit more expensive”
There is still a lot of convenience over actual need.
