Ban private jets to address climate crisis, says Thomas Piketty
Ban private jets to address climate crisis, says Thomas Piketty
French economist says class inequality must be at centre of climate response and calls for progressive carbon taxes
Questions of social and economic class must be at the centre of our response to the climate crisis, to address the huge inequalities between the carbon footprints of the rich and poor and prevent a backlash against climate policies, the economist Thomas Piketty has said.
Regulations will be needed to outlaw goods and services that have unnecessarily high greenhouse gas emissions, such as private jets, outsized vehicles, and flights over short distances, he said in an interview with the Guardian.
Rich countries must also put in place progressive carbon taxes that take into account people’s incomes and how well they are able to reduce their emissions, as current policies usually fail to adjust for people’s real needs.
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The problem is: There are nearly no private jets. The rich would be stupid to own their own planes for tax reasons. So the planes are usually officially owned by a charter company. That this very plane is only available for that customer - who coincidentally also pays "service frees" or whatever for all inspections, upgrades and checks - does not invalidate that it is technically "chartered".
Any flight done is a chartered flight, performed by a commercial entity.
Then you write in laws that prevent that sort of exploitation. Start stamping out the loopsholes to address the problem.
Thats practically impossible.
Nobody could execute or enforce such complex laws.
Yet alone the string of events for other parts of legislation.
Edit Im not against the proposed measure, I ghink it just has to be another route.
Like permitting certain emission threshholds per person in transportation.
Confidently incorrect
I must admit. Thanks for the link.
While I am surprised that france is so active here I welcome the push for other countries as well.
But as far as I read the other linked article about frances "ban" in detail it seems the regulation itself goes not very deep.
And I am skeptic about the outcome. The talks about this regulation were more directed towards:" give the small people some bait..." and are only impacting 3 routes in france.
But anyway, as its stated, its a small step into right direction.
Yeah I'm skeptical as well
If the assertion is;
Nobody could execute or enforce such complex laws
then a new law yet to be implemented is not evidence to the contrary.
Just like tax laws, it's extraordinarily difficult to legislate the behavior of very wealthy people because they have more resources with which to develop work arounds than the regulators have to restrict them.
Exactly.
And I see it in my country that forging a law to restrict something is very difficult to push through cause the danger that somebody will fight it into the highest court is high and then the law does not get permitted.
Its like an uphill battle.