martine wrote:Gareth wrote:Air travel should be subjected to much higher taxes...
Why air travel - it makes a very small contribution to CO2?
I'm not certain that you're correct. For example, an article from just over 2 years ago in the Guardian newspaper suggested Britain's use of air travel was disproportionately high, the figure given for carbon dioxide emissions is consistent with information presented on a UK government website, (even though both sources are woefully out of date), and is about half that resulting from car travel in the UK, but "Scientists say carbon emissions in the atmosphere are at least twice as harmful to the environment as those at sea level" which suggests the harm done to the environment is comparable.
I found another document which discusses these issues, (in Microsoft Word format), which points out that the IPCC say air travel carbon dioxide emissions must be multiplied by about 1.9 because of other harmful emissions ... "As a rough approximation, flying has the same climate changing effect as each passenger in the plane driving their own (smallish) car the same distance".
There is already a high degree of taxation on car use; if the argument is one of preventative measures I see no good reason not to have a similar degree of taxation on air travel per passenger mile.