We’re told that the majority of people in the UK are very concerned about global warming and climate change. But only 3% are so concerned that they are willing to pay even a trifling sum to offset their air miles. The Sunday Times carried a story about this and told us:
The airline offers all customers who are about to buy a ticket the chance to “fully offset your CO2 emissions for this flight” by paying a fee. The 730km journey from Dublin to Paris can be offset for €1.20, while a 486km journey from Dublin to London, one of the world’s busiest air routes, can be offset for 78c. Ryanair said: “The 3 per cent of customers that chose to go greener in 2019 has yet to substantially increase, with the impact of the pandemic on air travel potentially playing a part. To date, these customers have contributed €3.5 million to support environmental projects.”
NOT Zero: Less than 3% of Ryanair flyers willing to pay carbon offset
The Sunday Times, 6 February 2022
All of which begs two questions:
Firstly, why have polling organisations not asked consumers how much they’re will to pay to alleviate global warming before? Is it because the answers would reveal how unconcerned the large majority actually are?
Secondly, if “fully offsetting” air travel only costs tuppence for ten miles, why are we getting charged a ‘green levy’ of up to £172 per flight called Air Passenger Duty, and what does it get spent on? This stealthily named tax was introduced in 1994 and if you’re a frequent flyer, it has cost you a packet over the years. The amusingly named Office for Budget Responsibility tells us:
Air passenger duty (APD) is a duty chargeable per passenger flying from UK airports to domestic and international destinations. In our latest forecast, we expect APD to raise £3.7 billion in 2019-20. That would represent 0.5 per cent of all receipts and is equivalent to around £130 per household and 0.2 per cent of national income.
https://obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/tax-by-tax-spend-by-spend/air-passenger-duty/
Enviro Lawfare outfit ELF tell us:
Unlike other transport industries the aviation sector is exempt from other taxes including on fuel and VAT. This means that APD is the only green tax on aviation.
https://elflaw.org/news/what-is-air-passenger-duty-anyway/
If you can “fully offset your CO2 emissions” at the rate of tuppence for ten miles. Why is everyone in cattle-class getting whacked 20 times more on a flight of just over 2000 miles?
ELF’s comment raises a third question too: If APD is the only green tax on the airline industry because they don’t pay other tax or VAT on fuel, then how much of the tax and VAT on road fuel is green tax?
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
We are already being forced to pay for these corrupt official documents through our energy bills; so why add to the expense?
I get a whole wad of these expensive things from Octopus every time the wind can’t even boil my kettle; but a I never see them. I think they somehow get converted into subsidies but who knows these days?
“Unlike other transport industries the aviation sector is exempt from other taxes including on fuel and VAT. This means that APD is the only green tax on aviation.”
This is willful falsehood. VAT is not a “Green” tax. Fuel duty on petrol is not a “Green” tax. They are just taxes.
[…] NotZero: just 3% of air passengers use voluntary tuppence for ten miles miles carbon offset sch… […]
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Reblogged this on Utopia, you are standing in it!.
We’re told that the majority of people in the UK are very concerned about global warming and climate change.
Until they see the bill, then concern switches to economic survival.
So-called offsets never achieved anything, but made lots of money for financial organisations and consultants. This LSE document is from 2010:
“After Copenhagen: the impossibility of carbon trading.”
https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/32841/
“The attempt to develop international cap and trade markets for anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, ultimately aiming to determine a global price for carbon, is the most extensive attempt ever made to use market-mimicking mechanisms to deal with an environmental externality.
Addressed to the problem of climate change, it is an exercise in the adjustment of the social welfare function on a global scale, and it envisages expenditures which will run into trillions of dollars.
Focusing on the operation of the Clean Development Mechanism, the most important of the three flexible mechanisms for carbon trade established under the Kyoto Protocol, it will be argued that carbon trading which will reduce emissions in line with any of the targets set for avoiding dangerous anthropological interference is impossible.
Climate change negotiations have completely failed to place a cap on global emissions; indeed, they have given a legal permission to increase them. Reflecting the fatal shortcomings of the Kyoto Protocol, the operation of the CDM so far has not merely failed to secure reductions, but in all likelihood has actually increased the absolute level of emissions.”