Tony Blair rules out airline emission tax
Leading environment organisations reacted with anger as Prime Minister Tony Blair ruled out any emission tax on airline travel to curb the growth in CO2 emissions and the threat from global warming and climate change.
16th February 2006
carbon-info.org
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The Prime Minister argued that an emission tax “would have to be a fairly hefty whack” to be effective, and that this would be difficult to sell to the voters. Mr. Blair's preferred option was to wait for new technology to reduce aviation emissions.
Environment organisations pointed out that the world’s 16,000 passenger planes generate 600m tonnes of carbon dioxide annually, making air travel the biggest single contributor to greenhouse gases. And airlines pay no VAT or duty despite polluting the atmosphere.
"The Governments climate change policy is not working," said a spokesman for Carbon-info. "One minute the Government is calling for urgent action - Mr. Blair recently warmed that we have only seven years left to get a hold on CO2 emissions - yet here he is calling for technology to solve the aviation emission problem. There is no major technological breakthrough that will significantly reduce CO2 emissions from air travel within seven years. And what about the time it will take to actually roll out new technology to every single airplane in the world? We are just about out of time."
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