Political Penguin

No, not the post I meant to write which is critical of my own Government but something that’s come up in the last few days.

Now just for the record, it seems I have to put disclaimers before posts now, this isn’t having a go at the Tories although I will file it in the Tory Bashing section. I’m interested in the issue and the practicalities of implementation.

Right, on Sunday the Tories release some plans for environmental issues which would have been an exclusive with the Observer but hey, shit happens and it got leaked. I was a bit disappointed in the sense that they didn’t seem too well thought through.

Haven’t got a problem with higher fuel duty on domestic flights apart from the obvious problems it’s going to cause carriers in terms of competitiveness against foreign firms but hey, we do seriously need to do something about the environment and global warming so I won’t criticise that the good intention isn’t there.

However I’m not too convinced on two other proposals. Flight tax linked to carbon emissions and a tax on ‘frequent’ fliers. Here’s why:

If taxes are linked towards carbon emissions then by and large it’s the firms with the older planes that are going to get hit worst. Those carriers with newer fleets with more efficient planes won’t. Good if you’re EasyJet or Ryanair with sparkly new planes less than a decade old ironically the carriers that are being blamed because of their business approach. Not so good if you’re BA and other carriers with planes approaching 30 years old. Turnover of fleets is slow in the aviation industry, 50 years is a regular lifespan of a plane and as much as I might wish to see the Tories cause themselves problems, someone might have suggested this proposal will annoy quite a lot of business people who normally have a predisposition to supporting them.

However it’s this idea about taxing frequent fliers that I’m more interested in. Apart from frequent fliers generally being business people, a pillar of Tory support and people they might not want to annoy if they intend getting back into power any time soon, it’s the implementation and practicalities of the issue that I’m more concerned about.

Recently there was a bit of bandwaggon jumping by the Tories regarding the issue of road pricing, tracking cars and making people pay by the mile, personally I think it’s a bit of a crap idea too but for a start this is effectively the same thing, it’s just in the air instead of on the ground. What it does require is the ability to track every single man woman and child in the country to see where they’re flying to and keep a record of that so as to tax them appropriately. This of course poses a big challenge for anyone wishing to implement such a policy as the only feasible way would be through a logging system and hey presto we’re back to the idea of ID cards and there being some Government department somewhere tracking exactly where you’re going. Not wishing to be rude but the Tories have said they’ll scrap ID cards and have played up their concerns on how it will restrict individual liberty. By proposing such a scheme this does make them sound rather hypocritical.

Anyway, today comes an announcement by Gordon Brown. Where the tact on meeting the challenges of reducing our countries carbon emissions is focused not on aviation but on households and, party politics aside as regular readers will know I’m quite keen on environmental issues, I think Gordon’s got it right or at least more right than the Tories.

Aviation is a very small proportion of carbon emissions yet it receives vastly more attention than it deserves. Yes it is an area of growth but even in the context of transport carbon emissions it’s nothing compared to cars, an issue the Tories have diligently steered away from.

Homes and businesses on the other hand are where we can make a real impact with probably the minimum level of investment and change to both lifestyle and living standards. If we accept that we may not be able to achieve complete carbon zero housing but address the inefficiencies in our nations housing stock then we can make a massive dent in the carbon footprint of our country. Some of these can be by incentive in terms of grants for insulation and others can be by diktat by regulating out the use of standby buttons on consumer electricals and how about banning the sale of incandescent light bulbs. If memory serves me correctly Australia or New Zealand has, pretty sure it’s Australia. The amount of energy and therefore both our countries carbon footprint and it’s reliance on outside power sources can be dramatically reduced.

It doesn’t take some complicated scheme of tracking everyone’s movements. It’s relatively easy to achieve change and not only will it be beneficial to the environment but also to our pockets in the long run.

So on that basis, and as there’s been a bit of a media circus focussing on who’s the greenest; Brown or Cameron then I think on balance Brown is attending to a more serious problem and in a much more straight forward and easier to achieve way than Cameron at the moment. However I will concur with Tom Watson on this one. I know how he feels having been digging this weekend and getting ready to plant my crops to feed the family, this being green ain’t arf painful at times.