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as genuinely shocked by how cheap the flight was. I often take the train from the westcountry to London, so have become numb to the £150 that costs each way...
But I'd like to get away from seeing it just as a pricing/markets issue - which effectively makes travel a luxury good (prices go up, poor can no longer afford it...) and in addition change people's attitudes to travel. You can enrich your lives without going to the other side of the world and it would be great to see that view encouraged.
Gustav-
Yes, and the two issues (luxury/lifestyles of the rich and famous) and 'desirability' of travel are closely linked. If you're a (n international) celebrity, supposedly representing the best of society, part of that will always involve popping up in all sorts of places, whether you're on an international concert tour or going to all the glitziest parties in New York City, London, Paris, LA ... so if you jack up the price without changing people's fundamental idea that 'travelling' makes them more virtuous, you're not going to get very far (people might just go into more debt, starve their children of food, etc. to fulfil their 'dream').
Another important thing is not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. There's clearly something good about mobility, and despite the evils of hypermobility, shared out quite unequally, there are still many people for whom 'you're in your place, and you know where you are' is an inescapable reality. Likewise, there is clearly something good about travelling. There is nothing wrong, of course, with the general idea that it's beneficial to see a bit of the world when you're young (quite on the contrary), but much of the 'travelling' from tourist trap to tourist trap, or fragile historical sights/sites, obviously doesn't correspond.
However, building a consensus about the appropriate mean is extremely difficult when your departure point (pun intended) is such rampant injustice as today.
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That has to be the ultimate ideal, but the easy win must surely be to make sure people are incentivised to make greener choices.
Why is the train not £30 and the flight £75. How can we help people make the right choice rather than push them into the wrong choice?
At the moment we are incentivised to use the least efficient means of getting from one end of the country to the other.
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Building-in a rough environmental cost at purchase seems to me to be a good way of is being more ‘honest’ about our environmental impact.
It would be a bit like VAT and face much the same criticism I imagine. I don’t buy the argument that VAT is a regressive tax. The argument goes ... we all buy houses, furniture, cars, holidays, fashion items etc and those with twice the means don’t buy two houses, two cars, twice the furniture etc but I’d love to see the data. It sounds like an argument from a previous phase of capitalism to me because that’s exactly what the middle classes do now (and exactly what the 14 million in poverty dream of). Admittedly any eco taxes (again like VAT) are not a progressive, ok, but that’s an aside - we’re not short of mechanisms for wealth redistribution (only the political will to do so). Spend the revenue on eco social housing maybe? Being non-progressive is also helpful in communicating simply and directly why the tax exists (it’s purely to steer consumption, not for ideologically loaded wealth-distribution, not a Marxist plot etc). And unlike income tax ... at least these taxes would get paid by the rich.
Oliver Schick
Scrabble
miro_o
It really shouldn't be cheaper. Air travel is cheap because so little of it is taxed. We've become accustomed to cheap air travel and so prying that away will be difficult, but it needs to happen.
I just checked - If I need to be in Edinburgh by early afternoon on Monday, I could get the train for £75 or fly for £35. That is madness.