Is net zero a “luxury belief”? A strange assumption seems to have become knitted into the climate debate: that the burden of cutting carbon emissions will – must, inevitably – fall hardest on the poor.
This is the logic by which climate activists are sometimes deemed snobby, classist virtue-signallers – and the principle on which, earlier this year, Rishi Sunak signalled a tactical retreat on green policies. “It cannot be right for Westminster to impose such significant costs on working people,” the prime minister said. Because, of course, this is the group such policies would hurt the most.
But this is not a law of nature. It’s a choice. There is nothing inherent to environmental policies that means ordinary people must bear the brunt of them, although we have tended to organise things that way. A more progressive approach, whereby the richest pay more for the business of hoovering up carbon and blasting it into the atmosphere, is perfectly possible. But for some reason this seems not to have occurred to policymakers such as Sunak, who was reported in August to have taken a private plane or helicopter every eight days of his premiership.
In fact, let us take flying as an example of a carbon-guzzling activity that seldom comes under the spotlight in the way that, say, driving or heating does. This is a shame – especially for those, like Sunak, who worry about the effect of green policies on working people – because flying skews toward the rich, leisured and metropolitan.
When it comes to wealth and carbon emissions, flying constitutes an inverted pyramid of sin. One per cent of people account for half of all flight emissions. A Guardian investigation last week examined the carbon footprints of private jets belonging to 200 celebrities, oligarchs and billionaires. They were equivalent, it found, to the total emissions of almost 40,000 Britons.
Meanwhile, even for those who fly commercial, income links to pollution. Those stretched out and sleeping in first class are stamping a wider footprint than those upright but lounging in business, who are in turn sinning more than those squeezed agonisingly into Tetris shapes in cattle class. The less space per passenger, the fewer flights are needed.
Why, at a time when pro-environmental low-hanging fruit is supposed to have been plucked, have we not imposed a steep progressive tax on flying? Such a scheme would be fairly straightforward to devise. Those who fly once or twice a year for a holiday abroad needn’t face extra costs. But run through your carbon allowance, and taxes could rapidly accumulate in line with emissions, penalising those who fly in luxurious sin. Soon, even the wealthiest frequent flyers would start to think twice. Private jets would meanwhile burn money faster than fuel.
Of course, the sorts who can afford private jets in the first place may be able to absorb these extra costs and keep on flying. But that is exactly why we should impose them. We are missing out on a dollop of money that could be put towards home insulation, charging points for electric cars, or even transforming the air industry. Green jet fuel is already here. But the business of switching from kerosene to hydrogen lacks both urgency and cash.
But we don’t do this. Instead – extraordinarily – incentives run the other way. Jet fuel is not taxed, unlike the fuel used by all other forms of transport. On a private jet you pay the same air passenger duty as you would on a commercial flight. And then there are frequent flyer programmes – a reward system as perverse as, say, free pens for the largest oil spill, or a set of steak knives for the last rhino.
These put a further twist on an existing dynamic. Frequent flyer programmes create a new class system, existing only within the confines of airports and planes, that directly equate pumping out emissions with higher status. And the incentives work. A recent report into these schemes recorded the habit of “tier point running” – taking pointless flights for the purposes of bumping up into the next tier of privileges. “Seven of the other people in the front cabin were all doing the same thing as me – flying just to get their status…” ran one post on a frequent flyer forum. “It’s not a sensible thing to have to do from a personal health perspective.” Status is a powerful motivator.
But it’s not just flying, or yacht ownership, another means by which the rich out-pollute the rest of us. Penalties are weighted the wrong way everywhere. Flat taxes on the price of fuel punish those for whom energy takes up a larger share of household budgets. Poor people in inefficient housing stock end up paying more for their energy. Subsidies for electric vehicles mainly go to rich people who can afford to buy a new car anyway.
But it is not beyond our means to adjust the balance. The economist Thomas Picketty suggests that everyone get a carbon allowance covering ordinary needs – and that activities beyond that are taxed in ever larger increments. This would help avoid populist backlashes against pro-climate policies, he says.
If this seems radical, we should ask ourselves why, when it comes to making sacrifices for the environment, we have tended to start with the necessities and leave the luxuries for later. There is a bias that runs through environmentalism: people tend to be in favour of helping the climate until it inconveniences them. Could it be that this bias extends even to a particular bunch of frequent-flying high earners – policymakers themselves?
