UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has defended long-haul holiday flights in his interview with Sky News. Tony Blair’s statement that imposing “unrealistic targets” for passengers would be wrong and that it is impractical to…
UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has defended long-haul holiday flights in his interview with Sky News. Tony Blair’s statement that imposing “unrealistic targets” for passengers would be wrong and that it is impractical to expect people to give up flying for environmental reasons, echoes arguments put forward by David Soskin, Chief Executive Officer of Cheapflights.co.uk, who actively promoted independently well-researched reasons to continue flying at the Battle of Ideas debate which took place at Royal College of Arts, last November.
A steadfast supporter of affordable flying for all, Mr. Soskin says that “not only would it be unrealistic to expect people to give up flying for environmental reasons but the effect flying has on the environment is negligible.”
He points out that aviation’s current global contribution to manmade emissions is between 3% and 3.5%. This is very small when counted as a proportion of the transport sector as a whole, which contributes to approximately 25% of global emissions.
Mr. Soskin is among many who rejects the move for a unilateral environmental tax on air fares as this would make air travel “elitist” and have a detrimental affect on UK airlines (and the supporting industry) without having much impact on global air traffic.
“Whilst accepting the need to tackle CO2 emissions globally, by loading even more taxes on an already over-burdened airline industry, which may or may not be applied to countering CO2 emissions, the Government risks delaying the introduction of more fuel efficient fleets which are far more likely to tackle this issue head on. World class aircraft such as the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, due for launch in 2008, can reduce fuel consumption and carbon emissions by 16% compared to the 747-400 which it replaces. This is where the future lies.”
He goes on to say “The Prime Minster is quite right when he says that the key to environmental progress lies in technology and not in preventing people from flying. I only wish that some of his junior ministers showed similar commonsense.”
Theodore is the Co-Founder and Managing Editor of TravelDailyNews Media Network; his responsibilities include business development and planning for TravelDailyNews long-term opportunities.
