
France to tax flights from its airports, airline shares fall - Ultramanoid
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-airlines-tax-idUSKCN1U412B
======
dewey
Finally. It's really frustrating to see how heavily subsidized airlines, plane
fuel and airports are and how big of a tax breaks they get when they come to a
city.

At the same time people are shamed for buying salad in a plastic bag when the
big lever is somewhere completely different. Had the same thought yesterday
when I saw:

[https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1148317244893597696](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1148317244893597696)

~~~
rsj_hn
International Air Travel is one of the most heavily taxed, if not the most
heavily taxed, activity. It's not unusual for the taxes to exceed the ticket
price. Here I just looked on kayak for a flight from SFO to Berlin. Here is
the price breakdown:

    
    
       Ticket price USD 465.00
       Taxes, Fees and charges USD 540.52
       ---------
       International/Domestic Surcharge USD 350.00
    
       APHIS User Fee USD 3.96
    
       Immigration User Fee USD 7.00
    
       Customs User Fee USD 5.77
    
       United States International Departure Tax USD 18.60
    
       United States International Arrival Tax USD 18.60
    
       Passenger Civil Aviation Security Service Fee USD 5.60
    
       Air Transport Tax USD 46.58
    
       German Aviation Security Charge  19.15
    
       Passenger Service Charge - Intl USD 23.95
    
       Passenger Service Charge - Dom. USD 36.81
    
       Passenger Facility Charge USD 4.50
    
       Total price USD 1,005.52

~~~
dewey
Take-off and landing account for a lot more pollution than a flight in
cruising altitude on long trips. That's why we usually talk about the
problematic domestic flights where trains are an alternative. There's not
really a good alternative for long haul flights.

Flights within Europe are not that heavily taxed, otherwise I wouldn't be able
to fly Berlin - Brussels for 9 Euros.

~~~
zrobotics
Wait, Berlin to Brussels for €9? Good lord, that is far too cheap. For
example, the distance is roughly equivalent to Denver-Albuquerque. Kayak's
cheapest quote is $119 one way, scheduled 1 month in advance. I knew flights
in Europe were cheaper, but how is it possible to operate profitably at that
price? Kayak shows $23 for Ryanair Berlin-Brussels.

For comparison, I had a vehicle breakdown and needed to take an (awful) bus
that distance in the US, and it cost far more than $23 (IIRC, it was ~$75 and
took 18 hours).

~~~
egl2019
"How is it possible to operate profitably at that price?"

It isn't: Air Berlin, Monarch, Primera, Small Planet, Azur, Cobalt, VLM,
PrivatAir, Icelandic carrier WOW.

~~~
JAlexoid
They were run like traditional airlines, but traditional airlines can offset
short haul losses with long haul profitability.

Primera and WOW were in trouble because they couldn't offset losses on their
long-haul with anything.

I mean... I will not consider lower confort on transatlantic route, while sub
3 hour flights Ryanair is actually great.

------
gns24
The UK already taxes flights in a similar way. Whilst this does feel like
progress, it would be much better to tax the fuel instead of the passengers.
Virtually all other fuel is taxed, so it's strange that jet fuel is exempt.
The problem with taxing passengers instead of fuel include:

\- it doesn't encourage improving the efficiency of planes

\- airlines can't fill their planes with really cheap seats, and empty seats
seem like a ridiculous waste

\- freight isn't taxed

If you tax fuel too much there's a risk that planes will fly in with enough
fuel to fly out again, but that could be fixed by legislation or (better) by a
standardised fuel tax across a large area.

~~~
rlpb
> Virtually all other fuel is taxed, so it's strange that jet fuel is exempt.

"Without any international agreement on taxing fuel, it is highly likely that
moves to impose duty on international flights, either at a domestic or
European level, would encourage ‘tankering’: carriers filling their aircraft
as full as possible whenever they landed outside the EU to avoid paying tax.
Clearly this would be entirely counterproductive. Aircraft would be travelling
further than necessary to fill up in low-tax jurisdictions; in addition they
would be burning up more fuel when carrying the extra weight of a full fuel
tank."

This document explains it pretty well: [http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-
papers/SN00523.pdf](http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN00523.pdf)

~~~
ericd
It seems like regulators could just tax planes based on how much fuel they
leave with, regardless of the source?

~~~
LynxInLA
That would incentivize planes to fly with as little fuel as possible. That
could lead to some flights running out of fuel when unforeseen issues arise.

No matter how you tax the fuel, there are going to be some perverse
incentives.

~~~
freedrock87
ICAO already regulates the reserve amount of fuel required to be carried.

This isn't a valid argument

~~~
teraflop
ICAO sets a _minimum_ amount of reserve fuel, not a _maximum_ , so this is not
a valid counter-argument.

~~~
squiggleblaz
On the contrary:

1\. Tax the fuel in a plane when it leaves the airport (i.e. including the
fuel the plane imports). 2\. Airlines will reduce to the amount of fuel planes
leaving the EU fly with to dangerously low levels. 3\. ICAO prohibits planes
from flying with dangerously low levels.

Point 3 entirely deals with the problem of point 2.

------
keiferski
I am actually surprised that short-distance flights aren't taxed more in
Western Europe. The train infrastructure in France is world class and can get
you from Paris (North-Central part of the country) to Marseille (Southeast), a
distance of about 500 miles, in 3 hours.

For Americans, this would be roughly equivalent to go from Boston to
Washington D.C. (a trip that takes 7-10+ hours)

~~~
kaycebasques
Is the carbon footprint for train travel significantly lower than for plane
travel?

~~~
keiferski
About 5-10% of a flight, according to this:

[https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.dw.com/en/trains-vs-
planes-...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.dw.com/en/trains-vs-planes-whats-
the-real-cost-of-travel/a-45209552)

~~~
kgwgk
I was going to say that these figures ignore infrastructure and necessarily
underestimate emissions, but it seems that wouldn't change much the overall
picture:
[https://uic.org/IMG/pdf/carbon_footprint_of_railway_infrastr...](https://uic.org/IMG/pdf/carbon_footprint_of_railway_infrastructure.pdf)

------
dorfsmay
Why are they taxing flights rather than fuel?

There's nothing wrong with "flying"! What's wrong is how they get their
airspeed, namely by burning fossil fuel.

Also those prices are insulting. There is no jet fuel tax in the EU. This
gimmick tax is less than what people driving cars pay in taxes on their fuel
for a tank of gas. Governments want to increase tax on car fuels (hence the
yellow jacket movement) but still give airlines a break!

~~~
wcoenen
Airlines are already included in the EU cap and trade scheme. That's
effectively a fuel surcharge for CO2.

(When that happened, the US disliked it so much that they passed the "European
Union Emissions Trading Scheme Prohibition Act" to prohibit US carriers from
complying. And China threatened to cancel airbus orders. As a result, flights
that go outside of the European Economic Area are not covered by the scheme.)

~~~
Ericson2314
So sad...

------
cameronbrown
I don't really understand what the purpose of this tax is. There's no
alternative to burning fuel by energy density on an airline, so why go after
flights? What do they expect them to do? If you're taxing petrol cars you'd
expect electric cars to become more economically viable.

Either way I disagree with carbon taxes. They're regressive, and ignore the
fact that regular people are being badly hurt by them whereas the rich won't
even feel it.

~~~
hrktb
The purpose of the tax is to recover the external cost of flying.

Ideally there are alternatives to flying, but it's not a requirement: as long
as flying has an environmental price, recovering it through tax is a decent
logic.

We can discuss the offered price, or how the tax could be structured, but I
don't think the approach is unreasonable on its face.

~~~
flexie
But close to nothing is being recovered. We would recover more or less the
same if we introduced a tax on bad weather to be paid by those suffering from
it.

The money collected with this tax may or may not reduce air travel and will be
spent on government employees, welfare distributions, healthcare, roads,
military etc as all other taxes and only a fraction will be spent on improving
the environment.

~~~
bryanlarsen
They could destroy the money collected from the tax and it would still improve
the environment: the tax will discourage people from flying and encourage
people to use alternatives, which helps the environment.

~~~
hedora
As I write this, I imagine people are rushing to their phones to cancel their
transatlantic business class tickets because of the 18 euro surcharge.

I’ll be traveling via barge for the foreseeable future because of this tax.

~~~
skosch
All of this has been studied and modeled extensively. It's called elasticity
of demand. The fact that professional trading firms are selling airline stock,
pushing the price down, shows you that yes, this will indeed have an effect.

~~~
icebraining
The stock price of Air France barely took a hit, and already rebounded.

------
mgbmtl
They say it will "help support the environment", which could mean through
funding of greener initiatives, R&D or level the playing field (although the
tax is really low/symbolic, in my opinion).

It makes sense to tax flights in order to subsidize rail for short-distance
trips. I would have expected a higher tax on flights outside the EU, so that
people change their habits (although then you need a carbon-tax sort of
scheme, not to penalize low-income people who visit their family once a year).

~~~
isolli
Related: I was surprised to learn recently that short-distance trips by plane
actually have lower CO2-emissions than long-distance ones, because the plane
does not need to carry so much fuel just for later use.

~~~
ceejayoz
Do you have a citation on that?

[https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2015/09/evolving-
clim...](https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2015/09/evolving-climate-math-
of-flying-vs-driving/) says "Longer flights are more efficient overall, as
cruising requires less fuel."

[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/apr/06/aviation...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/apr/06/aviation-
q-and-a) also states "short flights tend to be more harmful to the climate per
mile travelled than long-haul flights are (because they have more empty seats,
and because taking off and landing burns more fuel than cruising)".

~~~
isolli
Thanks, it is indeed a bit more complicated than I first thought! There is a
sweet spot: "Above a certain distance it becomes more fuel-efficient to make a
halfway stop to refuel, despite the energy losses in descent and climb." [0]

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft#Fligh...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft#Flight_distance)

Interesting tidbit (from the same): Very long non-stop passenger flights
suffer from the weight penalty of the extra fuel required, which means
limiting the number of available seats to compensate. For such flights, the
critical fiscal factor is the quantity of fuel burnt per seat-nautical mile.
For these reasons the world's longest commercial flights were cancelled c.
2013. An example is Singapore Airlines' former New York to Singapore flight,
which could carry only 100 passengers (all business class) on the 10,300-mile
(16,600 km) flight. According to an industry analyst, "It [was] pretty much a
fuel tanker in the air."

~~~
dehrmann
Singapore Airlines relaunched that flight.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singapore_Airlines_Flights_21_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singapore_Airlines_Flights_21_and_22)

------
flixic
As subsidies and taxes can be used to incentivize and disincentivize behavior,
I’m happy about this. Flights have truly large ecologic costs, and flyers need
to be aware of that, trying to minimize travel if not necessary. I’m
particularly happy that it’s not a flat tax but based on ticket class.

~~~
dfilppi
Should be based on passenger mass

~~~
gourou
Can't tell if you're trolling. The A320 weights 42,600 kg. A passenger weights
100kg, let's say 150kg with luggages. That's 0.3% if the overall mass of the
plane. Wouldn't make much of a difference if you have an extra 50kg.

------
baud147258
I think the gov went in the wrong direction here, the tax for flights within
France should have been the highest, to give more incentives for using the
train, which is quite good (and very good when travelling to/from Paris).

------
marnett
> Want to do something about climate change? Start with yourself

I really dislike this line of thinking. I don’t manufacture millions of tons
of concrete or millions of single-use plastic shampoo bottles. Our current
path is irreversible if drastic shifts in disposable consumerism don’t occur
soon.

~~~
WhompingWindows
There's a constant war of words here: are individuals responsible for cleaning
up their footprint, or are corporations responsible for their dirty practices,
or are governments responsible for putting policies to guide the economy?

The answer is: we need all three. We will not tackle climate change without
strong change on the personal, corporate, and governmental levels.

~~~
OisinMoran
If you could only pick two out of those three, which would you choose?

~~~
pathseeker
individuals and government. Corporations don't exist in a vacuum.

~~~
slg
It is weird how people pretend that corporations and governments are some type
of weird entities with minds of their own instead of just a group of
individuals. Individuals changing priorities will directly result in
corporations and governments changing priorities.

~~~
moate
But the inverse is also strongly true. It's why people decry the "nanny-
state". The government and corporations can make decisions that result in
changes in individual behavior. Many times, it's easier to get 51 senators (or
whatever) to agree on pushing policy than mobilizing millions of consumers on
the same issue. Part of the advantage of a representative government is that
it's a smaller group of people to arrive at a consensus.

Societal changes are always about some group reaching a consensus on a topic
and collectively acting on their decision. Governments and Corporations can
sometimes be easier to deal with than 300+ million individuals when it comes
to driving that consensus.

------
vinay_ys
Here are the ways I see airline industry produces pollution: * The airports
are built (clearing so much green land, using so much concrete) * How flights
taxi when on airport * How much time they spend in air due to congestion or
weather * How far airports are located from city population centers and
transportation between them. * Amount of time people spend at airports waiting
- hence need large facilities to host them with food, entertainment (shopping)
etc with air-conditioning.

I can imagine ways of switching over to alternate fuels, optimizing the
process flows to reduce fuel needed or avoid certain step entirely through
innovation and drastic changes.

But huge segment of travel generated pollution can be completed avoided by
replacing in-person business meetings with alternate equally rich and
rewarding experiences.

In the future, some day, I hope there will be holographic rooms that one can
use to holographically teleport to another location and do meetings as if they
are there in person. This would consume way less energy and hence reduce
pollution. Imagine "holo-portation" hotel rooms that you can rent for doing
meetings.

~~~
bsilvereagle
> I hope there will be holographic rooms that one can use to holographically
> teleport to another location and do meetings as if they are there in person.

HP took strides on this in 2007 with the "Halo Room".

[http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press_kits/2008/halo/ds_ha...](http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press_kits/2008/halo/ds_halo-
meetingroom.pdf)

------
lou1306
Not sure why the title was edited. The article mentions both domestic and
international flights.

~~~
Ultramanoid
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20392885](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20392885)

------
gourou
It's surprising the government didn't start with that instead of abruptly
raising gas prices. Both are eco-friendly moves, but this one targets the rich
more than the poor. Maybe it would have prevented months-long Yellow Vest
protests.

~~~
remram
I am also surprised by how much this seems to be an answer to that movement,
yet it comes a year after this apparent deadlock and all this fighting.

------
agentultra
> A round-trip plane ride from New York to London costs another three square
> meters or so of Arctic sea ice. [0]

It sounds like it wasn't a high enough tax. And perhaps we need to do more at
the individual level to discourage international travel.

[0] [https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-
co2-sea...](https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-co2-sea-
ice-20161103-story.html)

------
mbell
I'm getting to the point where I think 'tax incidence analysis' should be a
required course, perhaps required every few years throughout ones life just to
ensure it's not forgotten[0]. It would improve the political discourse
substantially.

[0] Actual implementation of this would be very difficult on many axes and
perhaps impossible without introducing more problem than it solves, but I
think it's worth it to try to figure out.

------
coldtea
"Airline shares fall", so?

Would they also put a headline line: "Colony gets freedom, East India Company
shares fall"?

------
mberning
I wonder if this will roil the working masses like the planned gas taxes did.
Maybe it will take a while until the work stoppages and lay offs kick in.

------
cyrksoft
Will flights still be cheaper than trains?

------
hartator
I would rather them working on removing subsidies to airlines rather than them
adding another tax.

------
DocTomoe
So, this will mostly affect CDG as a hub. IF that tax gets painful, people
will move to LHR or FRA.

~~~
realusername
By starting with a small tax which won't affect much CDG, the strategy is
probably for France to push it on a EU-level after that.

------
gourou
Is there any way this could impact plane manufacturers? Lighter planes would
mean less pollution.

~~~
WhompingWindows
Would lighter planes mean less pollution? Shouldn't we look at per-customer
emissions? There's clearly benefit to a 2 seater vs 1 seater, what about 30
seats vs 60 seats? I don't actually know the physics here, would be
interesting to see that calculated.

------
bartwe
Please use the tax to fund research into holoportation to replace quite a bit
of travel.

------
benmdi
Based on recent events, I'm sure this will be well received...

~~~
Kurtz79
Why?

The protest that originated "gilets jaunes" was because the increase in
gasoline price would affect low wage workers for which their car was one of
the main tools for their job.

I cannot imagine many low wage workers that depend on international flights to
take home some bread...

~~~
C1sc0cat
I think the powerful french farming lobby had more to do with it

~~~
seszett
It's the first time I hear that, and that would be quite surprising since
farmers do not pay taxes on the diesel they use.

~~~
C1sc0cat
Precisely at some point (duty free fuel for farming) that has to go and it was
a pre-emptive flexing of the faming lobby's muscles.

------
xvilka
French government, unlike German one, is a lot smarter, and didn't kill its
nuclear industry, adding more coal burning emissions. Surely this will pay in
the long term. And a lot.

------
esotericn
Some of the posts here amuse me because they're based on the idea that
everything that exists now somehow must exist forever.

The train, or electric car, or boat, or other less polluting option from A to
B, may well take a lot longer.

That might make certain things impractical. Like, say, me wombling down to
Heathrow and taking a weekend in Krakow.

That may well just be the way it has to be. It may be temporary due to
technological advancement; it may not.

Just as it may be the case that, in fact, there is no suitable alternative to
say, plastic wrap on food. And maybe we'll have to change our diet.

I make no claim that any of the above is true; but if it is; such is life. We
will have to adapt.

~~~
riffraff
There are indeed a lot of things that were "normal" just a few years back:
driving without seat belts, smoking in clubs, having sex with strangers
without condoms, eating things that are now restricted due to environmental or
health concerns.

It is hard to think that cheap flights can be a "dangerous convenience", but
they may very well be.

~~~
esotericn
Stuff like the Clean Air Act and equivalent elsewhere.

You could just burn whatever in the stove. It's your house, and castle, why
not.

Turns out that didn't quite work out, so now you can't. There is no
replacement for a proper log fire that's quite the same. Life goes on.

I'd imagine that the wise amongst the older generations would have a better
understanding of this, and also those who grew up poor.

Go back 15 years and jetting around Europe on Ryanair flights for the cost of
a night out just wasn't a thing. Didn't exist. Completely unimaginable.

Now? I can arb my flat in London against a flight and an Airbnb in a country
2000 miles away and have a weekend holiday for free. Something has to give.

------
isolli
Isn't the title misleading? From the article: "The new French tax will be 1.5
euros for flights within France."

Unless "out of France" simply means originating in France, regardless of
whether the destination is in France or not.

Either way, the original title is better, I would keep it: "France to tax
flights from its airports"

~~~
duxup
"The new French tax will be 1.5 euros for flights within France or the
European Union, 3 euros for economy flights out of the EU, 9 euros for intra-
EU business class and up to 18 euros for business class tickets out of the EU.
Transit flights will not be taxed."

I read that as most flights in or out of France being taxed.

"Transit flights" Is that a connecting flight? Seems to be the only exception.

~~~
usrusr
> "Transit flights" Is that a connecting flight? Seems to be the only
> exception.

Makes sense, economically, in that there is quite fierce competition between
CDG and other major European hub airports for filling spare intercontinental
capacity and multi-hop connections are _far_ more price sensitive than direct
flights. If CDG would lose a majority of regional (but still international)
feeder traffic to FRA or AMS, Paris would experience a noticeable drop in
direct connections.

~~~
st1ck
I wonder, even if AMS takes over CDG as a hub, would it hurt Air France — KLM
in any way?

~~~
usrusr
Oh, wasn't even aware of that group. But it only makes the threat of a traffic
shift out France bigger: while a standalone Air France would be forced to
defend the status of their home hub against the odds, the group would not
really mind an internal shift.

According to Wikipedia (en. and de.), the French state has been divesting from
air France quite a bit while the Netherlands, who had very little at the time
of the merger, are about to match their government stake to parity (but both
will remain at <30% combined). I'd assume that French leadership is quite
aware of the risk of Air France KLM effectively becoming KLM Air France if
they push too hard.

------
blondie9x
About time. Traveling is killing the planet. One of major causes of climate
change. We need to take it seriously. I'm glad France is willing to take a
bold and brave step to support the environment.

~~~
rayiner
Flying is 5% of CO2 emissions.

~~~
avip
I think it's less? < 1B [tCO2eq] out of > 40 global annual emission.

But make it 5% to account for underresearched impact of stratospheric
emission.

------
theDevill
Why are Americans so obsessed with religion, devil and sins?!

Taxes exist to capture money and finance the externalities that are ignored by
corporations. If corporations were more responsible countries would not have
to tax these issues.

In this case France is using the money to improve an already pretty good rail
system. Compare this to the US and the California train line?

~~~
TuringNYC
"Sin Taxes" are not meant to literally tax sins but to tax behaviours with
negative consequences that where the price is ultimately bourne by society.
For example, the cost of second hand smoke is bourne by others, and when they
get sick, many times by taxpayers. The cost of alcohol is partly bourne by a
variety of parties.

"Sin Taxes" are not meant to discourage literal sins but to discourage such
activities with external costs. Many argue sugar should also be added to the
list of "sins" though of course it is not Biblically a sin.

~~~
bryanlarsen
Pigouvian tax is a synonym if you want to avoid the connotations of sin.

~~~
SilasX
I think there’s a subtle difference in intent, as elucidated by laken
above[1]. Basically, if you’re doing it with the intent to reduce the
behavior, it’s (best called a) sin tax. If you don’t care how much people
continue to do it, as long as they’re paying, it’s (best called a) Pigovian
tax.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20394548](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20394548)

~~~
bryanlarsen
OK, I'll go disagree on the linked comment then. :)

------
rdtsc
I've flown through a French airport once - Paris Charles de Gaulle and since
have gone out of my way to not fly through it again. It was a hot mess. They
lost the luggage, it was hard to find gates, parts of it looked outdated,
customer service sucked. A year after, the ceiling at its _new_ terminal
collapsed killing several people ([https://www.thoughtco.com/charles-de-
gaulle-airport-terminal...](https://www.thoughtco.com/charles-de-gaulle-
airport-terminal-collapse-3972251)).

Maybe it was just me having a bad luck, but it was certainly enough to
convince me to stay out French airports even if it means longer flights, delay
or changing the duration of my stay.

~~~
realusername
I had a pretty good experience on my case, nothing to say really. The passport
control queues were pretty optimized and things worked as they should. I've
definitely seen much worse airport than that.

~~~
rdtsc
Ah ok. It was close to 15 years ago for me so maybe they have improved and
I've just held a consumer grudge for too long.

------
frenchman99
I think there is this thing called the train.

~~~
nine_k
Specifically in France the train has a near-zero carbon footprint, because
it's electric, and the electricity comes from nuclear power.

~~~
buboard
Well looks like we need nuclear planes

~~~
nine_k
We don't have nuclear trains, do we? We just replaced coal-fired electric
generation with nuclear (in some places at least).

Same with planes. Use energy produced by nuclear / solar / wind plants to
synthesize jet fuel, operate the planes as normal.

~~~
komali2
Nuclear trains sounds badass but no I'm not aware of them existing.

The two nuclear powered vehicles in the USA are carriers and submarines. Owned
by the US military. All other nuclear generators are static and surrounded by
metric fucktons of concrete.

~~~
anoncake
Nuclear trains sound pointless. Unlike ships, you can power trains with
catenaries.

~~~
benj111
Ahem.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_boat](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_boat)

~~~
anoncake
That's awesome, thanks. But it's also a boat, not a ship ;)

------
0xNippon
Y'all have fun with that. France is at the bottom of the places in the
developed world I'd actually want to visit.

~~~
dang
Can you please not post unsubstantive comments so we don't have to ban you? If
instead you'd read the guidelines and take the spirit of this site to heart,
we'd be grateful.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
0xNippon
What? It's my opinion and is true. And is probably the lowkey opinion of many
other people. I'm literally in Tokyo right now cause Japan subsidizes travel
instead of punishing people for it. Honestly fuck hackernews. Y'all are the
actual assholes. I wasn't being mean or a dick in any way. "Unsubstantive" my
ass.

~~~
0xNippon
And further. When I do have an actual real and legit point to make I'm shadow
banned. I bet there's thousands of others in my position.

~~~
dang
When we ban established users, we tell them we're banning them and why.
Shadowbanning is for new accounts that show signs of either spamming or
trolling—especially serial trolling, i.e. someone we've banned before and
whose new account indicates more of the same.

------
jeanlucas
Smells like 2007

------
buboard
It's nice how you can rename any tax to an "eco tax" and suddenly everyone's
delighted. Kudos for the social engineering.

(there is absolutely no indication that this will somehow help the
environment. I 'm heavily against flying , but i m also appalled by the level
of gullibility here)

~~~
mamon
Ecology is a new religion, except instead of Apocalypse they have Global
Warming, and instead of sin they have "carbon footprint".

~~~
homonculus1
And instead of a bible, we have evidence ;)

~~~
mamon
No, all we have are scientific papers. And while in theory they should be
considered evidence, the current financing system basically turns climate
scientists into grant-seeking whores, and the results of research are
determined not by facts, but by the needs of the sponsor. "Fighting" global
warming is multibillion dollar business after all.

~~~
usrusr
Facilitating global warming is a multitrillion dollar business, so that
argument is kind of weak.

------
elohju
Because in France ecofascism is becoming the #1 religion thanks to leftist
propaganda. Government uses that to increase taxes.

~~~
XMPPwocky
Do you have a working definition of fascism here or are you using it as
something closer to "a bad politics thing"?

~~~
nine_k
From Wikipedia: «Fascism ... characterized by dictatorial power, forcible
suppression of opposition and strong regimentation of society and of the
economy».

There are people who see the enforcement of the green agenda in these terms,
like this: you can't speak publicly against it, you can't act openly against
it, and it gets forced on the economy through the power of the state.

I personally think that such a view is a bit of a exaggeration. But we should
remember that the danger of fascism is always around the corner, in the
groupthink and in the enforcement of One True Way in anything.

~~~
RobertoG
>>"[..]you can't speak publicly against it, you can't act openly against
it,[..]"

By this, I suppose you mean that, if you do it, you will get some angry
answers in your direction, but, is that not true about anything deserving to
talk about?

It works in the other direction too: I have heard pretty harsh insults against
ecologist (yeah, sometimes they are even called fascists).

>>"[..] and it gets forced on the economy through the power of she state."

Yes, but all economic organization is forced through the power of the state,
starting by property rights. So, nothing new there.

~~~
nine_k
I'm mostly talking about a PR suicide that is speaking against beliefs of
majority, or even a vocal minority. This has real economic consequences, so it
makes businesses stay in line with the accepted beliefs by talking the only
language that matters to them.

Yes, a state is an instiute of enforcement, violent if needed. Nothing new
here indeed. People just tend to see enforcement of ideas they like as good,
and of the ideas they don't like, as evil. Nothing new here either.

I just tried to explain the train of thought that may have led to the original
(flagged) comment.

------
caymanjim
This is simply rent seeking. It won't reduce flights, it's too small to
incentivize any fuel efficiency changes, it's passed on to the consumer so it
won't alter airline behavior, and while the article claims the revenue will go
towards financing trains, it doesn't state how that will be implemented. Are
they going to reduce fees on trains accordingly? Are they going to improve
train efficiency? Are they going to build additional infrastructure? It's
possible that they could do all these things and cause a tiny shift away from
air travel toward less-polluting options, but it's more likely just another
general tax revenue source that's politically easier to acquire because it's
easy to demonize airlines. I'm not defending airlines; they pollute a lot. I
just don't see how this helps.

~~~
perfunctory
> I just don't see how this helps.

Just curious, what would be your favorite solution(s) of the climate crisis?

~~~
0xffff2
Not GP, but any action that does not occur at a global level is nothing more
than a feel-good measure. You're kidding yourself if you think that this, or
even this multiplied across all of Europe would make a dent in climate change.
Meanwhile, it allows people to feel like they're doing something, reducing the
likelihood that we will actually see a globally coordinated effort to really
change direction on the climate.

~~~
caymanjim
Exactly. It's like recycling. It lets people feel like they're doing
something, raises prices, but doesn't actually achieve any of the objectives
used to market it.

If you want to reduce pollution, regulate it, cap it, and provide penalties
for breaching limits that far outweigh the profits for cheaters. Simply taxing
everything never changes behavior.

