Flightpath to the future: Part 1 – What action do Europeans want to see on airline emissions?

My posts have been getting too long lately. I realised I was in danger of penning another monster, so I’ve broken it down into t?w?o? t?h?r?e?e? four parts.

This series is about how to get a grip on aviation emissions in the next EU cycle. Part 1 looks at what people think. Part 2 examines what's already in the policy pipeline. And part 3 asks how we can shift the debate from incrementalism to transformation, because we are still so far from solving this problem, and we need to up the pace massively. I’ll wrap up with part 4, bringing it all together in one neat package.

Why listening to people – not just scientists and businesses – really matters

Europe has done a pretty good job of bringing in policies to cut carbon emissions, at both EU and national level. EU emissions are down by about a third from 1990, which is great.

What we aren’t always great at, though, is engaging citizens in this effort. Backlash to Germany’s boiler ban and the furious farmers’ protests are examples of what can happen if people don’t feel they’re being listened to.

There’s a growing sense that, as climate policies increasingly touch on our daily lives, we need to talk more with people about how they want to see emissions reduced. To bring the public with us on this journey, we need be to a bit more democratic and a bit less technocratic. Otherwise people are well within their rights to vote in the climate denier of their choice, which would paralyse policy action for a whole political term.

This is why I led a project over the past nine months with More in Common and Our Common Home to get advice from ordinary citizens (in Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK) on how to go about cutting aircraft emissions. Here are a few things we learned.

People like flying

Flying is pretty great, really. Every take-off and landing is a modern-day miracle. The application of engineering endeavour to defy gravity and afford us a rare glimpse of the heavens as we are transported thousands of miles in just a few hours.

Flying also enables holidays, which are the antidote to the tedium of the rat race. Our consumer culture primes us to work to live, rather than live to work. Those 45+ weeks a year of nine-to-five grind are the price many of us pay for a few weeks in the sun, or on the slopes, or with far-flung friends and relatives. The aeroplane is literally the icon that represents holidays in many companies’ HR systems (which I personally think is problematic, but that’s a whole other blog post).

So no wonder people have largely positive associations with flying. A democratic approach to decarbonising aviation is unlikely to succeed by telling people to simply stop doing a thing that they enjoy.

Also no surprise then that the environmental footprint of flying doesn’t factor much into people’s travel decisions (the Flight Free movement, Greta Thunberg, and your author being notable exceptions). Generally, if people can afford to fly more, they do fly more.

Which points to a vital, oft-overlooked feature of the flying public: rich people fly a lot and poor people fly very little. Globally, the wealthiest 20% of people take 80% of all flights, and most Europeans fly once or not at all in a typical year.

So increasing the cost of flying would mainly load expense onto wealthy people. On the other hand, poorer people are less able to bear that extra expense, and more likely to be priced out of their holidays. I’ll come back to this after the next section.

People care about the climate too

Just as striking though, people really care about climate change. Some groups are trying to whip up a narrative that ordinary voters are fed up with all this green malarkey, but this is an absolute fabrication. Consistent with similar recent work from the Jacques Delors Institute, our polling found strong support for climate action holding up well across the board.

On aviation specifically, 44% of respondents think airlines should be doing more to reduce their impact on the environment, while only 7% say they are doing too much. According to the survey, reducing environmental impact is the third most important feature of a good airline, behind only transparent pricing and customer service, and ahead of cheap fares and onboard experience. Two thirds (66%) of respondents agree that reducing aviation emissions is more important than providing more travel opportunities (e.g. by expanding airport capacity).

Policymakers should be encouraged that the public is well on board with bringing aviation emissions under control. The critical question is how, and who pays?

Time for high-flying polluters to pay their way

Responders to the survey think that those with more money, who cause more emissions, should chip in more than the rest of us. It’s tough to ask people to choose (more expensive) trains over planes when they see private jets soaring to record levels, and paying virtually zero tax.

Most people think policy should focus on those who fly the most, rather than all passengers equally. This means targeting private jets, business class, long-distance and frequent flyers, rather than blanket taxes on all travellers, which risks pricing lower-income households out of their holidays. A frequent flyer levy is one commonly cited policy that hits the mark here – see more info on that in the report.

Pricier planes for a few = cheaper trains for the many

People really, really think trains should be cheaper than planes. Perhaps this is because it’s so obvious that trains are greener. Or perhaps it’s because more people use trains more often, and for less glamorous reasons, than flying (i.e. to get to work).

This is probably the strongest finding in the whole survey: nearly three quarters (73%) want governments to make train journeys the same price as, or cheaper than, flights. Nearly two thirds (64%) still support this even if it means making flying more expensive.

See my previous post to learn what it’s like to take the train plane from London to Budapest.

Tax the super polluters and subsidies the solutions

It really is as simple as that. People really do want policymakers to clean up aviation emissions. They think wealthy people who fly and pollute the most (*cough* private jets *cough*) should contribute the most. And they think the money raised from this should go to making train travel cheaper and better.

This is not the sum total of everything in the survey. Do read the report and dive into the data tables to learn more about views on fuels and contrails for example, and to see how attitudes differ by country (with Spain a particular outlier on many topics).

Nor is this the sum total of everything policymakers should do on aviation emissions in the next EU cycle. But it is a great starting point. Showing you are listening to the public and doing what they want buys political currency to invest in some of the trickier, but more impactful, policy challenges later on.

Stay tuned for more on these bigger policy challenges in Parts 2 and 3.