Air travel will soon be the preserve of the privileged, an airline boss has admitted, as Net Zero makes low-cost air travel a thing of the past. The truth the Net Zero is making us poorer is slowly leaking out, says Matthew Lynn in the Telegraph. Here’s an excerpt.
It would drive a new industrial revolution. It would create lots of ‘well-paid, green jobs’. And the wealth it would generate would lower prices, raise living standards and spark innovations that would transform whole industries.
For most of the last decade, corporate leaders have insisted that the transition to a carbon-neutral economy was win-win.
We would save the planet and get richer at the same time. But hold on. The Australian airline Qantas has just broken ranks, admitting that flying may soon be the preserve of only the privileged, while a wealth of research is making it clear that environmental goals have hammered the economy.
In reality, bosses are starting to admit what has been obvious for some time. Net Zero is making us poorer – and that means we have to rethink the way we go about reducing carbon emissions.
If you thought that summer flight to Malaga or Crete with the family was already looking eye-wateringly expensive, you have not seen anything yet. According to the data company Mabrian, budget – and the word “budget” is looking increasingly out of place for the no-frills aviation industry – flights to Spain will cost 26% more this year than last and those kinds of price rises are becoming the norm for many destinations.
But it will get a lot worse very soon. Vanessa Hudson, the Chief Executive of Qantas, admitted this week that flying may well become “so expensive that it’s something only for the privileged”.
It doesn’t stop there.
Chris Wright, Trump’s Energy Secretary, delivered some blunt truths on UK policy last month when he argued that our roll-out of wind farms and solar panels “had not delivered any benefits”. In fact, he said that British politicians were impoverishing citizens “in the delusion that this was somehow going to make the world a better place”.
Likewise, earlier this month, an analysis by Peel Hunt showed that the steep decline in electricity supply since the early 2000s had coincided with a sharp fall in the growth of living standards and that the two were inextricably linked.
There is no point in kidding ourselves any more. The Net Zero drive is making us poorer.
Let’s take aviation, for example. Vanessa Hudson’s point was that sustainable aviation fuel, which will soon be mandatory for at least 10% of an airline’s consumption, is far more expensive than the traditional fossil variety.
It can cost up to five times as much as kerosene and that increase means fares will have to rise prohibitively if airlines are to stay in business. We have only seen the start of the rise in ticket prices and there will be a lot more to come over the next few years. Very soon, only the wealthy will be able to fly and the rest of us will have to stay at home.
The trouble is, this is completely crazy.
Lynn goes on to explain how numerous industries, including tourism, exports and conferences, rely on affordable air travel. And manufacturing of course is already being hammered by high and rising energy costs.
“At least Qantas is being honest,” he says”. “So are a handful of other corporate leaders, even if the majority are still living in the la-la-land where there is no trade-off between hitting our environmental goals and maintaining our standards of living.”
Worth reading in full.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.