Carbon tax threatens to ground Asia
tourism By Alan Boyd
SYDNEY - Asia's US$100 billion
international tourism industry is being put in
jeopardy by a campaign by European
environmentalists to limit air travel, with
politicians poised to price long-haul destinations
out of the market.
The European Community
plans to cap emissions on all aircraft flying out
of Europe as part of a carbon-trading scheme that
will take effect in 2011. Airlines will have to
buy permits for exceeding
carbon thresholds, with the
cost being passed on to consumers.
In
Germany and Britain, where anti-travel sentiment
is strongest, would-be travelers are being urged
to stay at home, and the issue has found its way
onto mainstream political agendas.
British
Conservative Party leader David Cameron, who may
become his country's next prime minister, says he
will allow every Briton one short-haul air trip a
year and make any subsequent flights unaffordable:
what his party terms "pay-as-you-burn, not
pay-as-you-earn".
British Chancellor
Gordon Brown has already increased the air
passenger duty that has been added to the cost of
all flights out of Britain for more than a decade.
The ruling Labour Party has pledged to reduce
Britain's total carbon emissions by 60% by 2050.
Germany's top state environmental
official, Andreas Troge, has backed the green
movement, offering an unusual partnership between
government and activists that will put the squeeze
on airlines.
"Anyone who flies to
Southeast Asia should know that, by doing so, six
tons of carbon dioxide are produced," he said.
According to the landmark Stern Review on
the Economics of Climate Change that was released
by the British government earlier this year, air
travel in Europe contributes only 1.6% of
greenhouse gases - even marine emissions (5%) are
higher.
Global transport as a whole
accounts for 14% of greenhouse gas emissions,
about the same as industry and agriculture. The
biggest transport source is motor vehicles, which
produce 75% of carbon.
Aviation players
believe they are being unfairly singled out by the
greens because their industry has such a prominent
public image. "The environmental hysteria goes
on every time you turn on a TV ... but I don't see
anyone complaining about the ferries," complained
Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary, whose charter firm
brings tens of thousands of visitors to Asia each
year.
What drives the politicians is a
realization that the issue has captured the public
imagination. A recent survey of US and European
firms by the Association of Corporate Travel
Executives (ACTE) indicated that 32% supported
sustainable travel and another 35% were rewriting
company policies to include such statements.
"There was a perception that the
environment was simply the flavor of the month,"
ACTE executive director Susan Gurley said of the
survey results. "Now people realize it is part of
every meal."
An Australian poll found that
20% of leisure travelers would consider abandoning
air travel altogether because of a perception that
it was contributing to global warming.
Policymakers argue that while aviation may
not have a large carbon footprint now, it soon
will because of the spectacular growth in
international travel, which has been propelled by
a surge in fare discounting.
Passenger
traffic in Asia is growing by more than 7% a year
and the region will lead the world in total
numbers carried by 2025, according to the
Association of Asia Pacific Airlines.
And
although the Stern report took a relaxed view of
the contemporary emissions damage from air travel,
it added a note of warning: by 2050, the
industry's carbon footprint will have tripled.
Complicating the issue is that while air
travel compares favorably in overall emissions,
the European Environment Agency (EEA) has
calculated that an airplane pollutes twice as much
as an average car journey for the same distance
and four or five times more than a train.
The agency says airline emissions
increased by 86% in the European Union between
1990 and 2004. It wants airlines to be regulated
through a system of permits for different emission
levels, so they would have to buy unused permits
from other firms when those levels were exceeded.
"We need to make the price signals a
better measure of the environmental cost that no
one is paying," Peder Jensen, the EEA's
transportation chief, said in a recent report.
Travelers would have to cover the
surcharge. There is no consensus yet on how
emissions could be evaluated, but payment schemes
already being offered by individual airlines,
usually on a voluntary basis, offer some insight
into likely costs.
Scandinavian Airlines
suggests a contribution of $82 per passenger for
the return flight from Copenhagen to Bangkok, its
main Asian hub. This would cover the environmental
damage from 3.6 metric tons of carbon emitted
during the journey of 32,306km.
Tour
agency Intrepid Travel, which has added a
compulsory carbon-offset payment on all of its
trips since the beginning of the year, adds $60 to
a return ticket for flights from Melbourne to
Bangkok.
Asian countries last year
collectively earned $93.4 billion from
international tourism, including air travel,
according to the World Tourism Council. Almost 80
million people relied upon the industry for at
least some of their income.
The biggest
benefits often go to some of the poorest countries
in the region. Bhutan registered the strongest
growth in Asia last year, with a 28.3% increase in
arrivals; Cambodia and Thailand grew by about 18%
and Macau by 14.8%.
But not everyone is
convinced that the Asian travel business is
doomed, as the industry's own studies suggest that
price increases alone will not deter travelers.
Respondents to one survey indicated that as many
as one in three passengers in Western countries
might be prepared to pay the additional cost
simply to cleanse their consciences.
In
any case, the proliferation of budget airlines has
offered travelers a cheap means of having it both
ways. Some observers believe it is only a matter
of time before carbon trading itself triggers
market discounting.
"The theory is that if
you increase taxes, fewer people will travel. It
doesn't work. It hasn't worked on the roads, where
traffic levels rise year after year despite some
of the highest fuel taxes in Europe. And it hasn't
worked in the skies," Willie Walsh, chief
executive of British Airways, wrote in a rebuttal
of the European policies.
"Airline
customers have been paying air passenger duty for
the last 13 years and demand for travel has
continued to grow.
"I have no doubt
aviation contributes to climate change and I am
determined the industry should play its full part
in finding solutions. The question is how. We will
succeed in tackling global warming by reducing
global emissions, not emissions from one
industry."
Alan Boyd, now based
in Sydney, has reported on Asia for more than two
decades.
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