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Allowance to track CO2 emissions
Thank you to Dave Jones for
raising the important question of
how we manage a reduction in
flight numbers in a way that's fair
to everyone and doesn't force hardworking
families to give up their
foreign holidays or businesses
to abandon travel to overseas meetings
that can't be conducted
by video-conferencing (Letters, May 5).
He is absolutely right that
cheaper train travel must be part of
the answer. He also raises the idea
of rationing international flights.
Personally, I think that will be
hard to deliver in an equitable way.
Some people need or want to travel
abroad more than others and are
prepared to reduce the greenhouse
gas emissions produced in other
areas of their life to compensate,
while others will be happy to cut
international flights from their plans entirely.
The Green Party believes a fairer
way of handling the need to cut our
collective greenhouse gas emissions
isn't to ration flights, but to
grant everyone an "emissions
allowance" (which would decrease
over time), which they can chose to
"use up' on international flights,
car travel, eating punnets of
imported strawberries in December
or whatever else they fancy.
Making these allowances tradeable
would give everyone flexibility
to adopt or maintain lifestyles
that produced higher than average
greenhouse gas emissions but
they'd have to pay someone who
didn't want to for the privilege.
A number of non-governmental
organisations, most recently Help
the Aged, have endorsed this approach.
Caroline Lucas,
Green MEP for South East England
and prospective parliamentary
candidate for Brighton Pavilion
2:11pm Friday 9th May 2008
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