Calculated on a “territorial” basis — the greenhouse gases emitted within its borders — the U.K.’s share of annual global GHG emissions is about 1 percent. That makes its “race to net zero” by 2050 pointless for anyone other than virtue-signalers, ascetics, masochists, and those who enjoy bossing people around — and the emotional, psychological, and more concrete rewards that come from that. Never mind, the British government, oblivious to global indifference, maintains that the country is setting an example to the rest of the world. The U.K. also likes to claim it is a “clean energy superpower,” which, I suppose, makes a change from the boast by Boris Johnson, one of the guiltiest of Blighty’s net zero criminals, who said that it would be the Saudia Arabia of wind.

Britain’s Climate Change Committee is a collection of net zero zealots (to be fair, it’s part of the job description), which advises Parliament on the progress that the country is making on its route to net zero and offers suggestions of how to get there. In climateland, the pointless is rarely painless.

And so, via the Daily Telegraph:

In its latest “carbon budget”, the Climate Change Committee (CCC) told ministers that ambitious net zero goals can be met only by deterring air travel through measures including a “frequent flyer levy” that hits travellers harder in the pocket each time they fly.
It added: “This is a tax that increases with the number of flights an individual takes. As higher-income groups tend to be less responsive to price changes, tax rates would need to be sufficiently high to manage demand.”

“To manage demand.”

Manage.

So much nicer a word than “ration.”

The Daily Telegraph:

Introducing a levy on families who fly regularly should help limit growth in airline traffic to 16pc through 2040, the committee said, compared with a level of more than 50pc without any intervention.

The recommendation is not binding, but it shows (so to speak) the direction of travel — for some anyway. The British delegation to the COP29 climate jamboree in Baku last year was 470 strong (the U.S. made do with 405). It was a 5,000-mile roundtrip — somehow I suspect that the delegates didn’t go by train. To be fair, some had essential work to do, such as the two (not one but two) official videographers, who accompanied the seven ministers, more than 100 civil servants, and, doubtless, an outstretched hand of consultants, NGO apparatchiks, and other rent seekers, “saving the planet” in Azerbaijan.

The war against flying, which is part of climatists’ broader assault on mobility, is by no means confined to the U.K. For example, France has banned certain short-haul flights, while Swedish activists have been promoting the notion of “flight shame” (flygskam) for years. It was a concept well suited to Sweden, traditionally a conformist society where social pressure is very effective, but even there, pushback has set in. Sweden’s current right-of-center government is scrapping the country’s flight tax.

But the pressure group Stay Grounded is still on the case:

From an environmental and justice perspective it is clear that the number of flights and cumulative air travel distances must be reduced to a necessary minimum as soon as possible. The remaining flights will need to be allocated in the most equitable way possible or for the greatest public good—as part of the total remaining carbon budget and in line with climate justice. On a global level, this policy could be implemented through a cap-and-share mechanism.

On the group’s reading list is a book published in December 2019 and titled Degrowth of Aviation (of course degrowth was going to be involved in this somewhere).

Turn to its pages to find this:

Avoiding an unmanageable climate crisis will require unprecedented efforts to cut fossil fuel use in half in less than 15 years and eliminate their use almost entirely in 30 years. Meanwhile, the aviation industry is planning for a massive expansion. Current or planned measures do not address the root of the problem, which is the growth of the aviation sector. Rather, they shift the discussion away from the fact that we need to radically reduce aviation, especially in countries of the Global North. This is a necessary step to reach a just and ecological mobility system.

“Just.”

Just stay in your place, more like.

As for cutting fossil fuel use by half (from 2019) by 2030, it doesn’t seem to be on track.

Here’s Dieselnet discussing a report by the Energy Institute:

The general energy trends in 2023 were similar to those in the previous year, showing a continued growth of fossil fuel consumption and CO2 emissions. While renewable energy consumption has seen a steep increase, renewables have not yet replaced any fossil fuels—rather, increasing renewable energy volumes are added on top of growing consumption of fossil fuels.

The “transition” is an addition.

Dieselnet:

Global fossil fuel consumption reached a record high, up 1.5% to 505 EJ (driven by coal up 1.6%, oil up 2% to above 100 million barrels for first time, while gas was flat). As a share of the overall mix, fossil fuels provided 81.5% of global primary energy, marginally down from 81.9% [in 2022].

But what’s this?

The report also highlights different energy trends across the globe, with fossil energy consumption peaking in ‘advanced’ economies that experience little or no economic growth, and rising in emerging growth economies such as China and India.

Hmmm . . .

But, sure, Britain is leading the way.