This right tonight

[j4]

I caught part of a bunfight discussion on Radio 2 at lunchtime today, between George Monbiot and somebody from (I think) the Spectator, about the environmental ethics of cheap flights. [BBC News: "UK 'must act' on plane emissions" | Report launched today by the University of Oxford]

You already know what Monbiot's line is; I don't need to rehash that here. But the other chap was putting forward a view that I hadn't heard before; he was arguing that Monbiot's call for fewer cheap flights was part of some kind of middle-class conspiracy to trample all over the "rights" that have recently "been acquired" by "poorer people". He claimed that the rich resented the poor becoming richer, and wanted to "punish" them for this by curtailing their "rights" to cheap flights -- whether they are making these flights for pleasure, work, or "education".

Questions I am not going to attempt to answer include: whether the environmentalists' predictions of the future global warming scenario are as exaggerated as their detractors claim; how many flights Monbiot has made in the last year; whether he is more interested in advertising his book than saving the world; how many of our cheap flights to European holiday destinations (of which I've made a few myself) are "educational"; whether there is a middle-class conspiracy to erode the rights of poorer people; whether the poor are in fact becoming richer, and if so, by what metric.

Questions I would like to find answers to include: where do "rights" come from? Are we born with them? If not, do we accrue them as a function of our passage through time, or are they allocated to us by some external agency? Does the discontinuing of a commodity or service which used to exist automatically constitute riding roughshod over somebody's "rights"? If we have a "right" to something, should we claim it, whatever the cost?

Comments

[addedentry.livejournal.com]

The government is not talking about increasing taxes on aviation (whether on fuel, passengers or landing rights). Environmentalists are*.

Please be explicit about the hidden agenda you detect. As far as I can tell it's that middle-class environmentalists are attempting to rein in the middle-class privileges of city breaks in middle-class destinations in continental Europe and second homes abroad for middle-class commuters. Looks like noble self-sacrifice to me.

*The article by Monbiot which j4 links to claims that the government is prohibited by treaties from taxing fuel used for international flights - which would hobble any attempt to harmonise fuel duties across transport modes short of scrapping them all. And contrary to your suspicion, I haven't noticed environmentalists targeting aviation while embracing SUVs.

[emperor]

I think it's high time (sorry) we sorted out the treaty that makes aviation fuel so damned cheap. It means that flying is artificially cheap, particularly given its environmental cost.