I don’t think my take home pay needs to be affected for green issues. I have no problem with it being affected to support better investment in housing and welfare and other areas but ultimately everything is interlinked and it’s impossible to draw a link between one area of spending and my take home pay.
I’m certainly willing to make lifestyle changes to reduce my carbon footprint. I’m willing to pay more in taxes but particularly willing to do so if it’s part of a reform. I don’t think public transport investment should be incremental to today’s budget. I think it should be substantially a redirect from roads investments for example. I think we should spend less money subsidising aviation. Michael O’Leary has a fine time complaining about governments and regulations and unions but he’s quiet enough when he has his hand out looking for subsidies for air travel that have made his business the success it is today.
So I am prepared to pay more taxes to fund better investment in our national infrastructure and more social and economic equality. I think supporting green investments can largely be achieved by redirecting existing spending to more progressive and forward thinking initiatives.
And underpinning all that, I’d prefer to see our country’s growth measured not solely in economic terms but in quality of life terms, similar to the changes made in New Zealand where they see the folly in measuring progress solely in terms of GDP (which was never intended for that use).
This to me is one of the big questions around climate change initiatives. Aeroplanes are oil guzzlers and are critical for the operation of the world today. When you say we should spend less money subsidising aviation are you suggesting that we should come up with an environmentally friendly alternative to air travel and what would that look like?
I think we shouldn’t make air travel artificially cheap by subsidising it through government grants to airports and through PSO funding of the actual flights themselves.
Ryanair have a policy of targeting regional airports which are recipients of regional grants. They would like us to believe they have organically grown low cost travel in Europe and made it affordable but much of this affordability is because the taxpayer is paying for air travel to be cheaper through direct and indirect grants to the airports, to the scheduled flights themselves and to Airbus (not that Ryanair benefits from the Airbus money).
So I don’t think it’s about finding an alternative. It’s not even about stopping all those grants necessarily. It’s about linking those grants to improvements in fuel efficiency etc. so we don’t keep funding aviation in its current guise.
Out of interest, I’d expect most people travelling to Donegal airport are travelling in 1s or 2s, similar with Farranfore. Given both journeys are the guts of a 4 or 5 hour drive and conservatively would be the equivalent of 20 cars driving so lets say 80-100 hours or ICE fuel being burned vs a 40 min flight, which is actually better for the environment?
Ok, all very admirable and nothing there I’d disagree with you on. How much are you willing to pay extra per month in additional taxes though? Give me a figure that you’d be happy with as long as it goes towards reform, just like the water charge was going to be introduced to reform the water treatment and delivery systems of the country. That was going to cost €20.83 per month which wasn’t acceptable to the people who prevented the reform, many of whom were without water or reduced supply for long periods last yearb
An average short haul flight uses 3 to 4 litres of fuel per 100km traveled per passenger. For simplicity we’ll say that Donegal and Farranfore are 300km away and its an 50 person flight so roughly 450 - 600 litres of fuel from one flight. (in reality the flight route would probably be shorter)
For the cars, lets say that 50 people are travelling in 25 cars and their ICE cars do around an average 6.5 litres / 100km doing the same 300km drive. That uses 487.5 litres of fuel which isn’t all that different from the plane journey.
Not disagreeing with anything you’re saying but I read something last year that mentioned that taking all the planes out of the sky would have a minimal impact on climate change as modern planes use far less fuel than people think. Eliminating all ICE cars off the road would have a far bigger effect but the automotive industry have such a stranglehold on things that it will be unlikely to happen.
And I agree on your train point. Our train infrastructure is 3rd world at best unless you want to travel towards Cork, Limerick or Galway from Dublin.
How was putting a meter on people’s homes going to change water when 90% of the leaks happen before the water even gets to an individuals house? - that was a rouse to privatize Irish water.
Is it more environmentally viable to have 100 people on a 40 minute flight or 100 cars driving 4 or 5 hours?
The money has to come from somewhere. And the initiatives have to be economically viable and sustainable.
What’s the environmentally, economically viable alternative to flying?
