Perverse Political Policy

It's not exactly a new insight but Martha Gill clearly lays out some of the absurdities of the UK's current climate-related transport policies (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/25/poor-pay-net-zero-rishi-sunak-carbon-tax). Bizarrely, private jets pay the same air passenger duty as folk on commercial flights in 'cattle class'. It's very well-documented that only tiny, wealthy percentage of our population, make regular emissions-blasting journeys on jet aircraft. An even smaller percentage can be classed as 'frequent flyers' (1% generate 50% of all flight-related emissions). Such frequent flyers also have schemes encouraging them to fly more often. Gill notes that some such folk actually take pointless flights, just to climb to a higher tier of their scheme (it's called 'tier point running'). Most folk, however, travel on petrol or diesel-fuelled transport (buses, cars or motorbikes). Yet, whilst diesel and petrol are heavily taxed, jet fuel escapes any duty. Gill wonders whether this lack of focus on air travel is a consequence of 'policy-makers' being heavy users of jet and helicopter services? She suggests that it would be simple to come up with a progressive scheme, where folk exceeding their specified carbon allowance were taxed more heavily. These would be 'green taxes', that didn't expressly hit the poor.