Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-11-12-Speech-1-200"
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"en.20071112.21.1-200"2
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"Aviation must pay for its environmental costs, and therefore this proposal is good. Aviation cannot be exempt from environmental costs which other means of transport pay. But I have a problem with the frenzy against aviation permeating this debate as if it were the greatest environmental villain and the best thing would be if we stopped flying completely. That is quite simply not true. Aviation accounts for five per cent of carbon dioxide emissions. A full aircraft uses less fuel per passenger kilometre than a car. It can and must be made even better, but through us making tough demands on the aviation industry which drive developments forward, not through us stopping flying.
Travelling and meeting people from other parts of the world is important. I am convinced that Ryanair has done more for understanding among the peoples of Europe that the EU’s cultural projects together. Less travel must therefore not be an end in itself. Isolating people takes us back in history to a dark period.
The Commission’s proposal is heading in the right direction, but it has a cynical perspective – that it is someone else who should fly less. An attempt has been made to exempt flights by Heads of State or Government, while at the same time citizens are required to act responsibly. Proposals like this cause politicians to be held in well-deserved contempt, and I am glad that we on the Committee on the Environment have removed these particular formulations.
Equally cynical is how a number of Left colleagues are demanding that we reduce aviation by more than half in only a matter of years. Those who make such proposals are unlikely themselves to take the train from, for example, Stockholm to Brussels. It is as if their own journeys are invaluable but others travel just for fun.
With that kind of irresponsible proposal it will be ordinary people who are forced to pay, not politicians and corporate executives, where someone else picks up the bill. It will be students who can no longer afford to study abroad in order to go out and see the world. It will be grandmothers up in Norrland who will not be able to see their grandchildren in the city so often. It takes us back to a time in the 1980s when an SAS cabin consisted only of corporate executives, politicians and union bosses.
Instead we shall vote tomorrow for tough but realistic demands on the aviation industry which force them to pay for their environmental costs, which force the development of better and more environmentally friendly aircraft technology, but which above all make it possible to prioritise, to compare aviation with the real carbon dioxide villains, like coal-fired power stations. The important thing is that emissions are reduced, not flying."@en1
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