Who's afraid of budget airlines?
On Wednesday 5 July, I was invited to debate cheap flights with Caroline Lucas, the Green Member of European Parliament for the south east of England, on the Jeremy Vine Show on BBC Radio 2. Here is a transcript of the discussion (Brian Hayes was standing in for Jeremy Vine).
Jeremy Vine Show (BBC Radio 2), 5 July 2006
Brian Hayes: If you've dreamed of visiting the Far East, but you can't afford the plane ticket, then you might want to listen to this: Oasis Hong Kong airlines, a new carrier, is launching flights from London to Hong Kong for only 75 pounds one way. Yes, you heard correctly - and that is cheaper than a train fare from London to Manchester. This airline is planning to offer five flights a week on Boeing 747s from October. They'll have 81 business class seats with 278 people in the economy section for this 12-hour trip. Now, it's not clear at this stage how many of those seats will sell for 75 pounds, and food will be provided with the option of paying for an upgraded meal - so all those little details mean, I suppose, that when you start the booking procedure you'll find out just how much it costs.
So the question is, are long-haul budget airlines the future of air travel? We've got used to them within the European area, now should we welcome this kind of development? Environmentalists have said that cheap long-haul flights shouldn't really be encouraged because of the detrimental impact they have on climate change. Let's talk about all of this with Brendan O'Neill, who is deputy editor of spiked online, and Caroline Lucas, the Green MEP for the south east of England. First, Brendan, will you be taking the airline up on this offer?
Brendan O'Neill: I hope so, at some stage. I think we should definitely welcome it, it's a great development and the more cheap flights we have, the better - because this allows people, who in the past wouldn't have had the opportunity to travel, to go wherever they please and to see the world and to expand their horizons. I can't help thinking that a lot of the criticism of cheap flights and budget airlines is really driven by a kind of old-fashioned snobbery about mass tourism. Really it's about the wrong kind of tourism. And that kind of snobbery gets dressed up in PC environmentalist lingo, but really it's about keeping certain people at home - their travel is just seen as being frivolous and unnecessary. The argument seems to be that we should keep flying for those who can afford it, for rich, well-off people, as it was in the past. I think that's wrong; we should celebrate cheap flights and the way they let all sorts of people travel around the world.
Brian Hayes: But the pollution argument is a serious one. I mean cheap air tickets will, as you've just said, encourage more people to fly, and of course the more people that fly the more danger there could be to the environment.
Brendan O'Neill: Well the impact that cheap flights have on the environment is not as great as some people say. It certainly isn't the greatest evil when it comes to pollution. But I think we have to face the fact that virtually everything we do in a developed, industrialised society causes pollution, that's life: factories, cars, everything causes pollution in some ways. And our emphasis should be on finding ways to manage that pollution rather than restricting travel or saying "You just can't do it because it will cause pollution". That is unreasonable and unrealistic; we shouldn't tell people to stay at home just because of pollution. Instead we should focus our energies on finding ways to alleviate the problem of pollution rather than punishing people, and especially poorer people.
Brian Hayes: The big airlines do get off a bit light, don't they Caroline Lucas? You and your MEPs voted in favour of airlines having to pay tax on aviation fuel yesterday in the European Parliament, and budget airlines aren't really going to be able to compete if that is introduced, are they?
Caroline Lucas: Well I think we have to face the fact that aviation is the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions, and certainly over the next couple of decades it's going to amount to an enormous percentage of our overall greenhouse gas emissions, contrary to what Brendan O'Neill says. He wants us to celebrate cheap flights - I hope he'll also be celebrating climate change in that case, because although he says "why are you picking on aviation, what about industry, what about other areas of our economy that pollute?", the point about aviation is that it's not covered by the Kyoto Protocol, where most other industries are; it's not covered by any other environmental agreement. On the contrary it's actually subsidised at a cost of 9 billion pounds every year.
Brendan suggests that doesn't matter because poorer people are able to fly, but I think it's important to look at the real statistics. The average salary of someone parked in Stansted Airport carpark is around 46,000 pounds. It's not the case that more and more people who are poorer are flying. The case is that those who are more well-off are flying much more often. Because, after all, once you've flown to Hong Kong for your 75 pounds you're still going to have to find accommodation, you're still going to have all the other expenses associated with holidays like that.
Brian Hayes: Yeah but it will still be less than paying what is the usual fare to Hong Kong.
Caroline Lucas: The point I'm making is that it is not the poorest sections of society that are benefiting from that, it's the well-off who are travelling more often to more second homes, or having three, four or five holidays of this nature a year. So this is nothing to do with snobbery as Brendan rather oddly suggests; it's actually about how we deal with climate change. And when he says, well, we just have to manage climate change, I would love to know what he means. Because if he has the answer maybe he can tell international scientists, who apparently don't.
Brian Hayes: Well, he can tell us now.
Brendan O'Neill: I think we should focus our energies, as I was arguing, on finding ways, using our scientific and technological knowledge of the past few decades, to alleviate pollution when it occurs. And in fact, one of the ironies of this discussion is that more development and more industrialisation actually improves the problem of pollution over the long run; that is why a society like Britain, which has been developed for a long period of time, has less of a pollution problem at the moment than certain cities in India and China, which are only now developing - because the more developed you become, the less pollution there is in the long run. So we have to bear that in mind....
Caroline Lucas: But aviation is the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions, you've got a doubling of the number of people due to fly from Britain over the next 20 years - it's simply not the case that you can suggest that some technological bullet will sort that out. Technological improvements are running at one or two per cent a year....
Brendan O'Neill: Okay, so your solution then is to keep people at home. I think we have to realise that one of the greatest developments of humanity over the past 200 years has been increased mobility: it has allowed people to travel for work when they need to, it has allowed immigration, emigration, it has allowed people to travel just for joy. I think we should celebrate mobility and find ways....
Caroline Lucas: Which ways? What ways? How are you going to make sure that aviation doesn't pollute? I mean, you say that in such a casual way when we know that technological improvements are running at one to two per cent a year, we know that there are some small marginal improvements that can be made through changing air traffic management - you know, brains have been applied to this problem and they are not coming up with solutions that can go any way near to counter-acting the massive growth, the doubling in 20 years, the trebling in 30 years, that we're seeing of the numbers of people who are flying. So when you keep saying we'll find a solution, I'm afraid you're whistling in the wind because the bottom line is we have to reduce this overall growth....
Brendan O'Neill: That is exactly the kind of thing that hysterical people said when flying first became a possibility: it will never work, we'll all crash, we'll all burn. There has always been these kinds of killjoys and miserablists who want to rein in all kinds of development and technological advance and exploration....
Caroline Lucas: So what is your solution? What shall we do?
Brendan O'Neill: Well, if you will let me finish. There has always been this kind of miserablism, and in fact we do get over big problems and barriers, we do find ways to resolve them, we have made flying safer and more environmentally friendly. Cheap flights, in fact, are less damaging to the environment than expensive flights because they use newer planes that emit less carbon and they cram more people on board every flight....
Caroline Lucas: But more and more people are flying....
Brendan O'Neill: And that is a good thing. Look, Caroline says this isn't about snobbery but the truth of the matter is that those taxes that she's so keen on will end up punishing the consumer, they will end up pricing certain people out of flying.
Caroline Lucas: There is a 9 billion pounds subsidy, 9 billion pounds in Britain alone that goes to aviation. If we're worried about how we reallocate money to poorer people, as we should be, then it would be much better to look at what to do with that revenue rather than subsidising richer people to go off on holiday more often....
Brendan O'Neill: Caroline, you can dress up your anti-flying stance as a kind of...
Caroline Lucas: I'm not dressing up anything at all!
Brendan O'Neill: ...you can dress it up as a kind of radical anti-capitalist position, but...
Caroline Lucas: You haven't told me what you are going to do about climate change.
Brendan O'Neill: ...in truth you are in favour of localism, people staying put, never venturing out, never going further afield, which is what kept people in poverty and stuck in the same place for so many years.
Caroline Lucas: Answer the question that international scientists tell us we have 10 years in which to make a real difference to climate change; if we don't do it in the next 10 years then it's going to be massively more difficult in the long term, and your solution is just to put your head in the sand and say well let's just celebrate more low-cost flights. I think that is massively irresponsible and if you have children and grandchildren, they'll be turning around to you and saying "How can you have done this to us?" because it will be the poor who suffer most from climate change.
Brendan O'Neill: The difference between you and me Caroline is that you're a conservative, because you want things to remain the same and to be reined in, you want less development, and I am a radical - I want things to move forward and transform and I think we can do that if we put our minds to it.
Caroline Lucas: No, you are irresponsible and I am looking forward.
Brian Hayes: There are two brief points I want to conclude on. The first is - if this business of getting airlines to pay taxes on aviation fuel is accepted and does become law, what will be the effect of that? Caroline?
Caroline Lucas: Clearly it will have the effect of levelling the playing field, because at the moment aviation is one of very few transport modes that doesn't pay any tax on its fuels - that is a complete anomaly, cars, trains and buses do....
Brian Hayes: But will it prevent people from travelling?
Caroline Lucas: If the airlines can't sort out improvements sufficiently, yes it will lead to that reduced growth and I think that is the bottom line, because there are environmental limits, that is the bottom line in the debate, and it's really so sad to see someone arguing in such a contorted way to suggest that we can keep growing forever - life is not like that, there are environmental limits, and we need to respect them.
Brian Hayes: And will it put the budget airlines out of business?
Caroline Lucas: It could well put the budget airlines out of business, yes, but it could also safeguard our environment for ourselves and for future generations.
Brendan O'Neill: I think this really demonstrates what environmentalism has become, which is an apology for capitalism....
Caroline Lucas: Extraordinary!
Brendan O'Neill: ....these limits are fundamentally limits of the society that we live in....
Caroline Lucas: They are limits of the planet.
Brendan O'Neill: ....they are social and economic limits, given the gloss of environmentalism. And when Caroline says we have to limit flying, one question that springs to mind is what does that mean for people who live in the West, working-class people or upper working-class people or whomever, who will simply be forced to travel less. But more importantly, what does it mean for people in the developing world, in countries like China and India, many of whom will want to travel in the future, will want to fly, will want to go around the world. Are we saying, I'm sorry, we've used up all the flights the world can handle and you're not going to be able to do it? This is really restrictive, it's really about dressing up the limits thrown up by our society in politically correct green terms. We should expose these limits and try to push beyond them, rather than apologise for them and justify them.
Caroline Lucas: How can you push beyond environmental limits, please explain it to me, because that is a fascinating prospect but not one that has much reality I'm afraid.
Brian Hayes: Well thank you both very much indeed, Brendan O'Neill of spiked online and Caroline Lucas, Green MEP for the south east of England.
Jeremy Vine Show (BBC Radio 2), 5 July 2006
Brian Hayes: If you've dreamed of visiting the Far East, but you can't afford the plane ticket, then you might want to listen to this: Oasis Hong Kong airlines, a new carrier, is launching flights from London to Hong Kong for only 75 pounds one way. Yes, you heard correctly - and that is cheaper than a train fare from London to Manchester. This airline is planning to offer five flights a week on Boeing 747s from October. They'll have 81 business class seats with 278 people in the economy section for this 12-hour trip. Now, it's not clear at this stage how many of those seats will sell for 75 pounds, and food will be provided with the option of paying for an upgraded meal - so all those little details mean, I suppose, that when you start the booking procedure you'll find out just how much it costs.
So the question is, are long-haul budget airlines the future of air travel? We've got used to them within the European area, now should we welcome this kind of development? Environmentalists have said that cheap long-haul flights shouldn't really be encouraged because of the detrimental impact they have on climate change. Let's talk about all of this with Brendan O'Neill, who is deputy editor of spiked online, and Caroline Lucas, the Green MEP for the south east of England. First, Brendan, will you be taking the airline up on this offer?
Brendan O'Neill: I hope so, at some stage. I think we should definitely welcome it, it's a great development and the more cheap flights we have, the better - because this allows people, who in the past wouldn't have had the opportunity to travel, to go wherever they please and to see the world and to expand their horizons. I can't help thinking that a lot of the criticism of cheap flights and budget airlines is really driven by a kind of old-fashioned snobbery about mass tourism. Really it's about the wrong kind of tourism. And that kind of snobbery gets dressed up in PC environmentalist lingo, but really it's about keeping certain people at home - their travel is just seen as being frivolous and unnecessary. The argument seems to be that we should keep flying for those who can afford it, for rich, well-off people, as it was in the past. I think that's wrong; we should celebrate cheap flights and the way they let all sorts of people travel around the world.
Brian Hayes: But the pollution argument is a serious one. I mean cheap air tickets will, as you've just said, encourage more people to fly, and of course the more people that fly the more danger there could be to the environment.
Brendan O'Neill: Well the impact that cheap flights have on the environment is not as great as some people say. It certainly isn't the greatest evil when it comes to pollution. But I think we have to face the fact that virtually everything we do in a developed, industrialised society causes pollution, that's life: factories, cars, everything causes pollution in some ways. And our emphasis should be on finding ways to manage that pollution rather than restricting travel or saying "You just can't do it because it will cause pollution". That is unreasonable and unrealistic; we shouldn't tell people to stay at home just because of pollution. Instead we should focus our energies on finding ways to alleviate the problem of pollution rather than punishing people, and especially poorer people.
Brian Hayes: The big airlines do get off a bit light, don't they Caroline Lucas? You and your MEPs voted in favour of airlines having to pay tax on aviation fuel yesterday in the European Parliament, and budget airlines aren't really going to be able to compete if that is introduced, are they?
Caroline Lucas: Well I think we have to face the fact that aviation is the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions, and certainly over the next couple of decades it's going to amount to an enormous percentage of our overall greenhouse gas emissions, contrary to what Brendan O'Neill says. He wants us to celebrate cheap flights - I hope he'll also be celebrating climate change in that case, because although he says "why are you picking on aviation, what about industry, what about other areas of our economy that pollute?", the point about aviation is that it's not covered by the Kyoto Protocol, where most other industries are; it's not covered by any other environmental agreement. On the contrary it's actually subsidised at a cost of 9 billion pounds every year.
Brendan suggests that doesn't matter because poorer people are able to fly, but I think it's important to look at the real statistics. The average salary of someone parked in Stansted Airport carpark is around 46,000 pounds. It's not the case that more and more people who are poorer are flying. The case is that those who are more well-off are flying much more often. Because, after all, once you've flown to Hong Kong for your 75 pounds you're still going to have to find accommodation, you're still going to have all the other expenses associated with holidays like that.
Brian Hayes: Yeah but it will still be less than paying what is the usual fare to Hong Kong.
Caroline Lucas: The point I'm making is that it is not the poorest sections of society that are benefiting from that, it's the well-off who are travelling more often to more second homes, or having three, four or five holidays of this nature a year. So this is nothing to do with snobbery as Brendan rather oddly suggests; it's actually about how we deal with climate change. And when he says, well, we just have to manage climate change, I would love to know what he means. Because if he has the answer maybe he can tell international scientists, who apparently don't.
Brian Hayes: Well, he can tell us now.
Brendan O'Neill: I think we should focus our energies, as I was arguing, on finding ways, using our scientific and technological knowledge of the past few decades, to alleviate pollution when it occurs. And in fact, one of the ironies of this discussion is that more development and more industrialisation actually improves the problem of pollution over the long run; that is why a society like Britain, which has been developed for a long period of time, has less of a pollution problem at the moment than certain cities in India and China, which are only now developing - because the more developed you become, the less pollution there is in the long run. So we have to bear that in mind....
Caroline Lucas: But aviation is the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions, you've got a doubling of the number of people due to fly from Britain over the next 20 years - it's simply not the case that you can suggest that some technological bullet will sort that out. Technological improvements are running at one or two per cent a year....
Brendan O'Neill: Okay, so your solution then is to keep people at home. I think we have to realise that one of the greatest developments of humanity over the past 200 years has been increased mobility: it has allowed people to travel for work when they need to, it has allowed immigration, emigration, it has allowed people to travel just for joy. I think we should celebrate mobility and find ways....
Caroline Lucas: Which ways? What ways? How are you going to make sure that aviation doesn't pollute? I mean, you say that in such a casual way when we know that technological improvements are running at one to two per cent a year, we know that there are some small marginal improvements that can be made through changing air traffic management - you know, brains have been applied to this problem and they are not coming up with solutions that can go any way near to counter-acting the massive growth, the doubling in 20 years, the trebling in 30 years, that we're seeing of the numbers of people who are flying. So when you keep saying we'll find a solution, I'm afraid you're whistling in the wind because the bottom line is we have to reduce this overall growth....
Brendan O'Neill: That is exactly the kind of thing that hysterical people said when flying first became a possibility: it will never work, we'll all crash, we'll all burn. There has always been these kinds of killjoys and miserablists who want to rein in all kinds of development and technological advance and exploration....
Caroline Lucas: So what is your solution? What shall we do?
Brendan O'Neill: Well, if you will let me finish. There has always been this kind of miserablism, and in fact we do get over big problems and barriers, we do find ways to resolve them, we have made flying safer and more environmentally friendly. Cheap flights, in fact, are less damaging to the environment than expensive flights because they use newer planes that emit less carbon and they cram more people on board every flight....
Caroline Lucas: But more and more people are flying....
Brendan O'Neill: And that is a good thing. Look, Caroline says this isn't about snobbery but the truth of the matter is that those taxes that she's so keen on will end up punishing the consumer, they will end up pricing certain people out of flying.
Caroline Lucas: There is a 9 billion pounds subsidy, 9 billion pounds in Britain alone that goes to aviation. If we're worried about how we reallocate money to poorer people, as we should be, then it would be much better to look at what to do with that revenue rather than subsidising richer people to go off on holiday more often....
Brendan O'Neill: Caroline, you can dress up your anti-flying stance as a kind of...
Caroline Lucas: I'm not dressing up anything at all!
Brendan O'Neill: ...you can dress it up as a kind of radical anti-capitalist position, but...
Caroline Lucas: You haven't told me what you are going to do about climate change.
Brendan O'Neill: ...in truth you are in favour of localism, people staying put, never venturing out, never going further afield, which is what kept people in poverty and stuck in the same place for so many years.
Caroline Lucas: Answer the question that international scientists tell us we have 10 years in which to make a real difference to climate change; if we don't do it in the next 10 years then it's going to be massively more difficult in the long term, and your solution is just to put your head in the sand and say well let's just celebrate more low-cost flights. I think that is massively irresponsible and if you have children and grandchildren, they'll be turning around to you and saying "How can you have done this to us?" because it will be the poor who suffer most from climate change.
Brendan O'Neill: The difference between you and me Caroline is that you're a conservative, because you want things to remain the same and to be reined in, you want less development, and I am a radical - I want things to move forward and transform and I think we can do that if we put our minds to it.
Caroline Lucas: No, you are irresponsible and I am looking forward.
Brian Hayes: There are two brief points I want to conclude on. The first is - if this business of getting airlines to pay taxes on aviation fuel is accepted and does become law, what will be the effect of that? Caroline?
Caroline Lucas: Clearly it will have the effect of levelling the playing field, because at the moment aviation is one of very few transport modes that doesn't pay any tax on its fuels - that is a complete anomaly, cars, trains and buses do....
Brian Hayes: But will it prevent people from travelling?
Caroline Lucas: If the airlines can't sort out improvements sufficiently, yes it will lead to that reduced growth and I think that is the bottom line, because there are environmental limits, that is the bottom line in the debate, and it's really so sad to see someone arguing in such a contorted way to suggest that we can keep growing forever - life is not like that, there are environmental limits, and we need to respect them.
Brian Hayes: And will it put the budget airlines out of business?
Caroline Lucas: It could well put the budget airlines out of business, yes, but it could also safeguard our environment for ourselves and for future generations.
Brendan O'Neill: I think this really demonstrates what environmentalism has become, which is an apology for capitalism....
Caroline Lucas: Extraordinary!
Brendan O'Neill: ....these limits are fundamentally limits of the society that we live in....
Caroline Lucas: They are limits of the planet.
Brendan O'Neill: ....they are social and economic limits, given the gloss of environmentalism. And when Caroline says we have to limit flying, one question that springs to mind is what does that mean for people who live in the West, working-class people or upper working-class people or whomever, who will simply be forced to travel less. But more importantly, what does it mean for people in the developing world, in countries like China and India, many of whom will want to travel in the future, will want to fly, will want to go around the world. Are we saying, I'm sorry, we've used up all the flights the world can handle and you're not going to be able to do it? This is really restrictive, it's really about dressing up the limits thrown up by our society in politically correct green terms. We should expose these limits and try to push beyond them, rather than apologise for them and justify them.
Caroline Lucas: How can you push beyond environmental limits, please explain it to me, because that is a fascinating prospect but not one that has much reality I'm afraid.
Brian Hayes: Well thank you both very much indeed, Brendan O'Neill of spiked online and Caroline Lucas, Green MEP for the south east of England.
