Been to court once, looks like it’s going again. The Economist reported this week:
AS OF January 1st, American, Chinese and all the world’s airlines are being billed for the carbon emissions of their flights into and out of the European Union. About time, too: airlines contribute 2-3% of global emissions, yet they were hitherto free to pollute. The European initiative, which brings airlines into the EU’s existing cap-and-trade regime, the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), is a modest corrective. The hope is that it will speed the creation of a long-promised, more ambitious successor, governing all the world’s airspace.
Foreign airlines, needless to say, are unhappy. So are their governments. Because flights into the EU have been included in their entirety, not just the portion within European airspace, they detect an infringement of their sovereignty. Last month, in response to a suit from an American industry body, Airlines for America (A4A), the European Court of Justice dismissed that concern. A4A, which claims, improbably, that the scheme will cost its members more than $3 billion by 2020, may file a fresh suit in the High Court in London.
Especially hopping mad are warming denialists, who fear that charges for carbon emissions will cause emitters to reduce emissions, which might have an effect on global warming, thereby making the denialists out to be wrong.
Better not to be proven wrong than to have a cleaner planet, they reckon.
