Government flies into trouble with targets
One can understand why a man whose job it is to promote and run an airport may be of the view that flying is, on balance, quite a good idea.
For much of the time that Heathrow has been in business, its bosses have largely had their licence to operate pretty much nailed on — the odd air pollution group apart.
Indeed such was the consensus on more flights that most of the arguments for expansion over the past decades have centred on increases in destinations, frequencies and — unspoken, most of the time — having more in London than the French had at Charles de Gaulle… an airport itself built, largely, because Heathrow had begun to steal Orly’s lunch money.
All of that changed when a teenage Swede ignited a movement that, in its various forms, has become too big and too scary for any government or company to ignore.
One of the manifestations of the rise of Extinction Rebellion and the mainstreaming of so-called flight shaming has been that yesterday, John Holland-Kaye has had to come out to bat for flying.
“The enemy is carbon, not aviation,” he said yesterday. “The answer is not to stop people flying.”
The truth, of course, is that aviation has been getting more efficient, acknowledging that things have to change.
Investments in new, cleaner planes have been matched with research into far greener biofuels. There is no doubt more to do, but it’s a start.
The alternative to market-based improvements, of course, is cack-handed government intervention. Right on cue just a few hours’ after Holland-Kaye’s intervention, Boris Johnson announced an end to new sales of petrol, diesel and hybrid cars five years earlier than expected.
Manufacturers, understandably, said they had quite enough on their plate already as a key piece in a coming trade negotiation without arbitrary targets turning up for the sake of a headline.
They also made the point they are going green already, but needed support in the form of a proper charging network and market incentives to invest, if they were to get consumers jumping into costly new models.
The government got a headline. The industry got a headache. The economy could well catch a hangover, too.
Conservative governments are perhaps better off working with industry, rather than dictating to it, if they really want to turn their green rhetoric into reality.
Main image: Getty