Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-07-03-Speech-1-134"
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"en.20060703.18.1-134"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance would like to express warm thanks to the rapporteur, Mrs Lucas, for her excellent report, whose proposals for action are very well justified.
Emissions from air traffic are growing faster than any other source of carbon dioxide emissions, and the other emissions and impact of aviation more than double its effect on global warming. Since 1990, greenhouse emissions from air traffic within the European Union have increased by 85%, which is 4% a year. This threatens to wipe out a quarter of the reductions in emissions achieved in other sectors for the prohibition period. This cannot be allowed to continue.
Emissions from air traffic are by far the greatest per kilometre travelled. For example, the impact is fifteen times greater than that of trains. Every aspect of air travel, however, is subsidised, including fuel, which is not subject to taxation. On the other hand, rail traffic is taxed in a number of ways, and it is also affected by the trade in carbon dioxide emissions.
The ‘polluter pays’ principle must be extended to flight, in such a way, obviously, that it does not lead to distortion of competition, although current tax breaks for aviation and other preferential treatment are a distortion of competition in themselves. The next global climate agreement should cover air traffic, but there are good reasons now for extending emissions trading to all flights arriving in and departing from the European Union, preferably based on a separate emissions trading system, to make the incentive for reducing emissions effective.
Ladies and gentlemen, every one of us flies, and we do so quite a lot. Every one of us can do something too. We can compensate for the emissions from our own air travel voluntarily. There are organisations which calculate flight emissions per passenger and through them you can finance an equivalent amount of investment to reduce emissions in the developing countries. I myself started compensating for the emissions from my own flights last year, and now I have paid compensation for all the flights I have taken since I was elected to the European Parliament. I call on all my fellow Members to do likewise – we can afford to."@en1
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