Rich Should Fly Less so Poor Families Can Still Take Summer Holidays, Says Climate Change Committee Head

Richer people should be made to fly less so poorer families can holiday without worsening Britain’s carbon footprint, Emma Pinchbeck, the Chief Executive of the Climate Change Committee, has said. The Telegraph has more.

Emma Pinchbeck, the new Chief Executive of the Climate Change Committee (CCC), said Net Zero meant flying should be considered a luxury, with airlines paying a price for the emissions they produce. However, she said it would be unfair to price lower income families out of air travel altogether.

Instead, the Climate Change Committee wants frequent fliers to be taxed more highly than those who fly just once a year. This would discourage richer travellers from flying as much, while not punishing the poor.

Ms Pinchbeck said: “What we have in our heads is the annual family holiday to somewhere sunny like Spain. Now I’ve got small children, so I completely understand the need for people to go away somewhere sunny every year. So we’ve tried to preserve that in our advice [to Ministers].”

She was giving evidence to the Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee following last month’s publication of the CCC’s latest carbon budget, which advises Ministers on what’s needed to reach the UK’s target of net zero emissions by 2050. …

The aim was to persuade those people taking multiple annual flights to cut down by maybe one flight, she said.

More savings might be achieved by removing CO2 directly from the air or low carbon “sustainable aviation fuels” but such technologies are in their infancy.

She said cutting emissions from aviation was one of the UK’s biggest climate challenges because there were no viable alternatives to fossil fuels. …

The impact on consumers could be huge. The CCC’s modelling suggests the cost of a ticket to Alicante in Spain would need to rise by £150, while a return New York flight would cost an extra £300. …

Richard Tice, Reform UK’s Energy Spokesman, said the CCC was turning itself into the “anti-fun police”, adding: “Ms Pinchbeck sounds like a socialist grinch, wanting to stop people flying and tell us how we must change our behaviour. When Reform win the next election, she may want to keep her CV close to hand.”

Andrew Bowie, a Conservative Party energy spokesman, said: “The Climate Change Committee’s latest carbon budget proves that Labour’s 2050 Net Zero target will require people to make huge sacrifices and cost £319 billion over the next 15 years.

“Keir Starmer and Ed Miliband are simply not being honest when they say they won’t force people to change the way they live their lives.”

Worth reading in full.

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Cotfordtags
1 year ago

This silly person does know that on most commercial flights, it is the frequent premium flyers that subsidise the cheaper seats in the back and less people upfront will mean significantly higher prices

JXB
JXB
1 year ago
Reply to  Cotfordtags

Clearly she’s a stranger to economics, but then it is a requirement anyone involved in the climate change/Net Zero scam have complete ignorance of economics and physics. She fits the bill according to her “career” in non-wealth creating, non-jobs.

Pareto principle: 80% of revenue and profits comes from 20% of customers/products. It’s an approximate rule for all businesses and certainly true for the three/two-class carriers.

Economy passengers contribute to covering operating costs with marginal contribution to profits.

Budget airlines use a different model, whereby late-bookers pay higher prices which subsidise early bookers paying peanuts, low prices being used as a come-on. These airlines also use add-on tariffs for things normally included in the price of tickets of the legacy carriers.

Epi
Epi
1 year ago
Reply to  Cotfordtags

fewer people up front – please

MajorMajor
MajorMajor
1 year ago

I would be interested if Ms (of course it’s Ms…) Pinchbeck would consider herself rich.
Still, good name. Pinchbeck pinches back.

James Leary #KBF
1 year ago
Reply to  MajorMajor

Quite.

“Pinchbeck” refers to both an alloy of copper and zinc invented by Christopher Pinchbeck, a London clock- and watch-maker, used to imitate gold, and a term that has come to mean something counterfeit or spurious.’

Marque1
1 year ago

Drat! Beat me to it.

For a fist full of roubles

Worth reading in full? I doubt it. Yet another posturing diatribe by one of the most likely of suspects.Cut CO2, Ms P, if you think it matters: stop talking.

Old Arellian
Old Arellian
1 year ago

Is this why Learjet Lammy, Never Here Keir and the rest of the leftie deplorables have taken/are still taking so many trips? Just in case this gets the nod? Meanwhile they are “minded to approve” the second runway at Gatwick and a third at Heathrow, even though loads of them claim to have “always” been against the latter? Make it make sense – someone – Please.

Old Arellian
Old Arellian
1 year ago
Reply to  Old Arellian

Now they’re expanding Luton airport!!!

DontPanic
DontPanic
1 year ago
Reply to  Old Arellian

My airmiles will never ever reach the level of Red Eds or 2TK but they expect me to give up my petrol car and gas boiler.

Marcus Aurelius knew

Hey Emma,

How are you today?

How do you feel in yourself?

By the way, if there were fewer people like you paid enormous sums by subsidised organisations like the one which employs you to do eff all, people wouldn’t have to pay so much tax, so they wouldn’t be as poor.

I hope you enjoy your next flight to a lovely location where you will tell “rich people” to fly less.

Very best regards,
MAk.

JXB
JXB
1 year ago

Nice one.

Gezza England
Gezza England
1 year ago

Another person for the DOGE treatment along with rest of the CCC.

stewart
1 year ago

Any doubts left that “climate change” is just a reworked version of communism?

It’s basically all a big central planning operation.

Communists didn’t disappear magically in the 1989 to 1991 period just because the Soviet Union collapsed. They retreated, regrouped and have come back with renewed force. And they’re now attempting the full take over of the planet, which was the original plan in the 1920s and 30s, global communait revolution.

Epi
Epi
1 year ago
Reply to  stewart

Well people wouldn’t vote for their sh1t so they have to do it surreptitiously through the back door e.g. using undemocratic, unaccountable NGOs, Quangos etc.

Gezza England
Gezza England
1 year ago
Reply to  stewart

Yes, the unemployed of CND trooped off the Greenpiss, the Woke Wanker Fund etc which might explain part of their hatred for clean nuclear power along with not wanting a functioning economy.

jenkida
jenkida
1 year ago

As climate change alarmism is based on increasing global temperature caused by C02 emissions and people prefer to holiday in warmer sunny temps, how is net zero going to increase uk temps such that the “poor ” people can save money by stay in UK to enjoy a nice sunny holidays due to global warming – she is making the case for abolishing net zero – just sums up the mental deficiency of these people who give orders to other people on how to live their lives

stewart
1 year ago
Reply to  jenkida

The very last part of your post is the entire reason and motivation for all of it. It’s so one group of people can exert power over another group of people by telling them exactly how they have to live their lives. That’s the entire motivation. Anything else is rationalisation.

Curio
Curio
1 year ago

I went to Zurich for business with a really friendly airline called Edelweiss. Although at the back of the plane, I managed to spot at the front, behind the curtain, Gates, Bezos, Musk, a Saudi prince, Page and Zuckerberg. Apparently, they had given the day off to their private jets pilots. It is a mystery to me how this mononeuron clown (apologies to the profession) found employment in the first place.

Marcus Aurelius knew
Reply to  Curio

Sorry for not believing this story! 😉🤣

But your overall message is sound, so I forgive your use of poetic licence.

Seriously now, and to your point, I wonder if Ms Pinchbeck has given but a moment’s thought about the fact that the word “rich” is a relative term.

James Leary #KBF
1 year ago

Except the likes of her, of course. NOTHING is too good for the representatives of the workers, comrade.

DiscoveredJoys
DiscoveredJoys
1 year ago

Anyone who uses words like ‘unfair’ or ‘fair share’ in a political argument is trying to manipulate you, unfairly, of course.

huxleypiggles
1 year ago

More savings might be achieved by removing CO2 directly from the air or low carbon “sustainable aviation fuels” but such technologies are in their infancy.”

Clearly a keen follower of The $cience.

Best joke of the week. 😀😀😀

stewart
1 year ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

These Net Zero people talk of alternative energies in the way that five year olds talk when they are playing and making up their story line.

“And now the car takes off and flies over to rescue the whale that is drowning. But the evil tank flies faster and blows the car up. And then…”

Basically the same.

“And the windmills and the solar panels and the low carbon sustainable aviation fuels that the mad genius inventor is busy creating will give us all the electricity we need and it we will be really cheap and the evil Putin with his filthy, dangerous oil will be overthrown by an angry mob.”

It’s all pre-school level fantasising.

JXB
JXB
1 year ago

If it’s a poor family it can’t afford to fly – unless of course it’s paying for the tickets out of the dole money it receives pilfered from my pockets.

And maybe if the Government (such as it is) stopped the :carbon tax’ and green levies on airline tickets, the ubiquities poor might be able to fly.

stewart
1 year ago
Reply to  JXB

Back in the East German days, everyone could have a car. It was a shitty car called a Trabant and families had to save years for it, and get on a waiting list for a bunch of years after that to get one, and that was the only car you could get. But the wonderful central planners of the German Democratic (Communist) Republic, organised everything to make all possible.

JXB
JXB
1 year ago
Reply to  stewart

And. After reunification when VW (I think it was) went to look at the factory to assess it for modernisation to build cars, they found the value of input to a Trabant far exceeded the value of the finished unit.

Gezza England
Gezza England
1 year ago
Reply to  stewart

13 year wait for a new car and used cars were twice the price of new cars because of the lack of supply.

lulu-b45
lulu-b45
1 year ago

This woman is just plain stupid. How did she ever get this job?

DontPanic
DontPanic
1 year ago
Reply to  lulu-b45

Oxford classics degree and friend of Red Ed ?

Art Simtotic
1 year ago

When Reform win the next election, she may want to keep her CV close to hand.”

Bring it on. Overdue a spot of work experience in the real world – assign to Heathrow Airport Site Services and provide with mop and bucket.

To be kept out of mischief until further notice, 2050 at earliest. Offer career-development opportunities in aircraft interior valeting, customer-relations and baggage handling.

Most important of all – Scrap the Climate Claptrap Committee.

RichardTechnik
RichardTechnik
1 year ago

Pinchbeck shows her limited, but entitled public sector background by assuming that air travel is solely to reach sunny leisure destinations. Many like me have spent more than half a year of my life ( 6,500 hr ) travelling on aircraft for business.yet less than 1% for holidays. Very few flights were business class.

Bill Bailey
Bill Bailey
1 year ago

Well there’s an old adage that taxes always end up at the bottom, in other words the poor will ultimately pay. The rich will absorb the costs by increasing their income and over a short period the cost will filter down. Either that or people will simply up sticks and leave. oh, they are already.

RTSC
RTSC
1 year ago

Who does this numpty think she is?

She’ll find out PDQ that she’s expendable if she attempts to curtail “the rich” from flying.

marebobowl
marebobowl
1 year ago

Emma has crossed a line. No one has the right to tell me or anyone else how to spend our money. If Emma does not want to travel by air, her choice. For those of us who simply want to live our lives I would say, Emma stay in your lane dear and stay the heck out of my life!

DM stop publishing articles like this. You are only acknowledging people who are less than…..fill in the blank.

Less government
1 year ago

The CCC has a very limited lifetime. It needs to be shut down along with most of the other useless quangos.

Less government
1 year ago

“Richard Tice, Reform UK’s Energy Spokesman, said the CCC was turning itself into the “anti-fun police”, adding: “Ms Pinchbeck sounds like a socialist grinch, wanting to stop people flying and tell us how we must change our behaviour. When Reform win the next election, she may want to keep her CV close to hand.”
Excellent advice.
The Carbon Dioxide scam has been well and truly exposed.

DontPanic
DontPanic
1 year ago

When this woman bothers to do a science degree instead of the classics degree she has then she may be able to think scientifically until then she’s just a gob shi..