After losing a court case in 2011, U.S. airlines are working on another way around joining the European Union’s carbon trading scheme: domestic legislation that would prohibit them from participating.
The Thune bill will come up for a vote in the Senate later this year (likely in September), and a similar measure has already passed the House. Despite protests from environmental groups, the legislation has broad bi-partisan support.
It would legally prohibit U.S. airlines from participating in the EU’s emissions trading system (ETS), thereby weakening the EU’s push to regulate aviation-related carbon emissions, and potentially dragging the issue back into court should U.S. airlines refuse to pay fines incurred for flouting the ETS requirements.
“The ETS has provoked a great deal of controversy because of its sweeping extraterritorial impact,” says Anita Mosner, an aviation law expert and partner in the Washington, D.C.-based law firm Holland and Knight.
The largest problem -- not only for U.S. airlines, but also for the airline industries in most non-EU countries -- is that of sovereignty. The EU doesn’t just want to regulate carbon emitted within its regional borders, but on flights that reach far beyond them as well.
“The world’s carriers would not necessarily oppose the application of ETS solely within European airspace, or for portions of international flights operated within European airspace," said Mosner. "The real sticking point is that under ETS, the Europeans would impose their tax on flight operations quite distant from European airspace. For example, on a Doha-London flight, the EU would tax the entire journey, whereas only a small portion of the total elapsed time for such a flight might be within European airspace.”
Non-EU airlines have been pushing instead for application of the ETS only on flights within the EU, but so far that proposal has been rejected by European legislators.
In the lead-up to April 2013, when the European law requiring airlines to participate in the ETS goes into effect, we may either see the EU bend its requirements, or non-EU airlines come up with a solution that works for all involved.
Next page: State Department tries to lead the way
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The Thune bill will come up
The Thune bill will come up for a vote in the Senate later this year (likely in September), and a similar measure has already passed the House. Mariage avec femmes russes et d'Ukraine.
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Amy Westervelt's piece comes
Amy Westervelt's piece comes closer than any I've seen to bringing together two seperate pieces of the business and environmental field--the traditional antagonistic response to regulations and the more recent sustainable business theme. But she needs to take it one step further so that these two parts are unified, and the challenge re-framed.
It would help if there was a subtitle: "What Should the Sustainability-seeking Airline Company Do?"
Seeing the "largest problem" as sovereignty", or the "wrong" government agency is driving this, is old thinking. Addressing global warming as the priority on our common planet is the new thinking, along with how can we (the airline company) at least establish a level playing field while doing so--or better yet, seek a competitive advantage?
It is gratifying to see that the U.S. State & Transportation Departments at least tried to find a "solution that would work for all parties." Westervelt also showed that some in the industry know the direction that things must go, another helpful factor. Unfortunately, thus far State has been unsuccessful.
I suggest applying the Sustainable Apparel Coalition model, recently discussed in a Marc Gunther GreenBiz article, to this problem. If they can't agree to participate in the European system, airline companies could come up with an approach that achieves an equal or better result.
Perhaps they could aim for an industry-collected carbon tax, with revenues split between funding technical breakthroughs to increase engine efficiency or sustainable use of biofuels they all could benefit from, and the funding of reforestation and sustainable jobs programs in developing countries. A few companies could even take the lead, which the Apparel effort showed can actually facilitate a cooperative sector agreement.
A commenter mentioned Elinor Ostrom. Those airline companies which refused to participate would need to be subject to peer and other pressure; and of course it would help if consumers, with new opportunities to do the right thing, refused to do business with the laggards.
Imagine if the airline industry proved to be the next model for how to overcome the big global warming policy jam, and before 2020?
“This is one of the few bills
“This is one of the few bills that has bipartisan support, so it will be interesting to see whether opposition from environmentalists is enough to sway the President.” Really? This president is the same guy who approved drilling for oil in the arctic. It's the same guy who campaigned on science and then walked away from climate change.
"The ETS has provoked a great
"The ETS has provoked a great deal of controversy because of its sweeping extraterritorial impact". Watch this: http://www.climatedots.org/videos/
I would propose cost of air
I would propose cost of air travel to double. Then airline companies could once again be viable concerns and employee people with good wages, give value to stock holders, and provide non cattle car travel environments....and reduce due to less travel. I see what I would call a lot of trival air travel going on...both personal, and business.
Atmospheric carbon is global.
Atmospheric carbon is global. The atmosphere doesn't care who carboned in the atmosphere or where. Air travel contributes to the global load. Taxes, fees or trade in airplane carbon must be global too. A more fuel-efficient airline will pay less -- that's the point, to encourage smaller impacts. Aviation law is international. The UN Charter obligates the General Assembly to encourage the progressive development of international law. At the moment, fuel prices are applying the same pressure: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/09/business/global/steep-fuel-prices-driv...
Despite this being a
Despite this being a bipartisan Bill I propose that all law abiding citizens oppose it, not just environmentalists. The EU ETS is already law in more than 27 sovereign nations and the scheme is already live. For the US to ban airlines from complying with laws in the nations where they fly to is not only ridiculous but outrageous and sets a very dangerous precedence. How would the men and women of the Senate respond if 27 countries passed laws to ban their airlines from paying, for example, landing charges or some taxes whenever they operate to the US? Exactly. Enough said.
I would propose that the EU
I would propose that the EU suggest the US to apply their unilateral security measures only in their airspace... that could be a way to sort out this issue!
There are some big
There are some big differences. Carbon emissions will not dramatically kill hundreds of people in single events; therefore, politicians are not going to relinquish sovereignty over them. ETS allows participants to purchase credits from outside the EU to offset emissions inside the EU. It does not require an Indian steel mill to offset their emissions because sometime someone in the EU might maybe put a steel door handle on their house. The EU cannot impose their air travel regulations outside their own airspace without opening a legal Pandora's box. Do our European friends really want Yemen, for example, to impose shipping regulations on all traffic passing through the Bab el Mandeb?
I applaud the EU for providing leadership in addressing climate change comprehensively. I equally applaud the sub-national and corporate leaders in the US who are finding feasible solutions that are not Federal impositions. Top-down regulatory solutions work for the Europeans, who decided long ago to have Brussels manage their lives. Bottom-up market solutions will work for the US - and yes, the national politicians will eventually catch up.
When different systems have different means to agreed ends, it helps to remember the lessons from the late Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom regarding governance of the commons. A globally applicable rules set on the ultimate global commons (our atmosphere) will require consensus among a majority of users of that commons, not imposition by a small subset.