Now here is a refreshing approach on how to deal with
eco-nut's....from the CEO of Ryanair, Michael O'Leary.....can you
imagine the biotech industry ever penning such a similar
piece?....maybe its time?.....
Climate change and cheap flying
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/letters/2008/0712/1215787855414.html
Sat, Jul 12, 2008
Madam, - I was disturbed to read in Thursday's Irish Times yet another
factually inaccurate opinion piece from one of the small band of
eco-loonies. The idea that the climate is "paying the price" for
low-cost flying is as absurd as it is untrue.
In an article littered with false claims and environmental
mumbo-jumbo, readers are invited to share the writer's delusion that
massive increases in taxation (on air travel) will somehow "save" our
planet, as if it needs saving in the first place. Wrong, wrong and
wrong again.
Instead of this eco-babble, perhaps your readers would be interested
in some actual facts:
1. The European Environmental Agency confirms that aviation accounts
for less than 2 per cent of Europe's CO2 emissions. By contrast,
shipping accounts for 5 per cent, motor transport 18 per cent and
power generation (mainly Government-owned) some 26 per cent.
2. No industry has improved its technology usage or reduced its
emissions per customer as much as the airline industry in the past
decade. For example Ryanair, by switching from older, polluting
aircraft to quieter, fuel-efficient 737-800s, has reduced its
emissions per passenger-kilometre by 50 per cent over the past 10
years. With oil now at $140 a barrel, airlines are doing everything
they can to reduce oil usage.
3. Contrary to the myth that airlines are tax exempt or don't pay
taxes, we are the only form of mass transport within Europe which pays
for all its own infrastructure (runways, airports, air traffic
control, aircraft, etc) at a time when Europe's ferries, trains, buses
and roads continue to be massively subsidised by taxpayers.
4. Ireland is an island, and therefore the only way for our citizens
and visitors to access this country is to fly. Contrary to the views
of most of these "eco-twits", we can't reasonably walk or cycle or
take a kayak to get on and off the island.
5. The biggest lie at the heart of all of this eco-babble is that
higher taxes will somehow save the planet. This is simply untrue.
Higher taxes simply means greater government revenue, waste and
misspending.
The greatest polluters in Europe are the governments, which in most
cases own the power generating stations (the biggest man-made
polluters of all) and which, like the eco-nuts, preach to ordinary
consumers about caring for the environment while doing nothing useful
to improve it.
Unlike these eco-clowns, the airline industry is doing everything in
its power to reduce its impact on the environment. Many of these eco
kill-joys would like to prevent people flying altogether. Imagine the
state of Irish tourism if we banned visitors from flying. Higher
taxation won't reduce people's propensity to travel. John Gibbons's
absurd claim that "the world's poor pay the highest price for runway
emissions" is totally and utterly untrue.
Irish citizens and visitors are now going to be penalised by the
mindless bureaucrats of Brussels, encouraged by these eco-loonies,
whose predictions about global warming are the modern-day equivalent
of those doom-mongers in the middle ages who used to run around towns
and cities preaching that the end of mankind was nigh! It wasn't, and
nor will the world's climate pay a price for low-cost flights.
Perhaps The Irish Times could encourage sensible, fact-based debate,
rather than providing a soap-box for the ranting nonsense and false
claims and fictional statistics of yet another eco-nut. - Yours, etc,
MICHAEL O'LEARY, Chief Executive, Ryanair, Dublin Airport. |
