politicians

Despite my last post on peak oil (and why we shouldn't rely on it) rising oil prices do impact transport and aviation growth. With oil currently hovering around the $128 / barrel mark, and widely predicted to hit $150 or even $200 / barrel by the end of the year, airlines are having to up their prices to avoid bankruptcy.

With no tax on aviation fuel the industry has no buffer zone: every dollar hike is another dollar that needs to be squeezed out of ever tighter margins. This weekend Richard Branson joined the doom-and-gloomers, predicting $200 / barrel oil in the very near future. Meanwhile BA is planning to ground planes because of rising fuel costs. The American market is widely tipped to implode if prices keep rising, and the British outlook is not so rosy either.

Meanwhile the government wants to expand airports all over the place, because demand for flights will keep going up - even if there's no airlines left to supply them. They claim that demand is inelastic - i.e. that it will remain constant no matter how hard it is stretched by rising prices. A Parliamentary Question last week showed the cause of their market-defying confidence: the government's modellers are working on the assumption that by 2010, oil will have rised to... $65 dollars a barrel. By 2020, the government is assuming that oil will have reached the staggering price of $75 / barrel. No wonder they think people will keep flying regardless...

During World War II, when fuel was scarce, the govenment made a point of asking people to think twice before travelling. Now that everyone has woken up to climate change, how is the government reacting? Why, by flying as much as possible, of course!

Last year government departments flew a total of 300 million miles. While some of these trips were no doubt essential - it's no surprise that the Foreign Office is number one on the list - does every department need to be abusing their air miles? Why, for instance, did the Department for Work and Pensions fly 9 million miles? Is there really that much benefit fraud in Australia?

Gordon Brown's comment yesterday, upon hearing that five climate activists had taken to the roof of parliament to highlight collusion between BAA and the DfT over the Heathrow third runway 'consultation', could not have been more untrue.

In one sentence he highlighted just how disconnected with the concerns of the general public this government has become - not to mention how little the disenfranchisement of vast swathes of the population, especially the young, means to him. Hearing him say "decisions get made in the chamber of this house [not on the roof]" must have left those millions of Londoners with no means of objecting to a third runway, the great range of councillors and mayoral candidates whose views on the runway have been completely silenced, and the millions of British citizens deeply worried about climate change, screaming in true panto-style: "OHHH no they don't!".

Who said we were the radicals? A poll in today's Guardian says that one in eight 16-19 year olds supported a ban on flying on holiday.

This might be down to their dreading another family holiday, but it's more likely to be a sign that younger people are really worried about their impact on the climate. Unlike most politicians, teenagers will still be around when the shit hits the fan, and they're unhappy that their parents' pollution is damaging their future.

The same poll revealed that 10% of young people said they'd be up for taking part in 'guerilla activities' carried out by green groups. Get involved...