The EU need not be scared by aviation climate action

While debates about farming and heat pumps have brought some climate policy debates to a standstill in Brussels, new public opinion research shows how action on aviation could represent a new way forward for climate and the EU.

Ed Hodgson is Research Manager at More in Common. This work work was funded by a grant from the European Climate Foundation. 

For many Europeans, there are few clearer examples of climate hypocrisy than the car-park of private jets found in airports closeby to every annual COP climate meeting. Many of the people we talk to in focus groups tell us that it’s yet another example of leaders ‘talking the talk, but not walking the walk’ on tackling climate change.

And at the same time, decarbonising aviation is a policy challenge that politicians and policymakers have left in the policy parking lot. Doing anything to tackle aviation emissions has been perceived as too difficult and too unpopular to address, and hope has been placed on technology once again saving the day – allowing politicians afraid and unwilling to take meaningful action on the climate impact of the aviation sector.

The ‘Europe Talks Flying’ report that More in Common released this week shows that decarbonising aviation need not be so difficult. Drawing on polling and focus groups of 12,000 Europeans across six countries, the report lays out a path to bring the public on board and navigate some of the clear policy challenges.

Clearly, there are risks that implementing the wrong climate aviation policies in the wrong order could reinforce people’s worst assumptions that policies to tackle climate change will  take away nice things like an annual holiday abroad. However, our research identifies the real opportunity in using aviation as a model for how other industries can be decarbonised – both more effectively and more fairly.

The first step is to get the sequencing right – the public are ready for and understand the need to take on those who pollute the most through flying. In practice, this means starting with actions on private jets, then moving to first or business class flyers before asking a larger group of flyers to change their behaviour.

Current plans for the revised Emissions Trading Scheme 2 – which include short-haul flights within Europe, but do nothing about more expensive and damaging intercontinental travel – are a good example of how to get this sequencing wrong.

In almost every focus group conversation we had (with flyers and non-flyers alike), people asked why they should have to sacrifice their yearly holidays, when celebrities, footballers, politicians and business people seem to be flying every week on their private jets. And in polling, people were more than twice as likely to say that policy action should target private jets than economy class flyers.

Ensuring those with the broadest shoulders pay their fair share should help politicians create the political space and public buy-in for other climate policy and behaviour changes – on flying and on other issues.

While the rise of anti-elite sentiment across Europe has so far been captured by anti-net-zero populist movements, it need not be so. Our research shows that there is an opportunity for policymakers and campaigners to use that broad anti-elite sentiment constructively to take on those private jet users as those who should foot the bill for climate transition while others are suffering from a continuing cost of living crisis.

More than half the public (53 per cent) in the six countries we studied say it is ‘never’ or ‘rarely’ appropriate for footballers to travel by plane between matches within their own country, while almost three in five (57 per cent) say it is ‘never’ or ‘rarely’ appropriate for politicians to fly domestically.

The public also expects airlines to play their part. Across the six countries, 44 per cent think that airlines aren’t doing enough on their climate impact, and only 7 per cent think they are doing too much. The public do not currently trust our airlines to tell the truth when it comes to their climate impacts, and measures to force airlines into greater transparency recorded the highest levels of support of any policy measure we tested.

Building space for policy progress on reducing flying emissions also means getting the carrot and stick policy mix right. In focus groups, participants complain that there is no point discouraging flying when the alternatives to flying are so bad.

It’s no surprise that across the six countries, more than seven in ten (73 per cent) support making train journeys the same price as flying, and that number only falls slightly – to 64 per cent – when asked whether people would support funding cheaper train travel by making flying more expensive.

The truth is that decarbonizing aviation will require some level of sacrifice and behaviour change from everyone who enjoys the convenience of air travel. But the public is willing to embrace those changes if they are implemented in a fair and sensible way.

If simple tests of targeting, sequencing and messaging are met, there will be space for policymakers to think about broader approaches to demand-side reductions. Approaches like a frequent-flyer levy currently attract more support than opposition – but policymakers can get ahead of backlash if they have taken the steps above first.

In other industries from home heating or farming, decarbonisation debates have become so toxic that politicians would rather avoid than address them. Rather than avoiding a debate about climate and aviation, politicians should be embracing the challenge as a real opportunity to show the public how the broader green transition can be done fairly and brings the public on board.