By Claude Barfield
The European Union seems determined to take on the whole world by demanding that all airlines pay a carbon tribute for the privilege of crossing EU airspace. The tax, which will start being collected in 2013, would be levied not just on the miles flown over EU territory but for the entire length of the trip, says Claude Barfield, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
The European Union justifies the extraterritorial basis of the tax system through the save-the-world mandate that has provided impetus for many of its cap-and-trade environmental policies. Nevertheless, the implementation of the tax is likely to backfire.
- All told, it is estimated that the European Union would have taken in $1.2 billion from all airlines in 2012 had the new system been in place.
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