Should society be forced to cut back on air travel because of the required immense use of gas?

Question

There is a debate in progress that air travel should be limited because of gas prices and the effect it has on global warming. What do you think?

Answer 1

Why air travel and not automobiles or coal-fueled power plants? And why "forced"? There is a more civilized way of achieving the same result. It's called taxation...

Answer 2

In a purely economic sense, no society should not be forced to cut back on air travel. Decisions that an individual makes are based on that individual's preferences. So a person's preferences for anything, which would included their preference on doing things good for the environment, would be implicitly assumed in their decisions. If someone is really concerned about the environment they will realize that there are societal costs to air travel (namely harm to the environment for use of gas) and they will adjust their demand accordingly.

This is of course assuming individuals make rational decisions. In my experience I find this assumption to be incorrect on a daily basis.

Increasing taxes on flying, rather than just limited the supply of air travel, would be another story though. This would be a way to take into account the societal costs caused by gas use for flying.

Answer 3

Limited, like a cap on supply?
Capping supply is the worst way to handle things.
First of all, if air travel was the only source of green house gas, this might make some sense, but since it is hardly the largest source, seems like a silly place to start. And since capping supply of air travel would create crazy distortion to the market with little benefit to the economy, it is just a plain idiotic idea.
Like said before me, all you need to do is to tax the things causing damage and use the tax proceeds to correct the damage.

Answer 4

Possibly- if air fare truly reflected the cost to society, it wouldn't be so easy and cheap for people to fly all over the world. All costs should reflect the actual cost to society not just the cost of procuring the goods. Many things- meat, personal vehicle transportation, paper and plastic packaging are overused and abused by producers and consumers- to the point of depleting our resources, poluting our water, air and land, AND contributing to global warming. If the costs of things- air fare included- actually reflected the cost to our planet, people wouldn't use and abuse them quite so much.

Of course, there's an argument that regulation necessary to make this change would prohibit growth... but more likely, it would motivate business to invent "greener" business models.

Answer 5

I think think the increasing price of oil and therefore air travel, combined with public awareness of the problem which will make air travel unfashionable, will probably cause a cut back and no government action is necessary.

Answer 6

No, it's anti growth, anti free market, and anti American.

Global warming is not caused by human activity,

there should be more air travel to reduce costs!

Answer 7

no they should cut back because of terrorist. No wait because of SARS not they should cut back because of Hurricains. No they should cut back on traveling because it's cheaper to walk.

Global warming is in full effects now if believe it or not. The thing I want to bring to your attention is that no one has bothered to tell the flight companies that the billions of dollars the US government shelled out to keep them afloat is due in 20 mins. Money poorly spent which could have gone to Greener solutions. GIVE ME MY MONEY BACK FOOO!!!

Answer 8

Rising fuel prices affect ticket prices. As supply dwindles, fuel (and therefore ticket) prices rise and price more and more people out of flying.

Answer 9

If Al Gore would fly in a big jet v/s small private airplanes, it would help.