Bipartisan bills shield US airlines from EU GHG scheme

Nov. 16, 2012
Nothing inspires US bipartisanship quite like coercion from abroad.

Nothing inspires US bipartisanship quite like coercion from abroad.

The Republican-controlled House on Nov. 13 passed a bill that the Democrat-controlled Senate passed in September excluding US airlines from European regulation of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

The European Union announced in 2008 that all aircraft landing and taking off in Europe would become subject to its emissions trading system beginning this year.

Airlines would be issued permits to emit specified amounts of carbon dioxide. Those whose emissions exceeded allowed amounts would have to buy unused permits from airlines with below-limit emissions.

Many airlines and countries consider this a tax breaching EU jurisdiction.

In the US, Republican John Thune of North Dakota and Democrat Claire McCaskill of Missouri cosponsored the Senate bill prohibiting US airlines from participating in “any emissions trading scheme unilaterally established by the EU.”

The House passed its version of the legislation a day after Connie Hedegaard, the EU climate commissioner, deferred the European initiative.

Her move was no retreat from an internationally unpopular exercise of authority. She attributed it to news that the Council of the United Nations International Civil Aviation Organization had held discussions on Nov. 9 about global regulation of aircraft emissions of GHGs. Indeed, she took credit for that development.

“Now it seems that, because of some countries’ dislike of our scheme, many countries are prepared to move in ICAO and even to move towards a market-based mechanism at global level,” she said in a press statement.

So the EU won’t internationalize its regulation of aircraft GHGs until the ICAO addresses the subject at its general assembly next fall. Meanwhile, it will threaten.

Hedegaard said, “If this exercise does not deliver—and I hope it does—then needless to say we are back to where we are today with the EU ETS. Automatically.”

So the EU offers the rest of the world a choice between what it wants and what it wants. That should be offensive enough to make Democrats and Republicans get along.

(Online Nov. 16, 2012; author’s e-mail: [email protected])