Climate Change Activists’ Embrace of Rationing

 

Seth Barrett Tillman, Associate Professor

Maynooth University School of Law and Criminology

(academic title & affiliation for identification purposes only)

 

June 20, 2023

 

Irish Examiner

Letters Editor

letters@examiner.ie

 

RE: John Gibbons, ‘Why we should ration the distance each person can fly every year,’ Irish Examiner (June 20, 2023, 11:55 AM), <https://tinyurl.com/3cret6m8>.

John Gibbons suggests a 1,500 km annual allotment per Irish national/resident for air travel. So you could do Dublin–Paris round trip. Europe is within reach.

But if you are a new Irish national, from Caracas, Venezuela, and you’d like to visit family and friends: Dublin-to-Caracas is a 7,000 km distance, just one way. And if you are a new Irish national, from Cape Town, South Africa, and you’d like to visit family and friends: Dublin-to-Cape Town is a 10,000 km distance, just one way. And if you are a new Irish national, from New Delhi, India, and you’d like to visit family and friends: Dublin-to-New Delhi is an 8,000 km distance, just one way. Even Rabat, Morocco is over 2,000 km from Dublin.

Under Gibbons’ scheme, as near as I can make out, if you want to visit a historically Caucasian-majority country in Europe, then you can continue to do so tax free. But just go try and visit some third-world country where the majority population’s skin tone has a different complexion, and then you will be taxed for the privilege.

If one of Ireland’s minuscule right-wing nationalist parties proposed such a policy, they’d be labelled bigots. But if the very same policy is put forward in the name of environmentalism and climate change, precisely what conclusion or conclusions should we draw?

Is mise, le meas,

 

Seth Barrett Tillman

Seth Barrett Tillman, Letter to the Editor, ‘Restricting flights closes the world,’ Irish Examiner (June 27, 2023, 2:00 AM), <https://www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/yourview/arid-41170720.html> , <https://ssrn.com/abstract=4486380> (responding to John Gibbons’ ‘Why we should ration the distance each person can fly every year’); 

Seth Barrett Tillman,  ‘Climate Change Activists’ Embrace of Rationing,’ New Reform Club (June 20, 2023, 12:47 PM), <https://reformclub.blogspot.com/2023/06/climate-change-activists-embrace-of.html>;