United Airlines Screws Polar Bears While Flying Over Them | Grist
But that Pringles-size price tag hasn’t stopped Smisek and other airline CEO’s from calling up their favorite senators, John Thune and Claire McCaskill, and their House counterparts and ordering them to throw a climate-killing tantrum. The senators have managed to pass a bill through both Houses of Congress that actually prohibits U.S. airlines from obeying the European climate law. Worse, it puts taxpayers on the hook for bailing out the airlines for the $22 billion in fines they’re expected to accrue as a result of their willful law breaking (full disclosure: I’ve done consulting work with the coalition of environmental groups fighting aviation pollution).
...since it will produce significant pollution reductions (equivalent to taking 30 million cars off the road) and costs so little that no one will notice, it will actually be yet another illustration of a longstanding truth: reducing pollution just isn’t that expensive...In other words, melting Arctic, dying polar bears, and flight-disrupting extreme weather notwithstanding, Jeff Smisek and his colleagues oppose the idea of climate action so much that they’re willing to spend tens of millions of dollars to block it…even when climate action will boost their profits.
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