On the bright side, I guess, it appears to be much stupider across “the pond” than here, which is astounding. However, the fact that anybody has been so addled by the various Woke and Wonderful agenda items as this story indicates has to concern everyone. My reaction to it is barely contained in the catch phrase, “I can’t even…”

Emma Pinchbeck is chief executive of the U.K.’s Climate Change Committee (CCC). She recently announced the group’s conviction that frequent flyers should pay higher taxes so that less affluent Brits can take nicer vacations.

Oh. What??

In its report published last month on how to cut UK carbon emissions by 87% by 2040 (Possible answers: 1) You can’t. 2) Go back to living in caves. 3) Encourage 87% of the populace to commit suicide…) the independent body proposed a “frequent-flyer levy,” a tax that would increase for every flight taken by a particular passenger. The 26-person citizens’ panel convened by the committee all loved the idea, apparently because its members were entirely recruited from Mrs. Hume-Poultwhistle’s Home for the Bewildered and equivalent institutions. This innovation will allow poor families to fly somewhere nice once a year! Sure it will! Brilliant!

Pinchbeck explains, “What we have in our heads is the annual family holiday to somewhere sunny like Spain. Now I’ve got small children, so I completely understand the need for people to go away somewhere sunny every year. So we’ve tried to preserve that in our advice….We’ve gone for a market-based approach, because polluters should pay, and that gets you an impact on demand. But we balance that with the need to still allow people to take an annual family holiday, particularly lower-income households who fly less.”

The CCC’s report said that half of the population did not fly abroad, while less than 10 % took more than three such trips a year. The government might need to limit the number of flights by law “if green fuels could not be used as widely as hoped.” (Bulletin: Green fuels will not be used as widely as hoped.) Freezing airport expansion was also cited as an option.

Tim Alderslade, the chief executive of the trade group Airlines UK, told the Financial Times: “We need more targeted policy support to help aviation get to net zero, in particular on scaling up [sustainable aviation fuels] and greenhouse gas removals and driven by the chancellor’s commitment to sustainable growth in aviation, rather than blunt measures that seek to discourage air travel for any cohort.”

I want to see that sentence diagrammed.