 The future of flying, God, I think last week or the week before, I told you about this report out of, I think, Juniors at Cambridge University in the UK that basically said, look, if we're going to achieve, we're going to achieve net zero by 2050, what really we're saying is we need to ban all airplanes, we can't fly, I mean, if you're going to fly, there's no way to achieve net zero, the technology is not there, we're not going to have electric planes, there's no real alternative fuels. Net zero is just, it will force our hand, and what we're going to experience, and there's really no option here, is no more flying. And that sounds right to me, if they're serious about the goal, then that's what it's probably going to require. But it's hard to sell that. It's really hard to sell that to people that just ban flying, we're just going to ground all the airplanes, and no more flying between countries, between cities, take the train, right, take the train. And that is hard to sell, but there was an alternative that can achieve a very similar goal, and that's what's really happening. What is happening is that the, right now, airlines have to offset something like half of the carbon they pollute by buying carbon offsets, right? And as those carbon offsets are getting more expensive than they are, what is happening is that the price of flying becomes more expensive, this is particularly, this is in Europe, we're talking about Europe. As they are forced to buy more carbon offsets, the price of air flight increases. And as that happens, what happens to demand? It goes down. One of the most, one of the most amazing things, one of the most amazing things about the modern world, one of the most amazing things about the last 40 to 50 years, is how cheap flying has become. How accessible it has become to almost everybody in our society. A European vacation, which used to be only for the wealthy, not that long ago, maybe the upper middle class, as of let's say the 1970s, is available almost to everybody today, flying to Disneyland, flying across the country, flying to Asia. You can see that with the, with the sheer number of tourists from relatively poor countries, who are everywhere, everywhere as you travel. There are millions and millions and millions of people traveling by airfare. I think there's something like four billion people who fly. Now, many of that is the same person flying many times like me, but four billion is a lot. If prices don't go off, if prices stay the same, they expect air traffic to go to eight billion in a decade or so. Eight billion. Total number of population of Earth is around eight billion. It means that people are flying, people enjoying seeing the world. It is one of the great, beautiful things about, you know, the modern world in which we live. How cheap things have gotten, right? We're very quick to talk about inflation. We're very quick to talk about, I don't know, stagnation. But one of the things that is hard to really measure and hard to really capture is how cheap things have become. And as a consequence of the cheapness, how they've impacted disproportionately their lives, primarily people who couldn't afford them before. Flying is one of those things. Well, it turns out now that this European Union emissions trading system, Alliance are going to have to buy emission allowances to cover every metric ton of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere of flights, starting and ending in the European economic zone, which include including the UK and Switzerland. They only buy half now. But by 2026, they're going to have to buy double. Prices are really expensive. They're going to go up. The price of carbon emissions offsets has gone up, right? In Europe, there is a market in CO2. You can buy and sell CO2. It's gone up from around 25 euro per metric ton, I guess, of carbon in 2019 to about 100 today. It's gone out four times. So when you pay those really, really high airfares, realize that a big chunk of that is going to carbon offsets. A big chunk of that is a consequence over the hysteria around climate change and the course of government policies to reduce that carbon footprint. Basically, carbon outline, over the next 25 years, companies are going to have to reduce their carbon footprint significantly. It's not only about buying credits, but also by just reducing the use of carbon by law. So they're going to have to invest heavily in improved technology. They're going to have to invest heavily in alternative fuels. They're going to have to invest heavily in the offsets and everything. The total cost of this is something like $820 billion if the industry is going to reach net zero by 2050. Now, there is no $820 billion to do this. That money doesn't exist. This is going to basically squeeze and eliminate. They're talking about just the increase in carbon offsets that the companies have to buy is going to shrink the profits of the major European airlines, particularly the cheap ones, the Ryanair, the EasyJet, the Wiz, Vueling, Eurowings, Transvia. These are the real cheap airlines that make it possible for everybody to travel all over Europe at really, really amazingly low prices. They're going to decrease their profits by 77 percent. 77 percent. What's the outcome of this? Much higher prices. Squeezing out the low-cost carriers. A lot fewer flyers. A lot fewer passengers. An economy in which, again, only the wealthy can travel by air. And just fewer flights. I read a story. I think I read a story that I did a show on this, or I mentioned in the show maybe a year or two ago. France now has eliminated short flights. If you can take a train between two cities, and I can't remember the exact number of hours, if it's below a certain number of hours it'll take you to get from point A to point B, they have banned the use of airplanes from those two points. Europe is serious about this. They're serious about eliminating flying. Whether it's through the pricing mechanism making it so expensive, Miroslav says it's 150 minutes. If the train is 150 minutes or less, it can't fly. Airplanes are grounded, or at least Miroslav thinks it's 150 minutes. Anyway, so no short hop, flying. I mean you're serious about eliminating, basically eliminating flying. And eliminating the ability for people to take planes, to go on vacations, to do business. The consequence of this are horrific to our quality of life, to our standard of living, and to our ability to do business. And they're talking about, so they're concerned about this flight, what they call flight inequality. That is that a few people, the richest 10%, fly much more than the poor. The poor do one flight a year, and people like me do dozens of flight a year. So they want to introduce a frequent fly attacks. You know how you get frequent flyer points? They want to introduce a frequent flyer attacks to tax people who fly a lot, again to reduce ability to fly. What this represents is a direct, unequivocal attack on the quality of life standard of living of people in the world today, particularly Europeans in this case. I don't think this would fly in the United States. And what are they pushing? They're pushing trains for now, electric trains, where they're going to get all the electricity to run these trains from solar panels and for windmills in England and in Germany and in the Netherlands, you know, where the sun shines all year long, right? So be prepared to be stuck or the other way around to look at this is I've urged you all to travel. I've urged you all to go see the world and I urge you again and I did a whole show on why traveling should be a value to you, that there's great joy and great benefit and great excitement and great great thrill to travel and see the world. Do it soon. Do it soon. Do it before it becomes too expensive. Do it before maybe in the world we're heading towards it becomes impossible. Do it now. Get on a plane. Fly somewhere. Enjoy the freedom that you have now because those freedoms are going to be taken away one way or another. The European Union at least is dedicated to taking them away from you. Thank you for listening or watching the Iran book show. If you'd like to support the show, we make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me. You get value from listening. You get value from watching. Show your appreciation. 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