Climate advisers call for steeper air travel tax

AIR travel should be taxed more and EU funds redirected to pay for a dramatic reforesting of Britain’s countryside, the Government’s climate change advisers recommend today.

The nation’s farmers should be incentivised to plant 100million trees a year and consumers encouraged to eat a fifth less lamb, beef and dairy to cut sheep and cattle grazing by 10 per cent, the Committee on Climate Change has said.

Leaving the European Union presents an opportunity to reshape agricultural practices in favour of the environment, says the body’s new report on land use.

The committee is charged with advising the Government on how it can achieve its target of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, which it set in law last year.

It estimated the costs of changing

British land use to meet this goal at £1.4 billion, which it said could be mainly funded by redirecting the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) after we leave the EU and by carbon levies on airlines and other fossil fuel producers.

Farmers are paid £3.3billion in subsidies every year under the CAP.

“It’s time we ended this adversarial

discussion between climate and farming,” Chris Stark, the CCC’S chief executive said. “Our farmers are the stewards of the land and the measures we are proposing today would see these stewards bring in a two-thirds reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.”

The report came as the Prince of Wales warned the World Economic Forum that time was running out to save the planet. He urged business leaders and governments to help divert an “approaching

catastrophe”. The CCC’S advice reflects policies set out in the new Agriculture Bill, though it warns that the Government should take action well before this is due to start in 2024.

The report estimates a net social benefit to the country of £4billion, including better air quality and flood alleviation. The National Farmers’ Union welcomed the report, but warned that plant-based products “do not always necessarily have a lower impact on the environment”.  A climate change activist who scaled Big Ben in a green leotard and blond Boris Johnson wig has “Extinction Rebellion psychosis”, Lady Emma Arbuthnot, the chief magistrate, said.

Benjamin Atkinson, 43, appeared barefoot at Westminster magistrates’ court yesterday where he denied a trespass charge after spending three hours on scaffolding at Queen Elizabeth Tower last October.

Mr Atkinson, of Rydal, Cumbria, will return for trial on 14 April.