Climate change as an excuse to 'tax the [bleep] out of us'

By Christopher Alleva

On Saturday, the Wall Street Journal featured a discussion with Michael O'Leary, CEO of low fare Irish airline, Ryanair. Portrayed as kind of a swashbuckler, O'Leary offered up an interesting array of comments on the airline industry and the regulatory environment, but he saved up his most scathing attacks for the new climate change taxes with which Britain is hitting the airlines. His profanity-laced tirade regarding these taxes is right on the money, literally!

Mention airlines and carbon dioxide in the same sentence, and he begins peppering his language with four-letter words. Earlier this year, before becoming Britain's prime minister, Gordon Brown raised taxes on air travel to and from the U.K. The then-Treasury chief's stated purpose was fighting climate change. Mr. O'Leary, whose airline serves more than a dozen British airports, demurs: "He just raised taxes on airlines. It has [bleep]-all to do with climate change! We've written several letters . . . to the Treasury, asking what the money's going to be spent on. We still haven't gotten a reply."

They can't reply because that money went straight to the general fund to pay for pensions and the national health system!

O'Leary wasn't done yet, laying bare, the whole global warming business for the fraud that it is.

"...the problem with all this environmental claptrap . . . it's a convenient excuse for politicians to just start taxing people. Some of these guilt-laden, middle-class liberals think it's somehow good: 'Oh, that's my contribution to the environment.' It's not. You're just being robbed--it's just highway [bleeping] robbery."

He observes that passenger airlines are responsible for only 2% of carbon dioxide emissions world-wide:

"It's less than marine transport, and yet I don't see anyone [saying], you know, 'Let's tax the [bleep] out of the ferries.' "

Like Al Gore or Cheryl Crow in this country telling everybody to use one square of toliet paper and ride bikes while they fly around on private jets, O'Leary blames "the chattering bloody classes" . . . or what he calls the liberal Guardian [newspaper] readers:

"they're all buying SUVs to drive around the streets of London. And there's this huge disconnect between their stated passion for or care for the environment and what they actually do. They all want to buy kiwis and kumquats in the supermarket on Saturday. They're flown in from New Zealand for chrissakes! They're the equivalent of, you know, environmental nuclear bombs! But nobody says, Let's ban the kiwi fruits.' "

The chattering classes over here are readying another big push this fall to tax the [bleep] out of Americans. The Washington Post is running a near endless parade of stories to hammer it home and more hearings are scheduled in the House and Senate for the highway robbery, oh I mean global warming taxes.