“I do not believe it at all”. The tone is set, and the position, clear. Questioned during the Meeting of Entrepreneurs of France (REF 2023), organized by the Medef, the Minister Delegate in charge of Transport spoke out against a hypothetical limitation of travel, a track advanced by some in the face of global warming. If transport represents 30% of greenhouse gas emissions, “I do not believe that restriction is the right answer”, judged Clément Beaune.
“I do not believe in the restriction of mobility at all”, added the Minister Delegate, also opposing the establishment of a quota of “four flights in a lifetime” for each citizen. A track suggested by the engineer Jean-Marc Jancovici: “We could establish a system where when we are young, we have two flights to discover the world and when we are old, we go on vacation in Corrèze by train”, said he so, in May. “I don’t believe in it at all, if only for operational matters,” replied the member of the government.
Instead of “restrictions”, Clément Beaune favored “changes in behavior, including through standards and taxation”, as well as the transformation of the transport sector, which must decarbonize as quickly as possible. The plane must therefore reduce pollution, “including through investment and innovation”. Similarly, the taxation of airline tickets should also not allow to “punish” the plane, but rather to “finance” these transformations, argued the government representative.
The Minister Delegate was not the only one to bet on technical progress in this way. Questioned during the same round table, the president (LR) of the Pays de la Loire region, Christelle Morandais, also considered that banning flights was “nothing”. “We could close all the airports, but the problem is not Franco-French […]. The reality is that we have the United States, China, India, countries that are not in the ban but are moving forward,” she argued. Same observation for Augustin de Romanet: the CEO of the ADP group also bet on “technical progress” to decarbonize transport, ensuring that electric planes would circulate, at the regional level, from “2028-2029”. “Young people need to do math, chemistry, and help us find the technical progress that makes air transport bearable,” he concluded, to applause.