Rossputin.com: Rational Thinking About Our World

In a great interview with the Wall Street Journal, Michael O'Leary, the chief executive of Irish low-fare air carrier Ryanair, has some choice words about the airline industry, its regulators, and the "Eco-nutters" who pray at the altar of CO2.

I highly recommend that you read the whole interview, but in case you're feeling slightly unmotivated, I've included the parts about regulators below since I enjoyed that particularly.

see "My 'Stupid Business'", WSJ, 9/15/07
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110010607

Mr. O'Leary's low opinion of his own industry, though, is nothing compared with his outright disdain for those who regulate air travel--particularly when it's done in the name of the environment. 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.

"This 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."

Airlines have become an enormous target for global-warming doomsayers. Last month, campaigners staged a nine-day protest outside London's Heathrow airport, hoping to discourage summer vacationers from flying. Mr. O'Leary points out that air transport accounts 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.' "

Mr. O'Leary assigns further blame to "the chattering bloody classes . . . or what I call 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.' "

Also coming in for an O'Leary lambasting is the European Commission--which in the past has declared Ryanair the recipient of illegal subsidies from the airports it uses, and more recently blocked its attempted (but so far unsuccessful) takeover of former Irish state carrier Aer Lingus. "The whole purpose of regulators," he argues, is to be "a convenient political cover for the lack of political will to allow competition. And so what the politicians [say] is, 'Well, this is a natural monopoly, therefore we're going to impose a regulator and he's going to protect the consumer interest.' And what happens from the second after the regulator's imposed is the regulated monopoly starts gaming him."