Confusing price and cost
Although it appears to have come about through a lack of understanding, the SNP are correct when they express concern over the “extreme cost” incurred through flying between the Scottish mainland and the various island groups.
However, the concern they express is not over cost, but is over the price of flights.
Many people confuse the two concepts.
The price is what individuals pay for a ticket to travel on a flight operated by a company between two geographical locations.
The economic concept of cost takes full account of all resources required to provide goods or services; the resulting environmental and societal effects; and what might have been provided as an alternative if resources had been applied differently.
It seems rash, at best, to describe any air service as being potentially sustainable in the long term given the proven damage the exhaust emissions from air travel have done to the climate, let alone the costs of the environmentally destructive infrastructure required to support air travel.
One reason given by migrants to Scottish islands as a driver for their relocation is the “island way of life” which must, at least in part, include geographical remoteness. Many tourists also describe that as a reason for their fleeting visits.
It seems fair to conclude that, at least in part, the increasing volumes of traffic on air routes to various islands has come about through people who have relocated to islands to live, or for temporary work on developments driven by geographically and culturally remote transnationals, or as tourists.
It seems fair to conclude that increased air travel, at least in part, erodes the “island way of life” that attracted people in the first place.
Much more importantly, if the SNP, or anyone else, want to justify increased air travel to the islands they should justify it through a comprehensive environmental impact assessment that examines the full upstream, operational, and downstream economic costs of such travel.
It is disingenuous for the SNP, or anyone else, to use a populist argument relating to price while disguising it as concern over cost, which they evidently do not have.
Leslie Sinclair
Kirkwall
Orkney
SNP conference motion to raise concern about ‘extreme cost’ of island flights
