The U.N. Will Make Airfares More Expensive

Reprinted from the Wall Street Journal, May 7, 2026

By Brenda Shaffer

You’ve got your passport, phone, wallet and lug­gage. Now buy your plane ticket. If you think it’s expensive, wait till next year. In the name of fighting climate change, the International Civil Aviation Organization, a spe­cialized United Nations agency, in 2027 is set to require air­lines to report their green­house-gas emissions for inter­national flights and buy carbon credits to offset emis­sions. This mandatory expense will raise flight costs and give an unelected global agency the power to tax an entire industrial sector without any democratic input from those being taxed.

The Trump administration can stop this U.N.-imposed aviation tax. The administra­tion last fall delayed a vote by the International Maritime Or­ganization on a measure that attempted to tax global ship­ping. Now it can help protect aviation.

The administration has made clear that the U.S. will cut funding to many U.N. agencies, a decision President Trump’s voters widely sup­port. The U.N., however, has found a workaround to main­tain its power: effectively tax­ing the aviation industry and, by extension, consumers-de­spite having no democratic mandate to do so. Using cli­mate change as the justifica­tion, the U.N. aims to control manufacturing, transporta­tion and commerce.

Aviation accounts for only 2.5% of global greenhouse-gas emissions, and this policy will impose significant costs on the industry. It is also likely to fa­vor larger aviation companies, putting budget airlines at a disadvantage.

Further, the quantity avail­able of noncarbon and low-car­bon aviation fuels is insuffi­cient, and the push for biofuels could increase global food plices. As part of this policy, the CAO is encouraging the use in civil aviation of hydrogen, a highly flammable fuel. This could raise insurance costs­ and the physical risk of flying.

The ICAO is neither a demo­cratically elected government nor a regulated corporation. This policy would give an un­elected, unregulated iaterna­tional bureaucracy significant control over businesses. The British Tea Act of 1773 main­tained a tax of 3 pence on a pound of tea. The amount was small, but the principle of an outside power taxing the American colonies helped spark the American Revolution. Today, few journalists or Western governments question the principle of unelected in­stitutions like the U.N. effec­tively taxing the aviation in­dustry through regulation.

The lack of democratic ob­jection to this taxation by a global institution is astound­ing. It marks a disturbing shift from the values that shaped modem democracies.

Ms. Shaffer is a faculty member at the U.S. Naval Post­graduate School’s Energy Aca­demic Group and a senior fel­low at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center.