States circle a narrower baseline for the aviation offset compact

Delegates reviewing the Lantern Compact, the offsetting scheme for international flights, spent three days this week not on the price of a credit and not on which activities count. They spent them on the baseline year: the past season against which future growth is measured and therefore paid for.

A later baseline captures a busier industry and shrinks the apparent growth that has to be offset. An earlier one does the opposite. Airlines from states that rebuilt capacity quickly prefer the later year. Airlines from states still restoring long-haul prefer the earlier one, because their growth from a depressed base would otherwise be treated as a problem they are being asked to buy their way out of.

Everyone can live with a baseline. Nobody wants it to be a year their airlines remember as easy.

“Everyone can live with a baseline,” a European delegate told the desk, asking that the line not carry a name. “Nobody wants it to be a year their airlines remember as easy.” Every other delegation offered a version of the same sentence. The argument is about whose easy year gets written into the rule.

The compact does not ground aircraft. It prices a slice of their growth and sends the money toward projects that are supposed to hold a tonne elsewhere. Its credibility problem is the slice, not the existence of the invoice. A decision is pencilled for the next session. People who have sat through the previous two pencilled decisions brought lighter bags this time, which is either confidence or the lack of it.