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LISA NAPOLI: Britain is calling for airlines to start paying for the pollution they cause. London wants airlines to be included in the EU’s greenhouse gas trading program within two years, even some US carriers. Kyle James reports.

KYLE JAMES: Several industries are already part of the so-called carbon trading program.

They’re assigned a base amount of allowed emissions and if they want to go beyond that, they have to buy permits from an open market.

Airlines had been expected to get on board by 2013, but Britain now wants to speed things up.

Once it was thought the plan would just affect flights inside the EU, but the UK is calling on the rules to apply to all planes leaving Europe as well.

Chris Avery is an aviation analyst with JP Morgan.

CHRIS AVERY: This was indeed a little bit of a shock. If you impose this onto particularly U.S. carriers, there will be howls at a political level that could actually cause further ripples well beyond aviation.

He says it’s never clear whether these kinds of initiatives are just made to establish politicians’ environmental credentials but in the knowledge they’ll never become reality.

In Berlin, I’m Kyle James for Marketplace.