It doesn’t take much imagination to see a day when private aviation, pleasure motor boating, needless journeys and any heavy carbon footprint activity will become both heavily taxed and socially unacceptable.
Yes, and this will have unintended consequences. When I learned to fly (I think back around when A & C was filling up a Trident) there were basically two types of pilots applying to fly for the airlines: Former military pilots, and pilots emerging from "private aviation". The ex Military pilots were very well trained, and used to flying within a regimented system. The private pilots had a more self directed learning path, in more simple planes, as generally they had funded their training and experience themselves. Now we have those paths, plus the more formalized career training path, which really does not include much "private" flying. Fewer hours, less total experience, training directed at the airline role only. Perhaps more similar to the military training environment than than private path.
The "private" path has one difference to the military or career path training, being a lot more self directed, with the pilot making more of their own decisions (particularly go - no go), and solo flying - perhaps in a modest "experience builder" plane. I have seen that pilots who emerge from the self directed path, and have flown a lot of solo, are confident decision makers. The airline passengers of the future would like to be flown by pilots who are well motivated, and confident decision makers. That's not to speak less well of military or career path pilots, we need a mixture of all types of pilots.
As private flying becomes more costly, and less socially welcome, the opportunity will be lost for new pilots to fly hundreds of hours of personal experience building, and solo decision making. Airliners will be flown (or watched form the pilot's seat) by pilots who have passed the training to the minimum requirements, and perhaps had little opportunity to make solo piloting decisions, and carry out the outcome of their decisions.
I hope that the career path training ramps up to produce very experienced entry level airline pilots, 'cause they won't be coming from the "private" path so much in the future.....