this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2023
115 points (99.1% liked)
Solarpunk Travel
664 readers
3 users here now
Community for those focused on sustainable travel. Our society's current levels of energy intensive and frequent travel are not compatible with life on a finite planet. We advocate for long-term slow travel to see the world, and low energy local travel to deeply experience your community. Green washing free zone.
related to sustainable travel:
- !trains@midwest.social ← open to all train chatter (but note the instance is centered on the midwest USA)
- !rail@feddit.uk ← UK Rail and Trains
- !ukpublictransport@feddit.uk ← UK public transport
related to travel generally:
- !travel@eviltoast.org ← general travel
- !main@lemmy.globe.pub ← general travel (this whole instance devoted to travel but note there is an instance-wide no politics rule there)
- !traveltips@feddit.uk ← Europe focus
The communities listed above are decentralized. Centralized instances are omitted as they go against the fedi purpose and it’s better to cultivate digital rights in the free world. That means instances that have a disproportionately large population or are centralized on Cloudflare are not listed.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I think no one is arguing for completely banning air travel (or maybe only very few people are). But in the long run we need to make train travel more affordable and airtravel less so. The problem right now is that the environmental impact is treated as an externality that the person buying the ticket doesn't have to pay for, but we all have to.
That is exactly my point though, it is impractical. Air travel contributes very little to overall emissions compared to cars or construction. I am all for expanding and subsidising trains but making air travel more expensive will only affect the common person. I travel alot between asia, europe, and america, airfare is already insanely expensive.
Some places need airplane accessibility, once again from a global perspective.
Common person is not traveling a lot via plane (especially between different continents)! That is rich people privilege and when it is subsidized then everybody else, including the common people you mention, pays for that.
I assume you travel for work? Then it is only fair that the company pay the full price.
If you travel for fun, then you should also pay the full price, there's no need to subsidize your hobby. If you travel for family (which I don't assume because you mention three continents) then that's tough, I agree. But just because we have gotten used to reaching remote places fast doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. We have spoild ourselves on the cost of the common good and now we're facing the consequences.
And I also agree that changes have to be made for cars and construction, too. It's not an "all or nothing" situation, we can take measures in all three of these fields.
Thank you for your considered response. I indeed travel for family, which forces me to spend an insane amount of money on travelling costs for the privilege of seeing my children once in a while.
Again, I agree that we should make trains more affordable but not at the expensive of long distance air travel.
Airplanes contribute 2.5 - 3.5% of total emissions
I see. That's rough and I wish you much strength for your situation as well as the fortune to afford these travels. It sucks that money is the only way to realistically filter who "deserves" to make these journeys but sadly that's the system we're living in.