But it’s one of the worst polluters
this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2023
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Id say cars are even greater polluter per km per passenger.
The data disagrees.
https://ourworldindata.org/travel-carbon-footprint
It turns out that overcoming gravity is a bitch
Thanks, I stand corrected, however it does not apply for short haul flights (154g)
If travelling domestically, driving – even if it’s alone – is usually better than flying;
However on the other hand, most popular European airline boasts much lower numbers. I wonder how they achieved this figure.
Ryanair already has the lowest CO2 emissions per passenger/km of any major airline in Europe (66g) and by switching to Ryanair, passengers can now further reduce their CO2 emissions.
It really isn't. More Kerosene is burnt in lamps and cook stoves in rural Africa and Asia than in the global aviation industry. Moreover, airlines have a capitalistic incentive to reduce carbon emissions already, since fuel is one of the largest costs they bare and the only one easily reducable.
Aviation is a tiny fraction of global travel emissions. It's mostly road vehicles. Aviation is 11% of transportation which is 30% of global emissions. It's a tiny fraction, considered.
I think that might be because there's a lot of lamps and stoves in Africa and Asia, rather than anything to do with aviation
Yeah but it illustrates that while the airline industry is held up to a lot of scrutiny for carbon emissions they are much less yet equally as polluting sectors that are much simpler to affect change that probably should get more attention.
*Rail travel
Air is generally cheaper than rail for the cheapest ticket, but more polluting and for journeys under around 300 miles slower, if you're flying from city centre airports like Billy Bishop or London City, or 500 miles if you're flying from larger out of city airports. Additionally it's even safer than flying and you can take way more luggage and bikes.
People don't tend to have a fear of train travel though, it's just that NIMBYs, those who would rather pour money into a pit than make investments and corrupt politicians (those last two often being the same people) who tend to dislike it.
They don’t fear safety of rail, but they do have rail related fears. They fear that rail is too slow and expensive to build and to use. They fear it’s worse for the environment thanks to several major ecological disasters caused by bad rail stewardship (and I suppose they do fear safety there too). They fear it’s just too inconvenient for practical use.
I’m a huge rail supporter but we don’t do it any favors by not acknowledging the reality of how fucked it is in some major markets. It’s for a long time been treated by Americans as the inconvenient thing we used before airplanes and cars that only makes sense in New York, DC, and Chicago. As well as the “what if the greyhound was also unaffordable and didn’t go where you want” option for cross continental travel. Europe seems to have treated it as the option for staying in your country and getting around your city.
With neither a cross Schengen heavily subsidized and standardized system that is designed to outcompete air travel or a massive change in how amtrack is treated and going from seeing it as a corporation owned by the American people that needs to support itself to a public resource that is supposed to take a loss when it needs to akin to how the post office used to be treated then rail isn’t going to beat air. California and France can’t do this alone
I see a difference regarding the effects if something does go wrong. A plane crash is no Fukushima.
sure, a plane crash typically kills everyone aboard. The explosion and resulting leak at Fukushima killed no one.
they're obviously not exactly the same, but similar in certain respects
Didn't know that, but you are right, nobody actually died directly from radiation related causes at Fukushima. However, deaths from circumstances relating to the evacuation of the area are estimated to be in the thousands (source: wikipedia). I find that that somewhat illustrates the extent to which human lives have been impacted. While a plane crash is a personal tragedy for a number of people and relatives, a nuclear accident feels more like a collective catastrophe.
It's not clear to me that these deaths from evacuation are from the explosion at the plant and resulting leak or the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in Japan (mag 9.0) and resulting tsunami. it's really hard to pin a definitive reason onto these fatalities.
Fair point. Nuclear plants are fairly safe and historically have a low death toll, I agree. Leaves the radioactive waste to deal with.