I went as a young kid in the 80s. Don’t really want to go back and have those amazing memories destroyed. It’s extremely sad.
There was talk about the carbon footprint of flying and since I like to fantasize about being able to go somewhere, I looked it up.
Driving in a car by yourself is considerably worse per mile. This was done with a “typical diesel car”, so, while other pollutants are high, fuel economy is good.
Business class is 3x worse than economy and first class is 4x worse.
Obviously flights are usually longer distances, but if you’re going somewhere you could drive (across country or w/e), driving is worse unless you put 3 or 4 people in an economy car or have an electric car.
Of course there are a million variables (hitchhike, fly on standby (edit: apparently flying standby isn’t really a thing anymore)…) that will effect the expected CO2/mile.
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iirc train travel is also worse than flying for long distances, but better for short. Without thinking about it too hard I’m going to speculate that getting 250 tons of airplane to 35,000 feet requires an enormous amount of energy, but relatively little to keep it there, which gives flying an advantage over long distance compared to land-based travel requiring constant energy consumption. Also, didn’t read the article, which likely has better info than my random-ass guessing.
Trains are better by a fair amount over any distance.
Long haul flight is like 15% less CO2 per person mile than domestic.
Trains use very little fuel per mile relative to almost any other form of transportation. They waffle crush trucks for freight, and there’s absolutely no chance planes are more efficient than cars even.
Planes being used for anything but rapid transit over oceans really is a pretty huge mistake from a carbon consumption perspective. They just happen to be very fast which is a big deal wrt convenience. If the airlines worldwide never recover from coronavirus it’ll probably be a significant good thing.
If you need to talk to someone fast there’s this thing called video chat. You do not need to fly anywhere basically in 2020.
People aren’t cargo, and long haul passenger trains are mostly moving air.
Trying to find non-Euro stats on train vs. plane.
As far as shipping goes, ships crush trains, no?
The weight of air + people is nowhere near comparable to the weight of freight either. I would expect fuel consumption for passenger rail to be significantly lower than freight rail.
Maybe. Ships are pretty bad about emissions thanks to all the law of the sea nonsense. Trains don’t generally burn bunker fuel.
Full plane is better than a nearly empty train, but the train has to really be pretty empty, like 30% full…maybe half full. That might be common though. I know city trains are often pretty empty, but I’ve only done a few short amtrak train rides.
Trains being less than full makes the “what is my carbon footprint?” question complicated though. As far as the immediate trip you’re taking, you’re virtually adding no CO2 if you’re just filling in empty seats.
Planes are almost always full or overbooked. Increased demand is much more likely to tick over to adding a flight.
Long distance passenger trains are usually very empty. Entire cars will have nobody in them for long stretches. The lounge car might have a half dozen people at peak. The dining car only has staff outside of mealtimes. Sleeper cars don’t sleep very many people, and if you’re in coach for an overnight leg they usually try to stagger seating for solo travelers so you’re not stuck next to somebody.
And if you’re doing LA to NYC you’re on that train for 3+ days.
If you get on that train you don’t add hardly anything. By not going on a train you may speed the demise of train travel. That might be a good thing if trains are empty…but maybe it’s better to contribute to train travel and help them get full.
Oh I agree, you’re preaching to the choir. Flying is my least preferred way to travel and I have only done it once in the last 10 years. And that was a one-way trip.
Of course individual action is the answer. Lower demand just hasn’t had time to slow down industrial production enough yet. It’s coming.
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And I get air travel, but how is that list (no air travel, much fewer car trips, less take-away and home delivery food) anything at all like “doing about as much as you could ask for in terms of reducing consumption”?
How about “Don’t get a new fucking phone/TV/laptop/tablet while your old one is still working” for starters?
Upgrading a 5+ year old laptop to SSD and adding RAM costs maybe £150 tops. An equivalent new laptop would be closer to £1000 and the battery etc has to be disposed of.
As for replacing smartphones - big meh. There are some business benefits but most of them are just status symbols for the blank generation.
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