6 ms·

Myself living in Berlin I'd still take the flight (and I did usually). First of all, it's nearly legendary how unreliable the trains can be here during winters

Myself living in Berlin I'd still take the flight (and I did usually). First of all, it's nearly legendary how unreliable the trains can be here during winters and hot summers. Second, flying is actually cheaper (I rarely fly with a big luggage). Finally, it takes me 15 minutes to get to Tegel airport. All the security and boarding procedures are highly optimised there. I usually leave my flat around an hour to the boarding time. Then the flight to Munich is an hour or less. In the end (with the train to the city center) it takes less than 4 hours. On the other hand I wouldn't mind taking a long distance overnight international train provided I had a bed there.

hh3k0 8y ago
The CO2 emissions of trains are significantly lower, though. You might want to reconsider if slightly more convenience is worth ~80-90% higher emissions.
- cup-of-tea 8y ago
  The government should be enforcing this. Nobody should be expected to make a personal sacrifice to do the right thing.
  - Certhas 8y ago
    You speak as if you were a toddler. Every intelligent person should be expected to do the right thing. And the state should help us by making the right thing easy. But this goes in the other direction, too. In democracies you need to build majorities (or at least growing minorities) first before you get policy. If enough of us decide it's a good idea to behave ethically it makes it a lot easier to pass laws that mandate ethical behaviour. So no, you do not get a free pass by voting green.
    - cup-of-tea 8y ago
      I'm simply being pragmatic. If that worked, if every intelligent being did the right thing we wouldn't have any problems at all, would we? Most people know that driving a single occupant car to work every day is silly. But what can they do? Completely change their lifestyle while everyone else continues to operate as normal? Make a personal sacrifice for the benefit of those making no sacrifice at all? It will never work from the bottom up even if everyone agrees what the right thing is.
      - some_account 8y ago
        You are responsible for what you do in your life. What other people do you have no responsibility for at all. Today, a lot of people don't take responsibility for their actions because nobody external is telling them to. This is being a toddler. You wait for some parent figure to tell you that you have to do something when you dont want to. Today, most of the western world are toddlers and its being programmed into us through movies and games as well. Because this is a state of mind that is super easy to control. You end up in consumer mode, wanting things that make your life easier. :)
        vertex-four 8y ago
        Unfortunately, we also live in a capitalist society where if you do something less “productive” than the next person, guess which person will have more opportunities?
        cup-of-tea 8y ago
        > What other people do you have no responsibility for at all. I might have no responsibility for it, but it affects me. If I choose to cycle to work I'll be a second class citizen on the road while people in cars pass me with little regard to my life. Why would I choose this? Why would anyone choose this? The answer is there is no reason to choose it, so people don't.
      - Certhas 8y ago
        You're just ignoring the second half of my statement entirely. Changing your behaviour and taking political action to change the context of our behaviour are two sides of the same coin. If you're not willing to change your own behaviour, how are you expecting to change the states? This just ends up with you declaring: It's someone else problem to make me. That's not pragmatic. Unless you personally invest time and effort into political change to address these issues, it's just lazy and irresponsible. Just own that. I have adjusted some behaviours and still fall short in many other areas. Never said it was easy. But here is actually an example where it is easy. Take the train and little cost in time and money, while gaining comfort and productive time. And you're saying you can't even be expected to do that? That's just cynical and irrational.
    - teh_klev 8y ago
      > You speak as if you were a toddler. This sort of response isn't acceptable here. I would suggest you rephrase. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      - xllly3 8y ago
        I'm triggered by "isn't acceptable". It sounded authoritarian and I had to go to my safe space for 5 min.
      - Certhas 8y ago
        I respectfully disagree. The specific part quoted by you is substantial, not ad hominem, and not name-calling. I accept that it's confrontational but not more so, (and not more offensive to me) than the statement it is in response to: > Nobody should be expected to make a personal sacrifice to do the right thing. A toddler can't be expected to do the right thing, but you wouldn't let your ten year old get away with this, would you? "I can't be expected to clean my room when it's sunny outside!". I am calling out the normalization of irresponsibility here with a re-contextualization. I am not calling the person I respond to a toddler, nor treating them as one.
      - cup-of-tea 8y ago
        Nah. He wasn't calling me a toddler and even if he was I'm actually a big boy and can handle such abuse.
    - konschubert 8y ago
      But you can't fix structural problems by individual behavior. It's like peeing into a house fire. Political campaigning and change is how you change things. Of course, for this you first need to win people's minds. But that's just the first step.
      - Certhas 8y ago
        In the four lines I wrote, I talk about the states responsibility and about the importance to pass stronger legislation to change things. I never claimed that you can fix structural problems by individual behaviour. I claimed that you can't fix them without (some) changes to individual behaviour. Political change never just happens without activists pushing for it. And in order to understand the space they are pushing for, you need both, leading by example and credibility in asking people to pass laws that mandate behavioural changes. Finally, I see no evidence for the idea that pushing outside the political sphere can not also lead to societal and behavioural change. Meat consumption is way down among younger people. Car ownership is down, too. This is in all likelihood to slow. But if we ever hope to change laws in cities to get rid of cars where they are not needed, well then having a large chunk of the population cycling and using public transport, and having had a gradual build out of alternative infrastructure due to this chunk of the population is going to make things politically a lot easier. The same logic applies to divestment. If a large enough number of individual actors divest from carbon extraction, the politics of it change dramatically. And once enough people signal by divesting that they believe that the political change will come (thereby making carbon stocks worthless), they can trigger others into such behaviours. Arguing for political action always has my vote. It's probably one of the best ways to use your time. But arguing against adjusting your behaviour is cynical and lazy. And arguing against people on here advocating for others to change their behaviour is actively arguing against political action. Because that is what political action actually looks like on the ground.
    - vidarh 8y ago
      Everyone "should be", but the reality is that everyone isn't. A fairly small proportion of us have the time, energy and motivation to research the best decision for any given situation. So it is totally reasonably to argue for making the right choice the obvious one, e.g. by externalising the costs of bad choices. It doesn't help until there's a majority for it, as you point out, but one way to build public support is to build awareness and criticise the current situation.
      - Certhas 8y ago
        It seems like you completely agree with what I wrote then?
  - jaggederest 8y ago
    If only we had a uniform, slowly ramping global $100/ton carbon tax. From the models I've seen it would fairly abruptly correct all of these "two methods are vastly different in carbon emissions but otherwise fairly comparable" situations.
    - nasmorn 8y ago
      abdolutely. Industry is known to lie about its ability to cope with even slight changes in price structure when asked. Even though things like tripling of oil prices mostly change if people buy v4 or v6 engines. A small yearly increase that that companies can price into their plans will absolutely not destroy our economy
    - adrianN 8y ago
      The carbon tax should be tied to the price of extracting a ton of carbon from the atmosphere.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - vidarh 8y ago
        In Norway there's taxation on drinks containers that is set high enough that it's cheaper to participate in a return scheme. The audited return/recycling/reuse rates are then used to provide a discount against the per-unit tax. I've always liked this scheme, because assuming you set the tax high enough for society to - as a fallback - take action to rectify the problem (e.g. hiring more people to clean up in this case), with a punitive margin on top, the tax provides a financial incentive to innovate to drive down the cost of acting responsibly. There is a collective return service you can participate in, but if you find a better alternative you're free to use it as long as you can demonstrate what your return rate is. Or you can pay the tax and leave it to the government, but your margins will be worse than the competitions, as the return scheme is cheaper. The general mechanism feels like it'd be adaptable to a lot of situations where you want to make sure it gets rectified, but also don't want to trust the government to dictate specific solutions - in this case it doesn't matter if e.g. the fallback solution is severely cost-ineffective; the more costly the fallback is, the stronger the financial incentive to find a better solution is.
  - rjsw 8y ago
    Aircraft fuel should be taxed to a similar level as that used for ground transportation.
- maccard 8y ago
  I would love to make the carbon friendly decision every time, but unfortunately price comes into it. I’m travelling to London this weekend. For two of us the flight, including a bus to the airport and the tram on the other side is less than half the price of the train for the same journey. The train is more expensive than our accommodation in London!
- nicolas_t 8y ago
  I'm looking for a good way to offset the carbon emission from the 20+ flights I take a year. Anyone has good recommendation of a reliable charity for this? Also, so far all calculators I've seen usually count the carbon emission for economy, but for longhaul flights in business class, I'm sure the actual emissions are significantly higher... I cannot avoid flying but I do think that I should at least pay the actual cost of the carbon emissions I cause.
  - wickedwiesel 8y ago
    Atmosfair (https://www.atmosfair.de/en/offset/flight/ https://www.atmosfair.de/en/offset/flight/) has received positive press and reviews (https://www.test.de/CO2-Kompensation-Diese-Anbieter-tun-am-meisten-fuer-den-Klimaschutz-5282502-5283299/ https://www.test.de/CO2-Kompensation-Diese-Anbieter-tun-am-m...) in Germany. Its calculation also includes the flight class, aircraft type, flight type (charter, scheduled) and they documented it as well (https://www.atmosfair.de/en/standards/emissions_calculation/emissions_calculator/ https://www.atmosfair.de/en/standards/emissions_calculation/...). We use it to offset our business flights. It's a charity and donations are tax deductible under German law.
cup-of-tea 8y ago
> In the end (with the train to the city center) it takes less than 4 hours. But for only one hour of that can you be working, reading, or just relaxing. For the rest you'll either be on your feet or at the very least aware of your next connection.
- odiroot 8y ago
  Thanks but no thanks. I don't have this overwhelming pressure to always be "on" or even squeeze every bit of work out of my day. I use this time to organise my thoughts and take a breath.
  - cup-of-tea 8y ago
    Huh? I really don't understand why people don't read and comprehend entire sentences. You got to the word "work" and just stopped reading and left a reply?
flurdy 8y ago
Partially why I believe short haul city-to-city flights should have more taxes applied to them if viable alternatives exist. And ways to further ease the tax burdens more for the alternatives if possible. (A stick for using flights and carrot for alternatives) Penalising medium and long haul, and flights to minor towns or remote towns excluded of course as alternatives are rarely viable. And of course, alternatives can't immediately handle all the passenger load so scaled approaches are needed. Thinking more of the Paris-London, New York-Boston, etc. Seems it worked with Barcelona - Madrid already, which might be more due to convenience than price? Though don't think it will happen as the opposition will be too much, and making the taxes/fee rules work easily without complicated red tape will also doom it.
step21 8y ago
Ah, so you are one of those who voted to keep Tegel open I guess?
- odiroot 8y ago
  I couldn't vote but I campaigned to keep it open indeed. The decision to close it is just a way for insincere and short-term thinking politicians to gain some cheap points.
  - taejo 8y ago
    How does it gain cheap points when the majority are against it?
Grue3 8y ago
>Finally, it takes me 15 minutes to get to Tegel airport. All the security and boarding procedures are highly optimised there. Maybe it's just Tegel airport, but every time I have to pass security in Frankfurt Flughafen (last time a few days ago), I feel violated. I travel quite a lot and it's the strictest security I've seen in an airport. The ICE trains in Germany are not that great either. I remember buying a ticket from Hanover to somewhere in the south and to save money I bought a non-registered seat ticket. Imagine my shock when upon entering the train there were dozens of people sitting on their suitcases or on the floor, and I proceeded to spend the next 3 hours in similarly miserable conditions.
- woodpanel 8y ago
  Regarding Frankfurt airport's strictness: It's Germany's biggest hub with the most international connections, some of them more "targeted" than others (say El-Al flights...). Regarding ICE's: That's one of the trade-offs. Either guaranteed (cramped) seating after being "violated" or un-violated uncertainty. Every time I use one mode of transportation, I'll damn myself and vow to always use the other mode from now on.
cameldrv 8y ago
For some people, sure, it's faster to get to Tegel. If you arrive by car, Tegel is an awesome airport, built before airports were designed as shopping malls with a small aviation division attached, and without a strong eye towards making sure that low-paid security personnel's time wasn't wasted. Unless you live north of Tegel though, it's going to be faster to get to either Hbf or Südkreuz, and when you get there, you just walk to the platform, wait for the train, walk on, and sit down.

hh3k0 8y ago

The CO2 emissions of trains are significantly lower, though. You might want to reconsider if slightly more convenience is worth ~80-90% higher emissions.

cup-of-tea 8y ago
The government should be enforcing this. Nobody should be expected to make a personal sacrifice to do the right thing.
- Certhas 8y ago
  You speak as if you were a toddler. Every intelligent person should be expected to do the right thing. And the state should help us by making the right thing easy. But this goes in the other direction, too. In democracies you need to build majorities (or at least growing minorities) first before you get policy. If enough of us decide it's a good idea to behave ethically it makes it a lot easier to pass laws that mandate ethical behaviour. So no, you do not get a free pass by voting green.
  - cup-of-tea 8y ago
    I'm simply being pragmatic. If that worked, if every intelligent being did the right thing we wouldn't have any problems at all, would we? Most people know that driving a single occupant car to work every day is silly. But what can they do? Completely change their lifestyle while everyone else continues to operate as normal? Make a personal sacrifice for the benefit of those making no sacrifice at all? It will never work from the bottom up even if everyone agrees what the right thing is.
    - some_account 8y ago
      You are responsible for what you do in your life. What other people do you have no responsibility for at all. Today, a lot of people don't take responsibility for their actions because nobody external is telling them to. This is being a toddler. You wait for some parent figure to tell you that you have to do something when you dont want to. Today, most of the western world are toddlers and its being programmed into us through movies and games as well. Because this is a state of mind that is super easy to control. You end up in consumer mode, wanting things that make your life easier. :)
      - vertex-four 8y ago
        Unfortunately, we also live in a capitalist society where if you do something less “productive” than the next person, guess which person will have more opportunities?
      - cup-of-tea 8y ago
        > What other people do you have no responsibility for at all. I might have no responsibility for it, but it affects me. If I choose to cycle to work I'll be a second class citizen on the road while people in cars pass me with little regard to my life. Why would I choose this? Why would anyone choose this? The answer is there is no reason to choose it, so people don't.
    - Certhas 8y ago
      You're just ignoring the second half of my statement entirely. Changing your behaviour and taking political action to change the context of our behaviour are two sides of the same coin. If you're not willing to change your own behaviour, how are you expecting to change the states? This just ends up with you declaring: It's someone else problem to make me. That's not pragmatic. Unless you personally invest time and effort into political change to address these issues, it's just lazy and irresponsible. Just own that. I have adjusted some behaviours and still fall short in many other areas. Never said it was easy. But here is actually an example where it is easy. Take the train and little cost in time and money, while gaining comfort and productive time. And you're saying you can't even be expected to do that? That's just cynical and irrational.
  - teh_klev 8y ago
    > You speak as if you were a toddler. This sort of response isn't acceptable here. I would suggest you rephrase. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - xllly3 8y ago
      I'm triggered by "isn't acceptable". It sounded authoritarian and I had to go to my safe space for 5 min.
    - Certhas 8y ago
      I respectfully disagree. The specific part quoted by you is substantial, not ad hominem, and not name-calling. I accept that it's confrontational but not more so, (and not more offensive to me) than the statement it is in response to: > Nobody should be expected to make a personal sacrifice to do the right thing. A toddler can't be expected to do the right thing, but you wouldn't let your ten year old get away with this, would you? "I can't be expected to clean my room when it's sunny outside!". I am calling out the normalization of irresponsibility here with a re-contextualization. I am not calling the person I respond to a toddler, nor treating them as one.
    - cup-of-tea 8y ago
      Nah. He wasn't calling me a toddler and even if he was I'm actually a big boy and can handle such abuse.
  - konschubert 8y ago
    But you can't fix structural problems by individual behavior. It's like peeing into a house fire. Political campaigning and change is how you change things. Of course, for this you first need to win people's minds. But that's just the first step.
    - Certhas 8y ago
      In the four lines I wrote, I talk about the states responsibility and about the importance to pass stronger legislation to change things. I never claimed that you can fix structural problems by individual behaviour. I claimed that you can't fix them without (some) changes to individual behaviour. Political change never just happens without activists pushing for it. And in order to understand the space they are pushing for, you need both, leading by example and credibility in asking people to pass laws that mandate behavioural changes. Finally, I see no evidence for the idea that pushing outside the political sphere can not also lead to societal and behavioural change. Meat consumption is way down among younger people. Car ownership is down, too. This is in all likelihood to slow. But if we ever hope to change laws in cities to get rid of cars where they are not needed, well then having a large chunk of the population cycling and using public transport, and having had a gradual build out of alternative infrastructure due to this chunk of the population is going to make things politically a lot easier. The same logic applies to divestment. If a large enough number of individual actors divest from carbon extraction, the politics of it change dramatically. And once enough people signal by divesting that they believe that the political change will come (thereby making carbon stocks worthless), they can trigger others into such behaviours. Arguing for political action always has my vote. It's probably one of the best ways to use your time. But arguing against adjusting your behaviour is cynical and lazy. And arguing against people on here advocating for others to change their behaviour is actively arguing against political action. Because that is what political action actually looks like on the ground.
  - vidarh 8y ago
    Everyone "should be", but the reality is that everyone isn't. A fairly small proportion of us have the time, energy and motivation to research the best decision for any given situation. So it is totally reasonably to argue for making the right choice the obvious one, e.g. by externalising the costs of bad choices. It doesn't help until there's a majority for it, as you point out, but one way to build public support is to build awareness and criticise the current situation.
    - Certhas 8y ago
      It seems like you completely agree with what I wrote then?
- jaggederest 8y ago
  If only we had a uniform, slowly ramping global $100/ton carbon tax. From the models I've seen it would fairly abruptly correct all of these "two methods are vastly different in carbon emissions but otherwise fairly comparable" situations.
  - nasmorn 8y ago
    abdolutely. Industry is known to lie about its ability to cope with even slight changes in price structure when asked. Even though things like tripling of oil prices mostly change if people buy v4 or v6 engines. A small yearly increase that that companies can price into their plans will absolutely not destroy our economy
  - adrianN 8y ago
    The carbon tax should be tied to the price of extracting a ton of carbon from the atmosphere.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - vidarh 8y ago
      In Norway there's taxation on drinks containers that is set high enough that it's cheaper to participate in a return scheme. The audited return/recycling/reuse rates are then used to provide a discount against the per-unit tax. I've always liked this scheme, because assuming you set the tax high enough for society to - as a fallback - take action to rectify the problem (e.g. hiring more people to clean up in this case), with a punitive margin on top, the tax provides a financial incentive to innovate to drive down the cost of acting responsibly. There is a collective return service you can participate in, but if you find a better alternative you're free to use it as long as you can demonstrate what your return rate is. Or you can pay the tax and leave it to the government, but your margins will be worse than the competitions, as the return scheme is cheaper. The general mechanism feels like it'd be adaptable to a lot of situations where you want to make sure it gets rectified, but also don't want to trust the government to dictate specific solutions - in this case it doesn't matter if e.g. the fallback solution is severely cost-ineffective; the more costly the fallback is, the stronger the financial incentive to find a better solution is.
- rjsw 8y ago
  Aircraft fuel should be taxed to a similar level as that used for ground transportation.
maccard 8y ago
I would love to make the carbon friendly decision every time, but unfortunately price comes into it. I’m travelling to London this weekend. For two of us the flight, including a bus to the airport and the tram on the other side is less than half the price of the train for the same journey. The train is more expensive than our accommodation in London!
nicolas_t 8y ago
I'm looking for a good way to offset the carbon emission from the 20+ flights I take a year. Anyone has good recommendation of a reliable charity for this? Also, so far all calculators I've seen usually count the carbon emission for economy, but for longhaul flights in business class, I'm sure the actual emissions are significantly higher... I cannot avoid flying but I do think that I should at least pay the actual cost of the carbon emissions I cause.
- wickedwiesel 8y ago
  Atmosfair (https://www.atmosfair.de/en/offset/flight/ https://www.atmosfair.de/en/offset/flight/) has received positive press and reviews (https://www.test.de/CO2-Kompensation-Diese-Anbieter-tun-am-meisten-fuer-den-Klimaschutz-5282502-5283299/ https://www.test.de/CO2-Kompensation-Diese-Anbieter-tun-am-m...) in Germany. Its calculation also includes the flight class, aircraft type, flight type (charter, scheduled) and they documented it as well (https://www.atmosfair.de/en/standards/emissions_calculation/emissions_calculator/ https://www.atmosfair.de/en/standards/emissions_calculation/...). We use it to offset our business flights. It's a charity and donations are tax deductible under German law.

cup-of-tea 8y ago

> In the end (with the train to the city center) it takes less than 4 hours. But for only one hour of that can you be working, reading, or just relaxing. For the rest you'll either be on your feet or at the very least aware of your next connection.

odiroot 8y ago
Thanks but no thanks. I don't have this overwhelming pressure to always be "on" or even squeeze every bit of work out of my day. I use this time to organise my thoughts and take a breath.
- cup-of-tea 8y ago
  Huh? I really don't understand why people don't read and comprehend entire sentences. You got to the word "work" and just stopped reading and left a reply?

flurdy 8y ago

Partially why I believe short haul city-to-city flights should have more taxes applied to them if viable alternatives exist. And ways to further ease the tax burdens more for the alternatives if possible. (A stick for using flights and carrot for alternatives) Penalising medium and long haul, and flights to minor towns or remote towns excluded of course as alternatives are rarely viable. And of course, alternatives can't immediately handle all the passenger load so scaled approaches are needed. Thinking more of the Paris-London, New York-Boston, etc. Seems it worked with Barcelona - Madrid already, which might be more due to convenience than price? Though don't think it will happen as the opposition will be too much, and making the taxes/fee rules work easily without complicated red tape will also doom it.

step21 8y ago

Ah, so you are one of those who voted to keep Tegel open I guess?

odiroot 8y ago
I couldn't vote but I campaigned to keep it open indeed. The decision to close it is just a way for insincere and short-term thinking politicians to gain some cheap points.
- taejo 8y ago
  How does it gain cheap points when the majority are against it?

Grue3 8y ago

>Finally, it takes me 15 minutes to get to Tegel airport. All the security and boarding procedures are highly optimised there. Maybe it's just Tegel airport, but every time I have to pass security in Frankfurt Flughafen (last time a few days ago), I feel violated. I travel quite a lot and it's the strictest security I've seen in an airport. The ICE trains in Germany are not that great either. I remember buying a ticket from Hanover to somewhere in the south and to save money I bought a non-registered seat ticket. Imagine my shock when upon entering the train there were dozens of people sitting on their suitcases or on the floor, and I proceeded to spend the next 3 hours in similarly miserable conditions.

woodpanel 8y ago
Regarding Frankfurt airport's strictness: It's Germany's biggest hub with the most international connections, some of them more "targeted" than others (say El-Al flights...). Regarding ICE's: That's one of the trade-offs. Either guaranteed (cramped) seating after being "violated" or un-violated uncertainty. Every time I use one mode of transportation, I'll damn myself and vow to always use the other mode from now on.

cameldrv 8y ago

For some people, sure, it's faster to get to Tegel. If you arrive by car, Tegel is an awesome airport, built before airports were designed as shopping malls with a small aviation division attached, and without a strong eye towards making sure that low-paid security personnel's time wasn't wasted. Unless you live north of Tegel though, it's going to be faster to get to either Hbf or Südkreuz, and when you get there, you just walk to the platform, wait for the train, walk on, and sit down.