4 ms·

3% of global emissions being due to air travel, when 4/5 of the world population has never set foot in an airplane, is incredibly huge, not quite small. This i

3% of global emissions being due to air travel, when 4/5 of the world population has never set foot in an airplane, is incredibly huge, not quite small. This is an activity almost entirely engaged in by the very wealthy, that has a huge adverse effect on the planet. Taxing air travel to reduce frivolous trips would be a great policy. Add fast trains between major US cities.

svara 7y ago
What you say isn't wrong, but when you're asking what the most impactful changes to the current system would be, the absolute climate impact of flying vs. other sources of greenhouse gases needs to be considered. Which is to say, the world-wide policy priorities need to be on transportation (other than flying), electricity production and industrial emissions [0]. Giving up coal and petrol cars has potentially much greater impact than giving up flying. That said, when you consider the CO2 emissions that you cause yourself directly, a good rule of thumb is that as soon as you fly at all, CO2 from flying dwarfs all your other CO2 emissions. On the individual level, not flying, flying less, or offsetting carbon emissions from flying has the biggest impact. [0] https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...
- bouncycastle 7y ago
  I think reducing CO2 emissions from a personal level is the wrong way to go about it. It needs to be addressed from a more higher level, because the majority of CO2 emissions cannot be attributed to a single person. Take for example shipping, which uses 4.5% of global co2 emissions, yet most people haven't stepped on a ship in their lifetime, and never will! Quote: "annual emissions from the world's merchant fleet have already reached 1.12bn tonnes of CO2, or nearly 4.5% of all global emissions" https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/feb/13/climatechange.pollution https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/feb/13/climatec... Also, note that aircraft are not limited to carrying passengers... They also carry cargo.
  - BurnGpuBurn 7y ago
    Shipping also very often uses the dirtiest of fuels and is therefore much more polluting than airliners which burn quite high quality refined fuels. That's why, to get around recent laws limiting sulfur emissions, large container boats now first "scrub" their exhaust gasses with sea water, so all sulfur will now nicely pollute and acidify our oceans. [0] No emissions though, because emissions bad. I agree with you wholeheartedly that this is not a problem that should be solved individually. I don't hold my breath for what the higher ups are coming up with though, their measures seem misguided at best, deliberately loop-holed at worst. [0] http://www.imo.org/en/MediaCentre/HotTopics/Pages/Sulphur-2020.aspx http://www.imo.org/en/MediaCentre/HotTopics/Pages/Sulphur-20...
- Moru 7y ago
  Yes, it's more efficient to concentrate on making one thing better. If you have a limited amount of people. But leaving the flying industry to play freely, the amount of saved environment will just move to the airplanes instead of taking the car. There is nothing that says we all can't do our part in lowering environment cost wherever we work.
- jellicle 7y ago
  Like every time this comes up, there are 7.5 billion humans on the planet and thus no need to only do X or only do Y. We can and must reduce every aspect of our global pollution problem, right now, or it will kill the majority of humanity. We aren't resource-constrained. This isn't a 5-person startup where you have 5 workers and that's it. You can put a million people (if needed) to work on fixing air travel at the same time as you put a million people (if needed) to work on any other aspect of climate change. All arguments that we shouldn't fix X climate problem because it's less important than Y are just arguments that we shouldn't fix climate problems because the arguer doesn't want them fixed. No individual actions have any effect at all, and people who argue about them are, again, just distracting from the important work of creating collective solutions.
entee 7y ago
I take your point, though I'm not sure taxes are the answer. Very rarely is air travel even close to the cheapest option (in the US here, Europe has low cost airlines that may shift the math). Although I'm pretty well off as compared to the average person, I don't know anyone personally who takes the plane purely on a whim, and I know nobody who prefers to fly when another comparable time option is available. If you were to tax air travel at say 10%, that would likely not change my travel, just make it more expensive. A $200 ticket now costing $220 isn't going to make me not take the flight. If you tax it more, sure I won't take the flight, but then you reduce quality of life given that in many places the alternatives don't exist. In Europe I usually take the train places. If it's 2-3h away by train it's usually faster to take the train, and it's often (though not always) comparable or cheaper on price. In the US, I virtually never take the train, there simply aren't adequate options. The distances tend to be much larger, and we simply haven't built the infrastructure. We could build it, but that's proven quite hard (see CA high speed rail and efforts to modernize northeast corridor) for both political and practical reasons. NY<->DC I often take the bus, it's cheaper and only a slight time penalty vs. the train. 4/5 people sounds like a big number but those people are much more likely to start eating meat or buy a car at first than to fly. That's a way bigger problem environmentally.
- nicoburns 7y ago
  In europe, jet fuel isn't taxed at all (but train/car fuel is) which often makes flying the cheaper option. From london, I can fly to several european cities cheaper than I can get a 2 hour train within the UK. Which is pretty ridiculous.
  - entee 7y ago
    That's wild, agreed that is out of step. I usually book fairly last minute so I haven't seen those prices personally, but I know they exist. I surely don't believe we should favor air over train.
  - iso1210 7y ago
    Train fuel is electricity. A train with 500 seats running London to Manchester costs about £4/mile in electricity, of which 20p will be VAT (which I think is reclaimed) - so tax would be about £35, or 7p per passenger. A flight of a 150 seat plane from London to Manchester attracts £3900 in tax.

svara 7y ago

What you say isn't wrong, but when you're asking what the most impactful changes to the current system would be, the absolute climate impact of flying vs. other sources of greenhouse gases needs to be considered. Which is to say, the world-wide policy priorities need to be on transportation (other than flying), electricity production and industrial emissions [0]. Giving up coal and petrol cars has potentially much greater impact than giving up flying. That said, when you consider the CO2 emissions that you cause yourself directly, a good rule of thumb is that as soon as you fly at all, CO2 from flying dwarfs all your other CO2 emissions. On the individual level, not flying, flying less, or offsetting carbon emissions from flying has the biggest impact. [0] https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...

bouncycastle 7y ago
I think reducing CO2 emissions from a personal level is the wrong way to go about it. It needs to be addressed from a more higher level, because the majority of CO2 emissions cannot be attributed to a single person. Take for example shipping, which uses 4.5% of global co2 emissions, yet most people haven't stepped on a ship in their lifetime, and never will! Quote: "annual emissions from the world's merchant fleet have already reached 1.12bn tonnes of CO2, or nearly 4.5% of all global emissions" https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/feb/13/climatechange.pollution https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/feb/13/climatec... Also, note that aircraft are not limited to carrying passengers... They also carry cargo.
- BurnGpuBurn 7y ago
  Shipping also very often uses the dirtiest of fuels and is therefore much more polluting than airliners which burn quite high quality refined fuels. That's why, to get around recent laws limiting sulfur emissions, large container boats now first "scrub" their exhaust gasses with sea water, so all sulfur will now nicely pollute and acidify our oceans. [0] No emissions though, because emissions bad. I agree with you wholeheartedly that this is not a problem that should be solved individually. I don't hold my breath for what the higher ups are coming up with though, their measures seem misguided at best, deliberately loop-holed at worst. [0] http://www.imo.org/en/MediaCentre/HotTopics/Pages/Sulphur-2020.aspx http://www.imo.org/en/MediaCentre/HotTopics/Pages/Sulphur-20...
Moru 7y ago
Yes, it's more efficient to concentrate on making one thing better. If you have a limited amount of people. But leaving the flying industry to play freely, the amount of saved environment will just move to the airplanes instead of taking the car. There is nothing that says we all can't do our part in lowering environment cost wherever we work.
jellicle 7y ago
Like every time this comes up, there are 7.5 billion humans on the planet and thus no need to only do X or only do Y. We can and must reduce every aspect of our global pollution problem, right now, or it will kill the majority of humanity. We aren't resource-constrained. This isn't a 5-person startup where you have 5 workers and that's it. You can put a million people (if needed) to work on fixing air travel at the same time as you put a million people (if needed) to work on any other aspect of climate change. All arguments that we shouldn't fix X climate problem because it's less important than Y are just arguments that we shouldn't fix climate problems because the arguer doesn't want them fixed. No individual actions have any effect at all, and people who argue about them are, again, just distracting from the important work of creating collective solutions.

entee 7y ago

I take your point, though I'm not sure taxes are the answer. Very rarely is air travel even close to the cheapest option (in the US here, Europe has low cost airlines that may shift the math). Although I'm pretty well off as compared to the average person, I don't know anyone personally who takes the plane purely on a whim, and I know nobody who prefers to fly when another comparable time option is available. If you were to tax air travel at say 10%, that would likely not change my travel, just make it more expensive. A $200 ticket now costing $220 isn't going to make me not take the flight. If you tax it more, sure I won't take the flight, but then you reduce quality of life given that in many places the alternatives don't exist. In Europe I usually take the train places. If it's 2-3h away by train it's usually faster to take the train, and it's often (though not always) comparable or cheaper on price. In the US, I virtually never take the train, there simply aren't adequate options. The distances tend to be much larger, and we simply haven't built the infrastructure. We could build it, but that's proven quite hard (see CA high speed rail and efforts to modernize northeast corridor) for both political and practical reasons. NY<->DC I often take the bus, it's cheaper and only a slight time penalty vs. the train. 4/5 people sounds like a big number but those people are much more likely to start eating meat or buy a car at first than to fly. That's a way bigger problem environmentally.

nicoburns 7y ago
In europe, jet fuel isn't taxed at all (but train/car fuel is) which often makes flying the cheaper option. From london, I can fly to several european cities cheaper than I can get a 2 hour train within the UK. Which is pretty ridiculous.
- entee 7y ago
  That's wild, agreed that is out of step. I usually book fairly last minute so I haven't seen those prices personally, but I know they exist. I surely don't believe we should favor air over train.
- iso1210 7y ago
  Train fuel is electricity. A train with 500 seats running London to Manchester costs about £4/mile in electricity, of which 20p will be VAT (which I think is reclaimed) - so tax would be about £35, or 7p per passenger. A flight of a 150 seat plane from London to Manchester attracts £3900 in tax.