Domestic flights wouldn’t be hard to electrify (815km range within 4-5 years, 1300km range within 10 years… enough to electrify short haul flights which are hal

Domestic flights wouldn’t be hard to electrify (815km range within 4-5 years, 1300km range within 10 years… enough to electrify short haul flights which are half of all passenger miles traveled by air… and most medium/long haul flights can be broken up to shorter routes), and you can also do electric car road trips (I just drove from Texas to Virginia in a Model S). Eventually, even long haul flights (~4000-5000km) could be electrified. It’s ultimately not hard to reduce emissions to low levels. Just use electricity for stuff we usually use fossil fuels for now. Until 1950 or so, most hydrogen for fertilizer was made with electrolysis, so it wouldn’t be hard to do that. Many homes are already heated purely electrically. Several electrical grids have very low per-kWh emissions. Mix of nuclear, hydro, wind, solar, and geothermal makes it pretty feasible. Even new iron in new plants in the US (the steel which isn’t recycled already in arc furnaces) is about half made with hydrogen (as part of natural gas syngas) and could be tweaked to be ~90-95% hydrogen. It’s not hard or even particularly expensive. We just gotta do it and quit telling people the only way to fight climate change is castration (literal or metaphorical, ie degrowth). (Also, a crewed solar powered plane flew around the world a few years ago, although you’d want to use mostly battery electric.) …really, the hard thing to electrify are the long haul transoceanic flights. A yearly visit to relatives in France has a massive carbon footprint right now, but it’s also something almost no one does (compared to commuting, having a house in the suburbs, domestic flights, and road trips, which are relatively easy to decarbonize). An appropriate carbon price on the few electrification-resistant sectors would address the problem efficiently.