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There's already a viable-but-not-utilized intermediate step, which is travel by motorized ship. Queen Mary 2 travels various transatlantic (and other internati

There's already a viable-but-not-utilized intermediate step, which is travel by motorized ship. Queen Mary 2 travels various transatlantic (and other international routes), but rates are rather high. One can also book passage on cargo ships, but price comes out to $100-120 a night, which, given that passage includes room and board, isn't unreasonable. Ship travel trades off cost of fuel (and aircraft) for cost of accommodations for the duration of the voyage. Add in that most people who can afford international travel cannot afford to take off 2-4 weeks from work just for the travel. Satellite internet might be able to obviate this for some employees, but even novel smallsat-based approaches have bandwidth limitations and latency that is too high for useful video calls.

BoxOfRain 5y ago
The kind of fossil fuels used by modern ships still aren't great from a climate change perspective though, which is usually the motivation for not flying. Having said that I expect it'd still be better in terms of grams of CO2 per person!
- mc32 5y ago
  Also for cargo ships, adding one person to the cargo load really adds very little to the margins. the ship was going to "sail" regardless of whether you were getting on or not.
  - rhn_mk1 5y ago
    Aren't margins the only thing that matters, per passenger? It's not free, after all.
- adrianN 5y ago
  If you're burning fossil fuels for travel anyway, burning bunker fuel is actually pretty good from a global warming point of view. Because it contains so much sulphur, which has a cooling effect, it contributes a little less to warming that the CO2 tonnage suggests. Compare this with flying where the warming effect is magnified by a factor of two or three, because the emissions happen high up in the atmosphere. Of course acid rain is a concern, so the picture is more complex than my two sentence comment makes it seem.
ggambetta 5y ago
Huh, that has piqued my curiosity. How do you go about finding and booking passage on cargo ships?
ihm 5y ago
A transatlantic trip on the Queen Mary 2 is more carbon intensive than flying[0]. Absurdly, the only green way to get across the Atlantic at the moment is hitching a ride on a cargo ship. [0]: https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2006/dec/20/cruises.green https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2006/dec/20/cruises.green

BoxOfRain 5y ago

The kind of fossil fuels used by modern ships still aren't great from a climate change perspective though, which is usually the motivation for not flying. Having said that I expect it'd still be better in terms of grams of CO2 per person!

mc32 5y ago
Also for cargo ships, adding one person to the cargo load really adds very little to the margins. the ship was going to "sail" regardless of whether you were getting on or not.
- rhn_mk1 5y ago
  Aren't margins the only thing that matters, per passenger? It's not free, after all.
adrianN 5y ago
If you're burning fossil fuels for travel anyway, burning bunker fuel is actually pretty good from a global warming point of view. Because it contains so much sulphur, which has a cooling effect, it contributes a little less to warming that the CO2 tonnage suggests. Compare this with flying where the warming effect is magnified by a factor of two or three, because the emissions happen high up in the atmosphere. Of course acid rain is a concern, so the picture is more complex than my two sentence comment makes it seem.

ggambetta 5y ago

Huh, that has piqued my curiosity. How do you go about finding and booking passage on cargo ships?

ihm 5y ago

A transatlantic trip on the Queen Mary 2 is more carbon intensive than flying[0]. Absurdly, the only green way to get across the Atlantic at the moment is hitching a ride on a cargo ship. [0]: https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2006/dec/20/cruises.green https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2006/dec/20/cruises.green