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by sazz 1393 days ago
I think this calculation is complete nonsense and pure propaganda to support political movement.

Many people have bought tickets and made trips that they would never have made at normal prices.

The article quotes someone who travels from Bavaria to Rostock simply because it is cheap. Not because he has to. Here, CO2 is deliberately wasted out of boredom or pleasure, and then people pat themselves on the back for being so environmentally friendly.

Does anyone still remember the punks on Sylt?

https://www.24hamburg.de/schleswig-holstein/sylt-sommer-pfin...

3 comments

This data comes from a survey that explicitly asked about how people changed habits [1] and the CO2 figure is "Based on the journeys shifted from cars to buses and trains" [2] not total usage.

[1] https://www.vdv.de/bilanz-9-euro-ticket.aspx

[2] https://www.vdv.de/presse.aspx?id=df893fc7-1759-497b-9488-ce...

The marginal cost for an additional person on a train is close to 0. Only when extra services(increase in scheduled trains) are added does this increase the CO2 emissions.

From my experience, because most trains are at higher capacity due to the ticket, the marginal emission per person per train is greatly decreased too.

There is also a net benefit to the economies of small towns that depend on these tourists, so id say this is an overall economic as well as environmental benefiy

The marginal GHG cost of the extra trip is almost 0.

In fact, if they were alternatively sitting at home running air conditioning the overall CO2 output would probably have reduced by them sitting in the train for those hours instead.