[mdasen]

I certainly understand that sentiment, but a ton of people commute 30 miles daily (or more). Even if you live "near an airport", you probably live 15+ miles from an airport. Tottenham London to Heathrow is 24 miles by car. The British Museum to Heathrow is 19 miles. Columbia University on the Upper West Side to JFK is 17 miles. DC to Dulles is 26 miles. Downtown Denver is 25 miles to the airport. SF to SFO is 14 miles. LA to LAX is 20 miles. The Loop in Chicago to O'Hare is 17 miles. Dallas to DFW is 21 miles. Houston is 22 miles. Seattle to SeaTac is 15 miles.

Most cities don't have airports that close to the city. Maybe you live in San Diego and the airport is right there downtown, but most people are traveling to get to their airport. Ok, maybe you don't want to take a train and can hire an airport van or whatever, but you're likely traveling a distance to get to an airport.

I'm not saying that it isn't nice to have a more convenient airport, but if we're being realistic about climate change air travel is going to have to be something we do sparingly rather than often. People in the US, UK, Germany, and France currently emit an average of 15t, 5t, 8t, and 5t of CO2 respectively. A trip from NYC to London will be 2t of CO2 - which probably needs to be around 40% of your annual CO2 budget. That is to say, an inconvenient airport should be an inconvenience very few times per year.

Making other things in your life more conveniently located should be a much higher priority - the things you'll use daily, weekly, or monthly. An airport is something you'll use infrequently - or will have to use infrequently if we're going to be realistic about climate change. Plus, as I noted, 30 miles isn't really that inconvenient compared to current situations in most cities. Even the "close" airport in London is 20+ miles away from most of London. Is there a huge difference between 20 miles and 30 miles? That's less than a 10 minute difference by car. With a high-speed train it could be a lot less. Paris to Lyon on the TGV averages 167 MPH. At that speed, 30 miles is covered in 11 minutes.

I certainly understand the desire for convenience, but airports are something individual people use infrequently (or will have to use infrequently given the reality of climate change). If getting to the airport is annoying, it's probably not an annoyance in your life frequently.

[rangestransform]

I will vote against whoever tried to make my flights less convenient

[com2kid]

So demand rail service that drops you off inside the airport right at the security line.

Demand baggage pick-up and delivery services be offered.

Having someone pick up your checked luggage the day before you fly out, walking off a train right into the airport, and then getting on the plane w/o any fuss, is amazing.

VS the American Standard of waiting in a huge line to weigh your checked luggage, that you just paid an Uber 60-80 to carry for you.

[dukeyukey]

Then the new airport will never get built, it'll get horribly congested, and your flights will still be less convenient. Probably by quite a lot too.

[throw__away7391]

And yet all aviation combined is responsible for less than 3% of total carbon emissions. Permanently grounding all aircraft will make no appreciable difference. All the major manufacturers are currently sold out for the next decade; even if there were an additional major surge in demand for air travel enough to impact this number, it would be impossible to fulfill it.