[K0nserv]

Flying is a bit unique in that there aren't really viable alternatives. It also accounts for a fairly small portion of emissions. Land transport (cars and trucks), power generation, and heating are where the big wins exist with viable alternatives.

[bluebarbet]

Per person, it is reliably the single most polluting thing you will do. The reason it accounts for a "small proportion" of emissions is that most people in the world do not fly at all. Indeed, a tiny (<1% IIRC) elite of the world's population account for most of the world's flight kilometers. Flying is an absolutely unscalable form of transport in a world of 8 billion people.

[tmnvix]

> Flying is an absolutely unscalable form of transport in a world of 8 billion people.

So is the private (ICE) motorcar. ~4000kg of CO2/y for typical US use.

[tonyedgecombe]

It only represents a small portion of emissions because so few people fly. For the people that do fly it represents a large portion of their emissions.

It’s also the activity least likely to be decarbonised.

Of course there are alternatives, I haven’t flown on a plane since 2001.

[dudefeliciano]

I think if high speed rail was a viable option in the US and Europe those numbers would look a lot different.

[bergie]

In Europe flying is subsidised and ridiculously cheap. That would need to end.

Further than removing subsidies, if flight cost would include its negative externalities, few would fly.

[megablast]

What?? In Europe there are lots of viable alternatives. Same as Asia!!

[jjice]

For transport you're right. I think the parent your referring to was specifically saying there's no alternative way to power a plane. That's my assumption at least.

[K0nserv]

I was saying a bit of both. megablast is correct that there are alternatives, but I'd maybe quibble with "viable". For example you can get from Stockholm to Umeå with a 1 hour flight or a 6-8 hour train journey, is the train a viable alternative? For aviation there aren't alternative fuels and on many journeys even the alternative transport options aren't in the same ballpark.

[sdoering]

Calling it a “1 hour flight” is a bit misleading when comparing transport options. The relevant number is door-to-door travel time.

Once you include getting out of Stockholm to the airport, security, boarding, the flight itself, possible baggage collection, and the trip into Umeå, I would be surprised if the total were much below 4 hours. Comparable German domestic flights such as Hamburg–Munich usually took me around 4–4.5 hours in practice in the past when traveling for work before the pandemic.

That makes the train a 6–8 hour alternative to a roughly 4-hour flight journey. Whether that is viable depends on the traveller, but it is certainly more competitive than “1 hour versus 8 hours” suggests.

I admit that for me, living about an hour north of the Hamburg main station but only 15 minutes from the airport, the plance for a business trip in Munich can still be a viable (albeit seldom taken) option. More often than not, if time permits, I take the train, work on the train. But as said - there still are situations, that make flying such a distance viable (to me).

I just wanted to point out, that it is not as clear cut as 1 hour vs. 6 to 8 hours.

[VBprogrammer]

In the UK I could get from Central London to Central Glasgow in 4.5 hours on the train. The same trip on a flight, it takes an hour to get the airport (assuming it's not one of the budget airlines pretending Essex or Bedfordshire is London...), I need to be there 2 hours before (maybe less is you are brave and Security isn't messed up) the flight takes an hour and then I have to get out of the airport and find my way from Paisley back to Glasgow Central.

Of course there are a lot of variables, if instead I leave from my house the aircraft would actually be faster, mostly due to the extra time it takes to get to Central London and from Waterloo to Euston.

In reality we usually drive in about 6-8 hours because, as a family of 4 traveling, it's considerably cheaper even before you take into account having transport on the other end.

[Findecanor]

I'd say that 4-6 hours is often the cut-off point for total travel time city-to-city -- provided that the train is fast.

I and a friend once started at Stockholm Central station to Malmö Central Station at the same time. I boarded a bullet train; he took the bus to the airport ... We arrived at the same time six hours later.

I've been looking at travel in Japan recently. Between Hiroshima and Tokyo, the bullet train (fast Shinkansen) and flight are both about four hours.

A bullet train is much more comfortable than flight within these limits because there are so fewer steps: no travel to/from airport, fewer tickets to book and often no check-in or security checkpoint.

[K0nserv]

Yeah fair, having experienced Japanese trains I fully agree about the comfort. I'm not arguing that we shouldn't build high speed rail and try to shift more travel to trains instead of aviation either to be clear. I love trains and I especially love Shinkansen style trains, but aviation still has a big edge in big parts of the world and on some journey lengths.

[RankingMember]

I'd like to see an attempt at modern air cruises on giant zeppelins.

[lbriner]

Then the plane takes longer than the train!

[phoghed]

A price I’m more than willing to pay to for my Final Fantasy IX airship

[RankingMember]

Exactly what I had in mind

[RankingMember]

Yeah this would be more making the airship part of the experience rather than a means to an end.

[rienbdj]

Flying is usually the cheapest and quickest option. Madness!

[bluGill]

For short trips. Most plane trips are at a distance where there isn't a viable alternative. Sure there are some nice trains that can handle the more common trips, but airplanes really shine for much longer trips.

[rickydroll]

And planes go to more places than trains do. You want to add a new destination? Go through a few years of planning and construction for a couple thousand feet of tarmac, and people can go there using existing planes. Best of all, you don't need a large passenger base to justify the expense.

For rail? You're looking at an order of magnitude more for planning and construction, all new infrastructure, all new rail stock. It will take a much larger passenger base to justify the expense and effort.

Airplanes don't just shine for longer trips. There have been some interesting developments with commuter airplanes that are either all electric or hybrid with a 200-plus-mile range. If they are as energy efficient as they promise to be, we could see a resurgence in municipal airports for transportation between regional centers where rail is either unavailable or excessively expensive.

[dredmorbius]

OTOH, there's a lot of stuff that is far more feasibly moved on the Earth's surface rather than in flight. So some sort of surface-level infrastructure will be required: highways, railroads, canals, rivers, oceans.

Some of those are amenable to high-speed variants, some less so. And once you've established transport corridors, much of the hard part (rights-of-way acquisition) is accomplished, so that adding a high-speed route becomes far more tractable.

For the most part, actual construction costs are fairly modest, modulo bridges and tunnels, both of which can of course be quite expensive.

[rickydroll]

Good points. I think that running rail parallel to highways, especially if the rail can travel twice to three times as fast as road traffic, is a good plan.

I think increasing the viability of travel between smaller airports is a good thing for those times when you don't want to spend a lot of time traveling or waiting for a transit vehicle. If the equivalent of micromobility air travel comes to fruition, you'll see two- or three-person vehicles that get up and go when someone wants a ride. Another benefit could be the airport-to-airport delivery of packages with different-sized drone craft and autonomous navigation.

#IFoundMyFlyingCar

[FredFS456]

Depends on where you're flying to and from in Asia, and how far.

[jryle70]

if people prefer flying even if alternatives exist, like what's going on in Europe and Asia, then the alternatives aren't good enough -- price, convenience, availability, comfort, whatever reasons.

[ImJamal]

Even if some high speed rail existed in the US, do you think it is practical to go from California to Maine? If you are going 2,500 miles on a train that is going 150 miles an hour it would take you 16 hours assuming there are no stops. Obviously there are going to be stops so your trip is going to be an entire day.

I think a lot of people do not understand just how massive the US is.

[elzbardico]

California to Maine is a lot of distance. But would people fly from NYC to Boston if they had a bullet train?

[ImJamal]

The person I was responding to was saying that Europe and Asia have alternatives so it is wrong to say that flying has no viable alternatives. I was pointing out that some routes in the US are just not viable.

Sure some routes could have viable alternatives, but others just do not.

[chneu]

There are plenty of alternatives. Most importantly: traveling locally. Nobody needs to visit 30 countries by 30 years old or whatever dumb social media excuses they have.

Air travel is a very recent modern invention(1960s, at least for everyday folk) and people act like flying around the world is a right.

Modern capitalism is an excess machine and it'll feed us constant excuses for why our reasons are valid. Air travel is a great example. Travel and tourism are seen as "musts" by people nowadays. It's insane how destructive and unnecessary it is. It's wild how entitled everyone is nowadays. I'll happily take down votes for calling out the insane excess that we have nowadays. We're killing ourselves one funco pop at a time and we all deserve that funco pop according to the latest excuse(won't someone blame the rich!!!)

[K0nserv]

Even if you are correct, in practice there's no way to put this particularly genie back in the bottle. It's the same as trying to argue that we should solve our energy problems by asking people to consume less energy. Outside of some climate dictatorship, it's not happening.

Also, on travel, I think there's a lot to be said for the value of travel and being exposed to other cultures and societies. "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness[..]" and all that.

[Tarsul]

I believe climate dictatorship will come already this century if our decarbonisation efforts stay as weak as they are. It won't be under that name though. One sufficient policy would be to price everything in money + co2 equivalent currency. Every person in a country gets a certain co2 currency budget per year. Pretty simple actually (yeah yeah, the small print will still be long but the gist is simple).

[julosflb]

A french association suggests this approach: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compte_carbone [in french]

[adrianN]

I could easily be convinced that dictatorships make a big comeback this century, however I find it unlikely that they will have a good carbon policy.