l’ll speak up for airplanes, or at least airliners in particular. I concede the point they mostly burn non-renewable fuels, but they make excellent use of the resources. Rhetorically speaking, one can cross half the planet in half a day, for not much money, in a mode of transport that is the safest on the planet (typically an order of magnitude safer than cars as I recall).
Although don’t forget that “for not much money” is partly because air travel is so subsidised. Fuel tends to be largely untaxed, even though fuel taxes on other modes don’t really cover the externalities
In terms of fuel per passenger unit of distance, air travel is very efficient, the reason why there are so many emissions is the amount of distance you can travel.
Fuel makes up a significant amount of the aircraft’s weight at takeoff on long haul flights.
Especially on middle-distance routes where land transport would be faster (considering that airports can’t be downtown like train stations can be, the delays associated with airport security, etc.) if the rail infrastructure were decent.
If I recall correctly, aren’t high speed trains the safest? At the very least, I recall that the Shinkansen has never had a single safety incident in its entire history, and as for the TGV, there have been a few derailments and a terrorist attack.
Yeah, that’s why I put them in lawful. If we can get them to be more sustainable (maybe green hydrogen fuel), then they’d basically just be super fast and super safe sky buses, whereas they’re currently extremely polluting sky buses.
![[meme] Transit alignment chart](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/6caaa958-a6b9-4ba5-bee1-9a986d9e8d7d.jpeg){kind=link}
l’ll speak up for airplanes, or at least airliners in particular. I concede the point they mostly burn non-renewable fuels, but they make excellent use of the resources. Rhetorically speaking, one can cross half the planet in half a day, for not much money, in a mode of transport that is the safest on the planet (typically an order of magnitude safer than cars as I recall).
Although don’t forget that “for not much money” is partly because air travel is so subsidised. Fuel tends to be largely untaxed, even though fuel taxes on other modes don’t really cover the externalities
In terms of fuel per passenger unit of distance, air travel is very efficient, the reason why there are so many emissions is the amount of distance you can travel.
Fuel makes up a significant amount of the aircraft’s weight at takeoff on long haul flights.
aerial transport is justified for intercontinental transport, but shouldnt be adopted when land travel is possible
Especially on middle-distance routes where land transport would be faster (considering that airports can’t be downtown like train stations can be, the delays associated with airport security, etc.) if the rail infrastructure were decent.
If I recall correctly, aren’t high speed trains the safest? At the very least, I recall that the Shinkansen has never had a single safety incident in its entire history, and as for the TGV, there have been a few derailments and a terrorist attack.
Yeah, but there’s a lot more airports around.
Yeah, that’s why I put them in lawful. If we can get them to be more sustainable (maybe green hydrogen fuel), then they’d basically just be super fast and super safe sky buses, whereas they’re currently extremely polluting sky buses.
We should switch to more coscentious standards. Air travel is a commodity. We must avoid it as much as possible.