Conversation

I think passenger ships are going to make a comeback at some point in the next 50y. International air travel is one of the few big climate impact vectors with no reasonable substitute. Domestic you have possibility of better all-electric high-speed rail...
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Isn’t shipping responsible for much more co2 emissions than air travel? Like 17% vs <2% Making ships less dirty + simplifying supply chains would prob make much more difference
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Not on a per-pound-per-mile basis, plus air travel has higher impact emissions because stratosphere altitude emissions cause about 4x more impact for same amount of CO2.
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My sense is that air travel is going to take a long time to go after - there is so much upside from solar (&wind) for land based uses, cleaner shipping and supply chain optimization, construction/ building practices. Flying is a red herring
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I disagree. Air travel has leveraged impact, and huge optics and social engineering benefits (pushes the most privileged to visibly become part of the solution). Hitting that will open the doors to action on bigger pieces of the pie.
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“Optics and social engineering” - yes, but people are very good at being engineered to look like they’re doing something, less so at actually doing something. I’m not familiar enough with what happened with plastic straws, but fox hunting in the UK didn’t seem to /1
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Drive more generalized animal welfare. A huge visible impact can be an excuse to do no more, rather than a motivation to go further. The good news is that on this topic - hopefully we shall both live to find out who was right 2/
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