Over on Free Exchange, one of the anonymous bloggers discusses carbon taxes on airlines:
In response, Mr Hall does an excellent job examining price elasticities in arguing that airlines would probably not suffer "massive dislocations" if faced with carbon pricing. To this I would add that so politicised an industry as air travel need not fear dislocations in any case; governments would react incredibly quickly to pull back on any part of an agreed-upon energy bill that appeared to cause significant damage to airlines or aeroplane manufacturers. This, in fact, is one of the arguments made by carbon pricing sceptics--that governments will not allow the necessary pain to be felt.
I'm with the sceptics on this one: flying is, all in all, the most wasteful consumer of carbon on the planet. Anything that doesn't touch airlines will do a poor job of addressing carbon consumption. And I also agree with the Economist blogger: governments will not allow anything to harm the airline industry.
What I don't quite understand is why this is so. Why is everyone obsessed with having protected domestic airlines, and indeed, airplane manufacturing capacity? The minimum efficient scale of airframe manufacture is so large that the efficient number of airframe manufacturers for the current global market seems to be one; nonetheless, Europe has plowed fantastic sums of money into Airbus. I believe the original rationale was quasi-military, but it's hard to take this seriously from a group of nations who have ratcheted down their military spending to the point that not one of them could project enough force to storm the World Cricket Cup without an American airlift. Now China, too, wants its own airframe manufacturer. And everyone wants to protect their national airlines.
Why is flying so emotional? And so heavily, heavily protected by the heavy hand of the state?
I don't get the reference to the "World Cricket Cup". Do you mean "Cricket World Cup"?
And also, what's this got to do with European countries? The only European country that plays cricket is the UK -- which has a more deregulated aviation set-up than the US.
Now China, too, wants its own airframe manufacturer
I think you'll have to admit that one makes military sense.
Flying as such is not the most wasteful consumer of carbon on the planet. One can certainly argue that long-distance travel is a wasteful consumer of carbon, but if one is to travel long-distance, flying is often better than driving. Large civil airliners can get as much as 90 miles per gallon per passenger (when flying full), far better than even a Prius with just the driver, and better than most SUVs with a driver and three passengers. Also, civil aviation produces on the order of three percent of anthropomorphic carbon emissions, which suggests that meaning action on climate change can be taken even if it exempts airlines completely. Personally, I'm still in favor of universal carbon taxes, but we shouldn't let skepticism about universality stop us from finding out what's politically possible.
Flying as such is not the most wasteful consumer of carbon on the planet. One can certainly argue that long-distance travel is a wasteful consumer of carbon, but if one is to travel long-distance, flying is often better than driving. Large civil airliners can get as much as 90 miles per gallon per passenger (when flying full), far better than even a Prius with just the driver, and better than most SUVs with a driver and three passengers. Also, civil aviation produces on the order of three percent of anthropomorphic carbon emissions, which suggests that meaning action on climate change can be taken even if it exempts airlines completely. Personally, I'm still in favor of universal carbon taxes, but we shouldn't let skepticism about universality stop us from finding out what's politically possible.
Why so emotional?
After millennia of dreams, mankind loosed the bonds of earth and will not willingly be re-bound. The triumph over gravity is an essential element of the definition of modernity.
Do I think that this sort of psychological impetus could actually influence political debates about subsidies for airlines? I do. I do indeed.
Irrationality on airlines abounds. Take, for example New York City with its three overstuffed airports, all of which have overlapping airspace (I'm including Newark, which, yes, is in NJ.) All three airports allow scheduling of flights based on perfect weather conditions which occurs rarely. A slight breeze out of the west throws Newark into contortions yet the arlines are allowed to continue scheduling more flights in smaller aircraft to more destinations creating havoc. NYC is now the air mess you'd expect and is responsible, by some counts, for ripple effects which cause up to 1/3 of the delays in the U.S.
Why is the airport authority allowed to behave in such an irrational manner? NY City Hall has been repeating over and over again that restricting flights into and out of the city will kill NYC's economy. I don't believe this assertion has ever been seriously challenged while the airport delays continue to grow until just yesterday: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/11/nyregion/11airport.html
Meanwhile, consumers continue to vote with their feet. Arguably the airlines poor records could account for the singular Amtrak success in the NE corridor and perhaps that's a good thing. Pity the poor consumer that has to travel from Minneapolis with no options short of a 2 day drive.
A carbon tax that applied to the airlines would add some much needed sanity to a system that obviously does not have all externalities built into cheap fares. Fat chance it will ever happen.
Flaying may or may not be heavily protected, but it is certainly one of the most heavily taxed and regulated endeavors-- to the detriment of consumers and firms supplying them.
Agreed, the government needs to take its hands off the flaying industry as soon as possible.
Why is flying so emotional? And so heavily, heavily protected by the heavy hand of the state?
You know how when you drive into JFK and read through all the terminal signs you think "Wow, there are a lot of countries!"? Or how you look at the arrival/departure boards in De Gaulle or Kimpo and think "Wow, there are even more countries!"?
That's why. It's a projection of your flag around the world, and for a lot of countries the only such projection they have.
Flying as such is not the most wasteful consumer of carbon on the planet.
Flying for business travel is probably the most wasteful consumer of carbon, time, energy and one's life on the planet.
To answer Megan's final question: National pride, I imagine.
I continue, of course, to reject the need for carbon taxes in any form at all.
'"Now China, too, wants its own airframe manufacturer
I think you'll have to admit that one makes military sense.'-Posted by Rob Lyman
Possibly. I don't think China can depend on Russia to make state of the art jet fighters for it anymore, but there have been plenty of warplane manufacturers that didn't make commercial jets. I can see the desireablity of starting up both industries at once if the commercial jet business subsidizes the military jet business, but it is quite possible that commercial jet manufacture would be a consumer of subsidies rather than a supplier.
Chris, both Ireland and the Netherlands competed in the most recent Cricket World Cup. The Netherlands, in fact, defeated one of the UK teams, while Ireland managed to reach the final 8.
Agreed, the government needs to take its hands off the flaying industry as soon as possible.
So the poor guy made a typo, no need to beat him up for it.
well we can't afford to flay him
Njorl,
How far are those fighters going without airborne refueling? How is food and ammo getting to those soldiers far from home?
Projection of military power, including of fighters, means airlift and airborne refueling and those two call for big aluminum clouds.
Also, giant floating tin cans. How's the Chinese cruise ship industry?
Well, I suppose you could argue that there are fewer gains to be had in air travel. Car travel, for instance, already has a number of cleaner alternatives--walking, biking, carpooling and public transit for short travels. And the actual cars have more fuel-efficient alternatives, there just hasn't been great demand for them because gas is still cheap enough. So there's opportunity to alter wasteful behavior and improve wasteful technology w/ car travel.
Air travel is a bit different. It's really the only option for traveling great distances in a short time--you may have the choice of taking the car or bike down to the store, but you don't really have any choice but to fly if you want to get from Phoenix to New York in a timely manner. I'd guess, too, that airplanes are already pretty fuel efficient, and that a carbon tax probably wouldn't spur any technological advances that the physical realities of flying haven't already. Airplane manufacturers and operators already have a strong incentive to maximize their mpg.
I could be wrong, though--and there's probably an issue of fuel-efficiency vs. emissions to consider too.
Connectedness usually gets a high priority from governments and societies, whether it's the roads in Rome or the broadband Internet in Asia. Making people more connected usually pays big dividends for a society, in terms of trade, culture-sharing, education, national identity and pride, etc.
On a personal level, I live in Dallas, but I can fly to visit friends or family in NYC for a price that is tough, but doable. I wouldn't want that to change. Bus and train and car aren't going to do the trick.
But on a bigger-than-personal level, making all the pieces of a society more connected is usually a step forward. Cheap air travel helps with that. Hence the importance placed on it by the society, not just the market.
Yes, the airline and aircraft industry are unlikely to be seriously damaged by congressional actions.
But it is only a matter of degree. All industries have a voice in Washington and both sides of the aisle are very aware of the concerns of industries in their districts. Congress is very good at writing legislation that appears to be harmful when in reality it make no difference or actually help the industry. I bet if you actually looked at the facts it would be virtually impossible to find an industry that has been "massively dislocated" by congressional actions.
I'm with the sceptics on this one: flying is, all in all, the most wasteful consumer of carbon on the planet. Anything that doesn't touch airlines will do a poor job of addressing carbon consumption.
I bet a lot of people would be elated if carbon taxation reduced the size of the crowds straining the globe's air travel infrastructure.
Still, while I support carbon taxes, I've always been a tad uneasy with respect to its effect on air travel. Because the thing is, there really aren't effective substitutes to jets. Going by boat isn't feasible for time-sensitive travelers. You can imagine the various substitutes for the morning auto commute, say, or the trucking industry. But if you're an overworked American with only two weeks vacation, how you gonna do Italy without flying?
Indeed, given the lack of effective substitutes, I'd take issue with Megan's statement that "flying is, all in all, the most wasteful consumer of carbon on the planet." It isn't a waste if that carbon-hungry jet preserved a $50 million deal that necessitated a last minute face to face in Hong Kong.
Actually, this is nothing. It used to be that every little country in Europe had its own money-losing airline, heavily subsidized by the state. One of the few real improvements of the European Union is the prohibition on subsidies for "national champions". As a consequence, airlines now have to sink or swim on their own.
In Belgium, Sabena got bought out by Swissair, then--when Swissair ran into problems of its own--got dumped and went under. It's subsequently been revived as SN Brussels Airlines.
Even here, airlines have failed after the industry was deregulated (one of the unheralded accomplishments of the Carter Administration). When I was growing up there were carriers like Eastern, Pan Am, Braniff and TWA that simply aren't around any more.
And I also agree with the Economist blogger: governments will not allow anything to harm the airline industry.
Governments have proven quite willing to inflict large amounts of harm on established firms in the airline industry - look at the effects of airline deregulation in the United States. Flown Pan Am or Eastern lately? The EU has followed suit, and the older flag carriers are getting their lunches eaten by low cost startups.
Large commercial airframes plus a coat of olive drab paint are handy for airborne refueling, AWACS, airlift, and heavy bombing. Then there are more exotic possibilities, like the theater missile defense lasers and the like.
Europe might not need 'em, but China will want to be able to build its own large airframes, and it might as well defray the costs of the capability by selling some to DHL or Air Canada.
(Obviously, for bombing, you first need to send in your strike aircraft to clear out the opposition's air defenses before you can send in a "B-747". But after you do that, modern GPS-guided bombs dropped from high altitude are good enough to count as precision bombing without the old scare quotes. If China got in, say, another war with Vietnam, commercial airframes would make excellent Chinese bombers.)
There may be a more nefarious geopolitical agenda behind some recent nationalist aviation developments, but the tide of nationalism is in many places and many ways receding. More here: http://evansparks.wordpress.com/2007/12/12/the-homegrown-fallacy/
The demise of Pan Am is not necessarily a net negative for the airline industry as a whole, any more than the failure of Chrysler would be a net negative for the automobile industry.
It's funny that I haven't heard anyone going after the motorboat industry. At least aircraft have some practical purpose. A 250bhp ski boat don't seem to really have any justification carbon wise....
Why the obsession with carbon taxes? China is not about to pay them and that's where the growth is.
The Senate voted 95 to naught to tell President Clinton not to bother submitting the Kyoto Treaty for ratification.
The people who will ultimately have to pay for these schemes are smart enough to know that holding an umbrella over our head won't stop flooding. They all vote.
It's not just the airline industry. Why are we so attached to the autombile industry? It runs deeper than the ability of Detroit representatives to project power. In the 80s, people seemed to be deeply upset at the idea that the US lost the the premier auto industry in the world to Japan. Just wait until the Big 2.5 go into bankruptcy.
"Projection of military power, including of fighters, means airlift and airborne refueling and those two call for big aluminum clouds."
Yes, but not state-of-the-art big aluminum clouds. They can buy all the old Airbusses and 747s they want and convert them. They can do this as long as they can reverse engineer any spare parts they would need, since an embargo would probably occur during any high-tension period before conflict.
Certainly, their own domestic industry would be preferable to them, but the cost might eat into other ventures, such as their satellite and naval programs.
"Possibly. I don't think China can depend on Russia to make state of the art jet fighters for it anymore, but there have been plenty of warplane manufacturers that didn't make commercial jets."
Just FYI, China is already manufacturing it's own state of the art fighter, the J-10, which was used as justification for keeping the f-22 program alive. To keep building their own fighters doesn't require building airliners, unless they want their own cargo/refueling craft to enable projecting power farther abroad.
Certainly, their own domestic industry would be preferable to them, but the cost might eat into other ventures, such as their satellite and naval programs.
That's a cost-benefit balance for them to strike; the military justification seems quite credible to me for China even if the same justification for Airbus is silly.
Thus answering the question: "Why is everyone obsessed with...airplane manufacturing capacity?" At least as to China.
Bombs and refueling a good reasons for wanting a steady supply of air frames, but it misses the obvious. Large passenger planes are the only effective way of rapidly deploying large numbers troops. To ensure you can move those troops you either need friendly (controlable) civilian carriers or a national carrier.
"Europe has plowed fantastic sums of money into Airbus. I believe the original rationale was quasi-military, but it's hard to take this seriously from a group of nations who have ratcheted down their military spending to the point that not one of them could project enough force to storm the World Cricket Cup without an American airlift."
Not as much as boeing gets from the us government of course. But it's hard to take this seriously from a writer whose nation's military spending is all about invading iraq on made up intelligence and then torturing any brown people who might stand in the way of the republican party being elected.
"Well we can't afford to flay him"
Flaying is cheap, it was done extensively in the Middle Ages and we know how poor they were.
torturing any brown people who might stand in the way of the republican party being elected.
Wow, Obama's got more guts than I realized.
"flying is, all in all, the most wasteful consumer of carbon on the planet"
That is the most idiotic remark I've ever read on this blog. Including trolls. I have great difficulty believing it's an opinion you really hold. Maybe your time has zero value, but most of us don't feel that way about our own. And we don't think it's less valuable than one person driving to the gym in a vehicle that can carry eight, or as Jmo pointed out, the existence of really cool ski boats. Get out of that echo chamber once in awhile.
Because the thing is, there really aren't effective substitutes to jets.
Up to about 500 miles, high-speed express trains make an excellent substitute for jets. 3+ hours downtown to downtown either way. The US has dismantled its passenger rail structure and reorienting will be very expensive, but China hasn't, and Chinese cities are denser than American ones, making travel to downtown a higher priority. We could strike a bargain with China to privilege rail over air -- get them to sign on to carbon taxes on jet fuel but provide breaks on energy used for rail travel -- that could keep Chinese intercity travel rail-oriented and save the planet a lot of atmospheric carbon.
Megan-
What I don't quite understand is why this is so. Why is everyone obsessed with having protected domestic airlines, and indeed, airplane manufacturing capacity?
Who is this "everyone"? (I have "flown" exactly once in my entire life -1993. Not impressed...)
Discuss "airline usage" among 'politicians', 'media', and 'business'... as compared to the population as a whole.
To me this seems like something to worry about in place of something we really should regret like the killing of the Lebanese general who was going to be in charge of the Army in a country now being run like a Roman Imperial household. On this subject though, did you miss Glen Reynolds link to the noncorrelation of atmospheric CO2 with global temperature? But, let's say it made a difference; it's like an illness then. You think Americans couldn't have controlled their cholesterol and heart disease in theory by eating rice and lentils like the Chinese. Bloody likely it was going to happen though. We needed statins. On a global basis, economies would need CO2 sinks like the promotion of plankton growth.
"Up to about 500 miles, high-speed express trains make an excellent substitute for jets."
I live in New Zealand. It takes me over three hours by commercial jet to reach the nearest adjacent land mass (Australia). Please let me know when they get a rail bridge up and running.
To answer Megan's final question: National pride, I imagine.
Indeed. Some of the poorest third world countries still maintain national airlines. They may not provide roads, schools, electricity, or phone service, but they have an airline.
To me, flying doesn't seem to be nearly as wasteful of resources as auto racing. After Jeff Gordon burns a ton of fuel, he's still in the same place.
I may be repeating what others have said, but I'm too lazy to read all their comments.
1) Flying is important because important people fly, a lot. These people put enormous pressure on governments to make sure that flying is absolutely as safe as possible. The only "acceptable" figure for airline safety is zero fatalities. Accomplishing this goal ensures that the government will be deeply entwined in the air industry. These same people ensure that the government will heavily subsidize both the airlines and private plane travel. It doesn't hurt that the media fly constantly.
2) It's not that surprising that other countries do not want to see the U.S. as the only country in the world that manufactures a product as significant and "cutting edge" as airplanes.
Some of the poorest third world countries still maintain national airlines. They may not provide roads, schools, electricity, or phone service, but they have an airline.
If you don't have roads, you damn well better have an airline, as anyone in Alaska or West Africa can tell you. And I am curious as to which third world countries do not have schools, electricity, or phone service. I have been in a lot of third world countries; I've yet to see one that had no schools, electricity, or phone service.
They can do this as long as they can reverse engineer any spare parts they would need, since an embargo would probably occur during any high-tension period before conflict.
Um. In order to make the spare parts (at least the most complicated ones, like jet turbine parts) you need to know how to manufacture them. You can't just measure every part and run them off at a machine shop, you have to know all the tricks done in the shops that originally made them, tricks that are documented on the blueprints or in manufactuing specifications. I work in aerospace and we have thousands of pages of such tricks for manufacturing and assembling parts. And it's all proprietary and/or export controlled.
For example, despite urban legends to the contrary, NASA has the full set of plans for the Saturn 5 rocket used for the Lunar missions. What we don't have are all of manufacturing techniques - so if we built an S-5 today, we'd have to figure them out.
So, having a domestic airliner company means you aren't depending on GE, Pratt & Whitney, or Rolls Royce for parts for your engines.
They can do this as long as they can reverse engineer any spare parts they would need, since an embargo would probably occur during any high-tension period before conflict.
Um. In order to make the spare parts (at least the most complicated ones, like jet turbine parts) you need to know how to manufacture them. You can't just measure every part and run them off at a machine shop, you have to know all the tricks done in the shops that originally made them, tricks that are documented on the blueprints or in manufactuing specifications. I work in aerospace and we have thousands of pages of such tricks for manufacturing and assembling parts. And it's all proprietary and/or export controlled.
For example, despite urban legends to the contrary, NASA has the full set of plans for the Saturn 5 rocket used for the Lunar missions. What we don't have are all of manufacturing techniques - so if we built an S-5 today, we'd have to figure them out.
So, having a domestic airliner company means you aren't depending on GE, Pratt & Whitney, or Rolls Royce for parts for your engines.
How 'bout that new Boeing 787 Dreamliner? They're advertising 50 percent carbon fiber parts (material from Japan, I believe), and 20 percent better fuel economy. Parts are being manufactured all over the world. People from all over the world seem to be buying them, too, including a number of airlines in China. Even Kenya and Azerbaijan are buying a few.
Build a better mousetrap...
(No, I'm not connected to Boeing. I just think it's a cool plane.)
"I live in New Zealand."
I believe this points to the real solution. We've got to stop living all over the damn planet. A nice 100 story 50-mile by 50-mile arcology will house the whole race nicely. Then we'll just take the pneumatic tubes wherever we want to go. Whoosh!
Then we'll just take the pneumatic tubes wherever we want to go
There is nowhere I would ever want to go that is reachable by pneumatic tube.
50 percent carbon fiber
So what you're saying is that the Dreamliner permanently sequesters carbon. I think this calls for a subsidy!
41 Degrees, it was said that high speed rail is the better option for trips UP TO 500 miles. Sydney is more than 1300 miles away from Auckland (and, for all intents and purposes, you're not going to get much closer between the two countries than that). So obviously, even if there were no ocean or if it were shallow enough to build a rail-bridge, it still exceeds the distance in which rail is preferable.
I love New Zealand (used to live in Wanganui, in fact), but Kiwis can be so stupidly touchy sometimes.
A fact check might reveal that coal burning for electricity production is still the biggest contributor to atmospheric CO2, ahead of airlines and automobiles.
And why does Megan have a British spellchecker or simply spell works with the British spelling? And why does she have an interest in the Imperial Game?
A fact check might reveal that coal burning for electricity production is still the biggest contributor to atmospheric CO2, ahead of airlines and automobiles.
And why does Megan have a British spellchecker or does she simply spell words using the British standard? And why does she have an interest in the Imperial Game?
alan
If Australia was 499 miles off the coast of New Zealand, I am still confident that an aircraft would be a more logical way to get there than a train.
My broader point is that many comments seem to assume that the whole worlds population lives on a large flat continent with good infrastructure. If this were true, automobiles and trains would genuinely be alternatives to aircraft. But is isn't true.
I know what you mean about stupidly touchy. Hell, if I lived in Wanganui I would be touchy too.
41 degrees south: what are you saying? What is being proposed is a global carbon tax and/or cap and trade emissions limits. This would lead air travel to become relatively more expensive than rail travel. Are you saying there should be subsidies or tax breaks for people who live in remote or island areas that can't easily be reached by non-CO2-emitting transportation?
It's going to become more and more expensive for people in remote island nations to stay connected to metropolitan centers as the price of oil rises. That's just the way it is. Meanwhile, the vast majority of the world's population lives in East and South Asia, Europe, and the coastal Americas. These are all areas where high-speed rail is a good substitute for short-range air travel.
I would suspect that at the current time it's rather more efficient to fly from San Francisco to Las Vegas - it doesn't just take an ocean to make rail travel impractical. A little over 500 driving miles per google maps - the airline miles are much less since you can straightline instead of driving 2/3 of the way to LA before heading east)
And if you think running a rail line that way would be easy - read up on the history of the transcontinental railroad.
I'm not knocking rail for any purpose, give me the Eastern Corridor before a flight from, say, Boston to DC. But Rail just won't work in the US outside the east coast - and probably not even outside of the northeast.
The US is HUGE, people. Russia and Canada are larger; china is if you count Taiwan. It is larger than the entire EU, and also larger than the entire continent of Australia.
The problems of air travel in the Northeast aside - there's not much to beat air travel in the rest of the US.
It's less distance (driving) from London, england to Berlin, Germany than it is from LA to Salt Lake City (plus there isn't one of the world's more rugged mountain ranges in the way).
It would appear that Moscow is closer to London than Seattle WA is to Washington, DC, but I can't get Google to give me driving directions to Moscow.
Post brought back memories Ian. I remember when I was working in the Netherlands and planning a week long vacation. I asked a colleague how far I could get if I drove 8-10 hours, and his eyes kind of glazed over. "Just about anywhere" he replied. I researched it, and while there were some limitations, that I could drive pretty almost all the way across Europe in the time I took for a pretty common American road trip brought home to me how large the States really is.
That said, the U.S. could still use trains on some corridors, not to replace, but to complement planes and cars for our intermediate transport options. Think people wouldn't love an express train from LA to Las Vegas? Or a gulf corridor, Houston to New Orleans in an hour and a half, downtown to downtown? Sure, there are practical reasons we will never be Japan, but we could do more than we do right now.
On the "national airline" comments, the glut and economic foolishness of extremely small countries desiring a national airline for prestige purposes is a well established historical fact. It will feature in most any discussion of the failures of 3rd world anti-imperialist nationalism. Painting with a broad brush, many countries - driven by industrialist socialist economic theories - tried to "modernize" by pursuing pro-urban, pro-industrial strategies in which they created from nothing masterfully inefficient modern industries - iron works, steel mills, and, yes, airlines. There was a great quote from one of the great African leaders about it. When he was asked why his country had an airline, he replied that it had nothing to do with economics - he knew it was inefficient - but that it was his country's way of saying that to the Europeans who had oppressed them for so long that they could do anything they could do.
Just my $.02. China seems better run than most of those countries were, so it is probably not making the same economic mistake with its new manufacturer idea, and there could be a military tie-in. Still, we should not underestimate the willingness of countries - almost any country - to pursue awful projects because they are prestigious, cool, and important to national self-image.
china is if you count Taiwan
Something like half of China is empty desert or uninhabitable mountains. The vast majority of the population lives in the coast and the plains, and those are eminently suited to rail -- more perfectly, perhaps, than Europe, since there aren't even any alps to get in the way.
Incidentally, Vietnam is also perfect rail territory: everybody lives in the two deltas or along the coast. You can cover the whole country with one rail line and a couple of little webs at either end. Highways suck -- you'd need sixteen lanes to move an entire country of 84 million up and down that one route. Rail can do it much more efficiently.
This is also why the objections to rail on the West Coast seem ridiculous to me. Since when is it harder to build two lanes across mountains than to build eight lanes across mountains? The transcontinental railroad engineers would have had a really hard time building the LA freeway system, too, basically because it was the 1870s.
I can't get Google to give me driving directions to Moscow.
Google could give them to you, but then Google would have to kill you. Anyway, the Moscow-St. Petersburg train is a great ride.
In our "Future World", devoid of most anthropogenic carbon emissions and slowly returning to its previous "idyllic" state, air travel may be the last vestige of fossil fuel consumption, since it is the only fossil-fueled energy end use for which there is currently no technical alternative.
I seriously doubt we will see the return of the hydrogen dirigible as a replacement for, or a successor to, the A380 and the B787.
While I understand the argument for carbon taxes and making flying more expensive in some cases, it does seem a bit harsh to punish those who live in remote areas with no alternative. People who live in remote islands, parts of Alaska, etc... would face higher prices for everything they import (probably most of what they buy) as well as travel. Given their situation, they wouldn't be able to practically switch to alternative transportation. So the higher taxes would be telling them to just move if they don't want a lower quality of life?
This strikes me as pretty regressive. The richer ones would be able to move without too much trouble. The poor ones, who could least afford the price increases, would also find it hardest to move. Also, many of these people will have lived their for generations... so they should abandon their homes?
I could see a case for doing this if flying was a major cause of global warming, but given that flying is not a major cause and that the alternatives will all still use some carbon and even if we eliminate all flying, the alarmists tell us that we'll still produce too much carbon and see all the catastrophic bad effects of global warming.
But sure, let's punish the poor people in remote Alaska and Pacific islands, all to make a symbolic reduction in carbon output.
EI
could see a case for doing this if flying was a major cause of global warming
A case for doing what? I'm not clear on what we're arguing over, here. I assumed we were talking about whether or not jet fuel should be exempted from general carbon taxes or cap-and-trade emissions permits, and I don't see why it should be exempt. People who live in remote areas have always had limited diversity of food and perishable goods; in the last 20 years, perhaps, a little window opened up in which cheap air freight transformed that, but I don't see why the world should permanently subsidize people in Nome who want fresh cilantro. Though, at the rate things are going, they'll be growing their own cilantro in Nome soon enough.
Since when is it harder to build two lanes across mountains than to build eight lanes across mountains?
Rail lines must be much flatter and straighter than highways because steel-on-steel generates less friction than rubber-on-asphalt, and because trains are so heavy. So building a rail line over a pass is much harder than a highway. The normal solution is to drive a tunnel. Have you ever driven over any of the Rocky Mountain passes? No way a train can do what the interstates do, never mind what the US highways do.
But in any case there are plenty of rail lines and abandoned roadbeds in the West. There just aren't passengers for them.
"No way a train can do what the interstates do, never mind what the US highways do.'
But what if the train is very, very confident?
Which is arguably the "most wasteful" carbon production on the planet, because it'd be relatively easy to replace it 100% with nuclear power. (If we revived the Integral Fast Reactor, which Bill Clinton's Department of Energy killed under lobbying from Senator John Kerry in 1994, we'd even get rid of that nuclear waste problem, because the most dangerous long-term waste, the actinides, can be used as fuel in fast reactors.)
Prior to The Atlantic, she worked for The Economist, and so got in the habit of using British.