Marc Morano comment on banning short airline flights: “You were warned! This is what a climate lockdown looks like. This is what the Great Reset looks like. The climate agenda demands you give up airline travel, car travel, cheap reliable energy, and plentiful food. Net Zero goals are now dictating vehicle shortages to force more people into mass transit.
They’re going after your freedom of movement; they’re going after private car ownership, they’re going after everything it means to be a free person and turning it over to the administrative state.”
By: Admin – Climate Depot
France Bans Short-Haul Flights to Tackle Climate Change – Banning convenience to ‘save the planet’ – get used to it guys, this is just the start if they can get away with it.
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https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65687665
France has banned domestic short-haul flights where train alternatives exist, in a bid to cut carbon emissions.
The law came into force two years after lawmakers had voted to end routes where the same journey could be made by train in under two-and-a-half hours.
The ban all but rules out air travel between Paris and cities including Nantes, Lyon and Bordeaux, while connecting flights are unaffected.
Critics have described the latest measures as “symbolic bans”.
Laurent Donceel, interim head of industry group Airlines for Europe (A4E), told the AFP news agency that “banning these trips will only have minimal effects” on CO2 output.
He added that governments should instead support “real and significant solutions” to the issue.
Airlines around the world have been severely hit by the coronavirus pandemic, with website Flightradar24 reporting that the number of flights last year was down almost 42% from 2019.
The French government had faced calls to introduce even stricter rules.
France’s Citizens’ Convention on Climate, which was created by President Emmanuel Macron in 2019 and included 150 members of the public, had proposed scrapping plane journeys where train journeys of under four hours existed.
But this was reduced to two-and-a-half hours after objections from some regions, as well as the airline Air France-KLM.
French consumer group UFC-Que Choisir had earlier called on lawmakers to retain the four-hour limit.
“On average, the plane emits 77 times more CO2 per passenger than the train on these routes, even though the train is cheaper and the time lost is limited to 40 minutes,” it said.
It also called for “safeguards that [French national railway] SNCF will not seize the opportunity to artificially inflate its prices or degrade the quality of rail service”.
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By Lottie Limb with AFP • Updated: 23/05/2023
The idea for the ban originally came from a Citizens’ Assembly.
France’s ban on short-haul domestic flights comes into force 23 May.
Under a government decree, any journeys that are possible in less than two-and-a-half hours by train cannot be taken as a flight.
France is also cracking down on the use of private jets for short journeys in a bid to make transport greener and fairer for the population.
Transport minister Clément Beaune said the country could no longer tolerate the super rich using private planes while the public are making cutbacks to deal with the energy crisis and climate change.
Which flights are now banned in France?
The law will mostly rule out air trips between Paris Orly airport and regional hubs such as Nantes, Lyon and Bordeaux.
Critics have noted that the cutoff point is shy of the roughly three hours it takes to travel from Paris to the Mediterranean port city Marseille by high-speed rail.
As rail services improve, more routes could be added such as those between Paris Charles de Gaulle and Lyon and Rennes as well as journeys between Lyon and Marseille. They currently don’t meet the criteria for the ban because trains to airports in Paris and Lyon don’t allow passengers to arrive early in the morning or late in the evening.
Connecting flights are unaffected by the new law.
Train services must meet certain conditions to replace flights
The new law specifies that train services on the same route must be frequent, timely and well-connected enough to meet the needs of passengers who would otherwise travel by air – and able to absorb the increase in passenger numbers.
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Could short-haul flights soon be banned in Europe? – In October 2021, Greenpeace demanded an EU-wide ban on any flights where the rail journey would take under six hours. … Germany also has short-haul flights in its sights. While not banning or cutting back on them, the German government recently doubled the amount of tax levied on short flight tickets. Spain, meanwhile, has said it wants to eliminate all short-haul flights by 2050. …Austria has taken a similar tack: when the government bailed out Austrian Airlines during the pandemic, the carrier was ordered to stop operating its Vienna-Salzburg route so that customers could prioritise train travel instead.
In October 2021, Greenpeace demanded an EU-wide ban on any flights where the rail journey would take under six hours.
So how do you persuade people to take trains and coaches over planes? Well, one way is through banning short-haul flights outright, especially when there are valid bus or train alternatives. And that’s a route that several European countries have already taken – but could more follow suit?
A couple of years ago, a poll found that 62 percent of Europeans would support a ban on short-haul flights. In other words, banning them might not just be a good, environmentally-friendly policy. It could also be pretty popular.
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France bans short-haul domestic flights despite widespread criticism – Travelers will now be forced to use rail alternatives as France seeks to reduce its carbon footprint
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Related:
Bloomberg News: Airlines must have enough emissions allowances to cover every metric ton of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere on flights starting and ending in the European Economic Area, the UK and Switzerland. … That is effectively going to double their carbon costs over just three years. … Over the next three decades, aviation has to transform itself from a polluting industry — planes are responsible for 2.5% of global CO2 emissions — to a net-zero one. …
Meanwhile, China is still planning to expand its network of airports from 241 (at the end of 2020) to 450 by 2035.
Via Net Zero Watch: “Airlines face an expensive and challenging few decades ahead as climate compliance laws get stricter. … It’s the new reality for flying as airlines face a huge decarbonization challenge and tightening climate-compliance laws… Airlines must have enough emissions allowances to cover every metric ton of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere on flights starting and ending in the European Economic Area, the UK and Switzerland.”
“Are we going to have to give up flying to save the planet? Many climate campaigners have been saying so for years, but now Sustainable Aviation – a trade body which represents the UK aviation industry – seems to agree, at least in the case of less well-off passengers.”
The UK aviation industry seems to have nodded along with the idea that some passengers are going to be priced out of the air…Today, it has published a ‘road map’ showing how the industry intends to decarbonise, in order to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050 – in line with the government’s self-imposed, legally-binding target. It proposes that 14 per cent of emissions cuts will come from ‘demand reduction’ – i.e. potential passengers being put off flying by a rise in the price of airline tickets…The UK aviation industry seems to have nodded along with the idea that some passengers are going to be priced out of the air in order for Britain to reach its net zero target.
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‘Puritans of the Green Deal’ promote ‘unworkable utopia’ – ‘For the first time since it began, the EU’s agenda is to impoverish Europeans’– ‘If their crusade succeeds, cars, meat, and seaside holidays will be for the rich, just as they were a hundred years ago’ … The Puritans of the Green Deal intend above all to reduce the consumption, rampant consumerism, and free lifestyle of Europeans. If they really believed we would be baked in twenty years’ time, they would be promoting nuclear power stations.
2021: Watch: COVID lockdowns morphing into climate lockdowns – Morano on Tucker Carlson
Watch: Morano on Tucker Carlson: We Will Go From COVID Lockdowns To ‘Climate Lockdowns’
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WaPo: A report suggests a novel way of curbing climate pollution from air travel: A global tax on people who fly the most, with the proceeds going toward research and development into sustainable aviation fuels…The report from the nonprofit International Council on Clean Transportation recommends a frequent flier tax that starts on the second flight each person takes per year, at a rate of $9. It would then steadily increase, reaching $177 for the 20th flight in a single year. … Although the authors didn’t attempt to include private jet travel, due to a lack of data, Zheng said that including a similar tax for those using private jets could further shift the burden to the world’s wealthiest consumers. …
Returning from San Francisco to Vienna with my family of 5, we choose Air France, after landing we found that there is strike on Charles de Gaul and all flights were canceled.
No help there, nice airport stuff broke all wheels on my baggage cases.
I was advised to take train. Closest train I was able to find was from Paris to Munich. But it was departing from other train station, so I was forced to transfer from Charles de Gaul to another Paris train station, with around 10 suitcases with broken wheels and 3 kids.
Can you just imagine how hard is to get via subway tourniquet with 35kg suitcases in one hand, 15kg suitcase in other, holding two kids with another baggage?
It was my worst nightmare travel so far. Train itself was not so bad.
Several points:
1) CO2 is not the climate knob, and not responsible for any looming climate catastrophe
2) That short haul airliner travel emits more CO2 than trains is questionable at best!
3) We are seeing that at some point the woke, cultists will go a bridge too far, and invoke the adage “get woke, go broke” and decimate corporations and even governments by voting with their wallets. See Bug Light and Target for examples.
Regards “short haul” air travel vs trains*. Let’s use an apples to apples comparison in N America:
Boeing 737-800 with average capacity of 150 passengers. And the Amtrak Inter City line, 7 coach train, with average 150 passengers.
Let’s use the same distance, which for the airliner the flight takes 1.3 hours, considered a short haul. This is 690 statute miles. So we’ll use the train example at the same distance.
The 737 burns 8,200 pounds of jet fuel for the complete flight (data from an actual 737-800 flight). The train burns 9,384 pounds of diesel for the same distance trip. (data from Amtrak, 2 gallons per mile, 6.8 lbs/gallon)
Both Jet-A and diesel produce 3.106 lbs CO2 per pound of fuel burned. (because both need huge amounts of oxygen to burn so resultant CO2 is heavier than the fuel)
So the bottom line is the airliner had 0.246 lbs CO2 per passenger mile…
And the train with same pax/distance had 0.281 lbs CO2 per passenger mile!
Oh and the flight took only 1 hour and 20 minutes, but the train took 10-20 hours depending on number of stops….
*”short haul” is a term subject to variable parameters, as is the generic term “travel by train”. Short Haul flight depends on the customers, the plane and the geography. Likewise not every region has high speed trains, nor does every region have stupid population density like Europe. You can do profitable short haul flights of 150 miles with a small turbo prop, where a 737 is uneconomical to go such a short distance. Making blanket comparisons without context and adhering to nonsense CO2 narratives is of course subject to being lies or propaganda. See the following comparison on an equal energy and efficiency basis:
https://truecostblog.com/2010/05/27/fuel-efficiency-modes-of-transportation-ranked-by-mpg/
Now mpg is not CO2 emission, but diesel, jetfuel and gasoline are very similar in CO2 per pound of fuel 3.106 for diesel/jet to 3.088 for gasoline.
Leaving aside the merits or lack therof of banning short-haul flights, the 3 French cities in the article have a good high speed electrified rail service. Travel times by air or rail would be similar, so most people probably make those trips by train anyway.
The US and Australia are another kettle of fish.
Driving more travelers to trains to hopefully cut subsidies probably will have unions demanding higher wages.
It’s all about scope creep. We take an inch. Ok it’s just an inch. Ok I will take another inch. Ok it’s just an inch. 10 more inches later – holy crap where did the foot go? Inch by inch that’s where it went.