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Are you saying fuel efficiency makes no difference to net fuel used?
The alternative to altering consumption by cost is through draconian laws (authoritarianism?) or persuasion (presumably via marketing). Marketing would be like swimming up stream because logic and human nature are against you and the audience sophistication is ever increasing. When you stop marketing for a moment normality resumes.
Do you not agree that the uk taxing transport properly would be a driver for positive changes; less private jet travel, more economical flight planning, fewer business or leisure flights, more efficient aircraft technology, less pressure for airport expansions, increased government tax revenue, business conditions where railways, busses and ferries can truly compete.
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regressive tax.
Tax will always be a hot topic.
Broadly I'm in favour of progressive taxation, but this idea that all taxes must be progressive rather than based on use it not necessarily more fair.
Ultimately people do make choices, and charging them for their use of something can be perfectly reasonable.
Also VAT is a massive earner. There's a reason why only the smallest countries with limited options tend to have 0% sales tax.
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Totally. Income taxes are progressive. Other taxes should really reflect costs.
Food packaging is a good example. The work of collection and recycling of the food packaging is done through our council. Currently we pay a council tax (not proportional to volume of food packaging used). I suggest the ‘cost’ here (processing in the best way to mitigate environmental damage) should to be covered at purchase.
It’s more responsible consumption. It would change habits.
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Travelers gonna travel. I'd love to take trains everywhere but it's not practical, possibly or priced well in many cases.
If this chart is to be believed, we'd still be better served stopping single-occupant car travel rather than focusing on flights. I know a shitload more people using a car to shuffle one person around versus those taking 1st class flights.
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@hippy Yes but don't forget you're typically doing a much bigger distance in a plane than a car. If we're talking about journeys from destination A to destination B and choosing a mode of transport for that journey then yes. If we're talking about the guy driving a mile to work vs. the guy who flies to NY once a month the second guy is the more important (although the first guy is a lazy bastard and should take a good look at himself). I knocked out 10000 miles going to Nepal and back, that's obliterated any gains I made by not really driving for a year in just a few hours.
I think with the travel angle it's not impossible to make flying unappealing. What people are typically after is an authentic, romantic experience and it should be quite easy to convince a traveller that a long-distance train journey to Eastern Europe or cycle touring is going to be more interesting and unique than an easyJet flight to a popular tourist destination. Young people clearly care about the environment and the travel companies will begin to cater for them with low-carbon options. I can certainly see an ad along those lines being very effective. Maybe not so much for the package holiday people who are only interested in convenience.
But carbon tax (with the money going to offsetting and stuff) is the only way I think. It's too late to worry about how horribly regressive it is - fix some other bits of the tax system if it's a problem. Either poor people don't go on holiday or holidays as a concept cease to exist for the coming generations...
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Yes, but you can't drive from here to Nepal (at least not without using a shitload of other forms of vehicle CO2).
There's WAAAAY more people driving an empty car to the shops than there are flying though, right? Surely there's an order of magnitude more car trips than flights?
Basically, Australia, I need to assuage my guilt getting to/from there somehow. (pedalo with aerobars?)
Also a lot of this air travel isn't holidays, it's work. I have a mate who flies to Australia for meetings, yet our company manages to operate with teams in Australia, Ukraine, UK, etc without traveling anywhere. Why do some companies insist on flying their staff around? What % of flights are business vs. holidays I wonder?
There's tonnes of other stuff though - food waste, food packaging waste is crazy. People leaving lights on. There's so much shit wrong I barely know where to start.
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What people are typically after is an authentic, romantic experience and it should be quite easy to convince a traveller that a long-distance train journey to Eastern Europe or cycle touring is going to be more interesting and unique than an easyJet flight to a popular tourist destination.
They just need to get people to watch that show on BBC where they get folks to travel to Singapore by land / sea and only spending the equivalent of the cost of the flight.
Yeah OK it kinda takes ages but it looks like fun and you find out some weird shit, like it only costing £45 for two people to get an overnight coach from Victoria to Dusseldorf.
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or holidays as a concept cease to exist for the coming generations...
This is an important point to make about all our behavioural choices. Either we choose to scale back our activity now, or we force these actions (and much worse) on future generations.
It's a no brainer to me (don't have kids), but so many people seem to be fine with carrying on living how they want and forcing all of the hardship and sacrifice onto their kids.
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Jevons Paradox
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradoxFuel efficiency doesn’t necessarily reduce fuel consumption due to demand effects.
Fossil fuel companies know this and it’s disgraceful that they are allowed to promote efficiency efforts as ‘green’ measures.
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I’ve done returns of London-Paris by coach three times, and Warsaw/Krakow, Bielefeld/Berlin, etc etc. The cost was so much less than train or flight, and actually at times way less unpleasant than some air experiences. Each time I remember a relatively packed. Whenever I go Swindon-London (fortnightly, currently) it’s by coach, and a fraction of the cost of train.
Coaches rule. I’d totally go Nepal or Singapore or wherever by those kind of means. I’d definitely do them by train where train was equivalent cost, but it’s really not.
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Because that list is largely total bollocks. :)
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Aircraft won’t be getting ‘clean’ for a good while yet, I’m afraid.
Very true, as aircraft (or for that matter any mode of transport that employs heavy machinery) will never get 'clean'. This is because of the inevitable problem that you have to expend a lot of energy to move it. And it doesn't matter in that whether the machinery ends up moving very fast or very far unless the question is answered why the journey in question should even be made. As to what NickCJ posted, it's not only for resource consumption that this problem exists, but also for how much machinery we invent. The more we invent, the more we want to use it, and the more problems accumulate, e.g. 'oh, as a response to the oil crisis, we'll just produce more small cars that consume less fuel' and look what happened--sprawl, spatial dissociation, etc.--not just more journeys of the same kind/distance as were made before.
It's only when it begins to appear that a given resource is final that people begin to modulate their behaviour, e.g. in response to roadspace in London. This effect is never good enough (it's everybody else's problem) and usually too late.
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More news on posh protesters:
The Cambridge-educated mother-of-two, who lives in a £700,000 home near Clapham Common
Well, her address sounds a bit common.
had been expected to stay in prison alongside some of Britain’s most dangerous female inmates until next month’s scheduled court appearance.
Surely they can't be as dangerous as her?
Under the bail conditions, Eastburn is banned from entering the borough of Westminster unless for a medical appointment, she cannot travel on trains, the Tube or the DLR, and must sleep each night at home. She is allowed to use public buses, but the court heard that her regular mode of transport is cycling. No conditions were imposed to stop Eastburn from attending eco-protests, as long as they are not in Westminster.
I'm not quite sure how they imagine she is going to do without trains altogether--which I assume includes National Rail?
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Also, in Europe it's simply civilised behaviour to take the train.
And before someone says that flying is more convenient, well, obviously, but that's because of decades of under-investment in rail (and I'm not talking about long-distance fast rail), and too few restrictions on air travel. Political choices.
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Thanks. I understand the concept. But it’s just one factor in many.
Is there any evidence that efficiencies are entirely negated by the rise in demand they trigger? Of course not.
Conservation policies that increase cost of use (such as cap and trade or green taxes) can be used to control the rebound effect.
This shouldn’t be missed.
.... so let’s can the fallacies that keep us feeling comfy whist we fuck things up.
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decades of under-investment in rail (and I'm not talking about long-distance fast rail), and too few restrictions on air travel. Political choices.
This.
Another problem we face is smoothing the spikes in daily demand, many trains/ busses / trams / roads are chocka for appx 4-6hrs per day then much quieter outside of this.
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Do Mercedes have to capture every market?
Only built in 1958, interestingly.
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Do Mercedes have to capture every market?
You joke, but the big manufacturers will be essential partners to produce low carbon "stuff" on the scale needed to replace other stuff, if this at all possible. Without them, where will all the additional factories be built & at what cost (£ & eco)?
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Yep, it's cheaper to fly and cheaper to drive in almost every case I've come across. I have the luxury to be able to choose slower, more expensive but less polluting options but I still have limits about how much time/money I can 'waste' being 'green'.
Trains should be free, driving cars should cost a fucking fortune - and I'm saying this as a car owner.
rhb
miro_o
hugo7
hippy
frankenbike
Howard
NickCJ
pdlouche
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About
Extinction Rebellion
Posted by
@Lebowski
Aircraft won’t be getting ‘clean’ for a good while yet, I’m afraid. Turbofan engines are far more efficient these days and aircraft design means they’re a lot more aerodynamically efficient, but this all means that the cost of travel comes down and makes more people want to fly, which means more flights which then negates the savings in fuel by being more efficient. It’s the same with cars - build a car that runs on hydrogen that’ll be really clean and cheap and every fucker will want one and so that means more roads, congestion etc. You can’t win.
Aircraft are wonderful things (I’m an ex-civil aircraft engineer) but the issue isn’t the aircraft itself, it’s the fact that travel is being so heavily touted so everyone want to fly. Right now there is no hydrogen or electrical alternative to kerosene engines because the technology is nowhere near ready (burning oil still has by far the best calorie value).
It’s our mindset that has to change, and seeing as so much is tied up in air travel, from airlines to airports to the travel industry itself and the reliance on tourism as a primary income for entire nations, I can’t see how that’s going to happen any time soon. I personally think that business travel will fade out as technology means that people simply won’t need to travel to NY for meetings anywhere near as much in the near future, which is clearly a good thing, but that means that airlines and the associated industries will then focus on leisure travel even more. It’s all pretty depressing.