Don't know about UK, but in Germany trains are obscenely expensive, especially when you compare them to low-cost airlines. There is nothing like "low-cost railway" so far, and I doubt there ever will be.
But to say there's no "low-cost railway" is plainly false. Bavaria has probably one of the best train systems in the entire world, and it's not expensive by any means.
If I just want to travel in the same Bundesland where I am, there are plenty of cheap options, that's true.
- flying: 120 EUR from Munich, getting up at 4-5, arriving at 9
- train: have to go the day before, have an additional night in the hotel (70 EUR) and THEN the train is more expensive than flying anyway. Maybe not so important if the company pays, but still not fun to argue (depending on the company).
I.e. the chance of it having a school class in it is like winning the lottery ;)
The 75 Euro deal sounds really cheap too.
I've hardly ever had any customers not in Munich or in the Nuremberg (area) that weren't so far away from the station that you'd need a taxi, so you can drive anyway. Especially for conferences. Usually Munich or Nuremberg.
https://ps.bahn.de/preissuche/preissuche/psc_angebotssuche.r...
I hope we will find a better one, e.g. online conferences or putting a tax specifically on business travel on behalf of medium to large sized companies.
Our offspring will be Earth-poor, suffering the consequences of our frivolous "spending."
In my mind a carbon tax is a wealth transfer from the present to the future. I think it's a good solution because we aren't exacting fair price for our activities. I read a great book once in which future generations sued the shoes off their elders for not paying fair price for their climate-changing activities.
Wealth inequality should be addressed. We shouldn't hamstring other solutions just because it also is a problem - we can work on them in parallel. I appreciate you bringing it up though, it is a good thing to be aware of.
That seems reasonable to me and while it will make flying to Europe too expensive for some, it wouldn't make traveling to Europe something only the rich can afford.
For a typical family flying from middle America to Orlando, it would probably mean one less day at Disney.
My personal hope is to liaise with some of the best researchers in the world regarding offsetting and have an approved offsetting scheme, which can be applied anywhere, that updates based on the current best understanding; we would then bring this capability into a newly built travel tracker (it's closer to a prototype atm).
Please let me know if this is something you'd find interesting.
My comment was based on the cost to directly pull CO2 out of the air at industrial quantities, not indirect methods like planting trees.
https://co2.myclimate.org/en/flight_calculators/new
https://www.seas.harvard.edu/news/2018/06/team-provides-firs...
If you massively raise prices for everyone to fly, less fuel gets burned, and the people burning the fuel are paying into a pool that ideally would be used to alleviate inequality on any other front.
If you want to tax the rich, just tax the rich based on them being rich; don't greenwash it.
I agree. The question is who are these 1% of people. Carbon tax means that they are the richest 1%. I hope our society has enough imagination to consider other options.
Targeting airlines might be the wrong place. Perhaps the fuel vendors are the ones that should bear the cost of removing all of the CO2 that's going to end up in the air from every bit of fuel they sell.
There are regular offers between capitals and big cities across countries, travels I did from Stuttgart: Stuttgart-Paris 40€, Copenhagen-Stuttgart 80€ (the train got in a Ferry and then the travel continued until Hamburg!), Stuttgart Amsterdam 80€. Sometimes traveling to far places like Spain must go over Paris, and each country has their own train network with more or less adaptation.
The quality of the public train got worse in Germany during the last 10 years and it is not an infrastructure thought to be run as a business with profits, but it is still one of the best transportation services for long distance.
The only problems with the train is visiting remote areas where it is necessary doing to or three train changes, which increases the chance of delays.
However, if you want to go Hamburg-Munich on an ICE (better than flying imo IF (!) everything works) and you do not have purchased a "BahnCard" and you do not book far in advance then it is very expensive.
2nd class ICE ride on that track in 2 weeks is 153€, flex, one way. For that money you get a return flight.
If you can be 100% sure to make it to one exact train you can go for ca. 50€. [1] Risk of failing to catch that train is pretty high though.
[1] https://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/dn?revia=yes&exi...
The flexible plane ticket is probably 3-10x the price, depending on the airline.