Ask HN: Solving climate change idea, and question, high speed train | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Solving climate change idea, and question, high speed train

13 pointsantocv26 comments

Im seeing many friends traveling by air and renting a car at their destination, and these air travels are usually 3-4h by air but take 6-8h door-to-door, about 2000km if done by road. By car it would take on average 24h of continous driving to go north to south in Europe. Ridiculous.

Why dont we have high-speed trains in Europe which can load cars and go 250-300km/h and the trip would be done in 6-8h at most? Cars are limited to 150km/h and humans cant drive more than 3-4h anyway. Driving 9h continous would still only reach 1350km. High speed trains going average of 280km/H would do this in quality-time of 5h.

How can we improve the quality of high-speed train travel in EU? Offer this "take your (electric) car with you" would kick any air-offer off the table.

Why has train travel been so undeveloped for past 20 years in all of EU?

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The same reason why cell phone roaming in the EU was such a desaster before the regulation. It's too many different players (each country has one ore more railroad companies).

Thus, the upfront investment cost of unification, planning and building such high speed tracks would by far be greater than for any other player just operate an airline. At the same time, the demand for climate friendly travel is not high enough, given that everyone acts selfish (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_dilemma#Public_goods).

Politicians say that air traveling should not be cheaper than railroad traveling. However, I expect that they will come up with regulations which just makes flying as expensive as railroad traveling.

All good points. Why can Japan and China do it? Are their politicians better than Euro-crats?

Reading a bit more on this, seems EU had proposed already 1996 a common European signaling system as you say to integrate the various railroad companies diverse ssytems, and a bunch of other directives for a EU high speed rail. And yet in 2019, France still of course runs their own, Sweden their own with a ERTS type 2 on some lines, and many others not advancing at all since 1996.

Different signalig/control systems, different electrification systems, and some small gauge differences in Ireland and Spain.

> Thus, the upfront investment cost of unification, planning and building such high speed tracks

How can we put pressure on EU to do this despite high cost? Tax the air-lines and put the money in pan-european high-speed rail, from Lissabon to Tallin, Amsterdam to Athens.

> Why can Japan and China do it? Are their politicians better than Euro-crats?

They both are individual countries, so they don't face that problem.

> How can we put pressure on EU to do this despite high cost?

If you tax air-lines first, and then use the money to build an alternative, even in the most optimistic scenario, you'll end up in a situation where long-distance travels become substantially more expensive at least for a few years. Climate activists claim that long-distance travels are not a human right, but ironically, free movement is one of the core values of the EU. And making travels more expensive would exclude more people than today from exercising their right as a EU citizen.

The only realistic option to make the switch from air to train a meaningful option for long-distance travels, would be to 'internalize' the environmental costs, i.e. a CO2 tax (or certificates). However, to calculate this in a fair manner, this would become so high, that you would face a tremendous economical recession.

To me, it never made sense to spend so much resources (brain, time and money) to reduce emissions, because we cannot go to zero and we have already polluted the planet. Wouldn't it be wiser to spend all this money to "repair" the damage we've already done? Maybe solar panels with artificial photo synthesis? Or GMOs with a higher rate of carbon storage?

We must do both. We can achieve zero emissions. Its really simple to tax-more-and-more-if-you-pollute in whatever form be it air or pesticides. And use the taxation money to invest in scrubbing, cleaning and more efficient ways of travel such as high-speed trains.

Pollution of any kind is just externalizing, out-sourcing the costs to others, its not fair.

> Pollution of any kind is just externalizing, out-sourcing the costs to others, its not fair.

That's way too simple, imho. Things come with side effects, usually. Of course, we should not pollute more than necessary, but the fact that there /is/ pollution is just a side effect of having

  - a civilisation
  - an economy
  - better overall health (and, thus, more humans)
  - ...

This all makes it possible to pay for welfare. In that sense, collecting taxes would be just externalizing the costs (of being dependent on welfare, thus being unproductive) to others.

The question, if we should do both is not a question of what sounds more fair, more justified or whatever. If it would turn out that "repairing" is more cost-efficient than "preventing", then why bother with the least effective measure?

> We can achieve zero emissions. Its really simple to tax-more-and-more-if-you-pollute in whatever form be it air or pesticides.

Some emissions are simply unavoidable. E.g. producing meat produces methane. So, taxing it would certainly bring down the demand for high-emission products (because of their now higher price) but as long as these products still exists, you won't go to zero.

I doubt fish, pigs or goats produce any methane in any significant amount. Meat can be produced without polluting, it doesnt have to be cows. The cost still has to be payed though, even if it is so low.

Even so, just because some pollution would be hard to stop doesnt mean we shouldnt strive to tax it and every polluter anyway.

Compare a country such as Albania producing all its electricity by hydropower and Netherlands which is still burning coal. Both are civilizations and nice place to live with welfare, yet one is polluting and the other is not.

> Compare a country such as Albania producing all its electricity by hydropower and Netherlands which is still burning coal. Both are civilizations and nice place to live with welfare, yet one is polluting and the other is not.

And now compare the standard of living in both countries. Or their GNP. Or their healthcare systems.

I'm not saying that they're better of because they burn coal. But I'm saying that using energy is causing so much positive side effects, i.e. that we have an economy. It's just hard to attribute the negative side effects to one "polluter".

Again, with the same argument you might as well stop taxation, because it imposes costs on those who are productive to pay for those who are unproductive. However, upholding civil peace through a welfare system might be of higher value than 'punishing' the less productive people for their lack of capabilities.

Remember the ice cube in futurama? Every year you will need a bigger one. The cost of repair grows over time and it grows quickly.

Free movement is a core value, negligible cost or cheap free movement is not. Freedom from border controls - that's it.

Given the likely impacts from a heating climate and predictions of economics costs, that probably vastly underestimate, I submit the "tremendous economic recession" comes from not taking adequate action. We'll probably need to end up rationing air travel as the only fair way to achieve the necessary reductions.

For me, I simply don't understand economic arguments for inaction. The economic consequences of ignoring the problem are going to be orders of magnitude worse, and a permanent ongoing drag on economies.

Because in EU, to reach the consensus or any agreement on anything, between all countries and then to review that 1000 times through million of EU Commissions, takes decades :)

They first have to love each other, to have common goals and then maybe something will happen. Right now most of the EU countries are there because of the cheap loans, donations, cheap work force and free exchange of resources. Once that flow is stopped, EU will be the past. EU is simply not operating as a one unit, it's not balanced union, that's why I think there has to be some mindset change in order to move the EU forward and to bring big projects to reality.

> Why dont we have high-speed trains in Europe which can load cars and go 250-300km/h and the trip would be done in 6-8h at most?

We kind of do, it's just not very common. You can take the train from hamburg to vienna with your car for example, and I know there are a few other lines.

You can also simply take the train and rent an electric car when you get to your destination, seems easier and more convenient to me. I don't think the future of "solving climate change" involves owning private cars, even electric, and carrying it around in trains, there is no way this would be scalable to the amount of people traveling by plane.

> Why has train travel been so undeveloped for past 20 years in all of EU?

The real problem is that plane tickets are so subsidised than it's nearly impossible to make the other means of transportation competitive, and in the end that's all people care about, money.

If you want to travel inside France or Germany (for example) you're good, but as soon as you cross borders and don't want to go your destination country's capital you're doomed. Taking the train from Berlin to a major TGV station next to my hometown takes 9 hours and cost 150 euros. By plane it takes 3 hours total and cost <35 euros. I'd take the train if it was half of its current price.

The only way to "solve climate change" is to simply not travel as much, no more romantic weekends in Rome or 4 days trips to mallorca, &c ...

> The only way to "solve climate change" is to simply not travel as much, no more romantic weekends in Rome or 4 days trips to mallorca, &c ...

That's exactly what I talked about in other comments. To you, these 4 day trips are the most wasteful usage of resources. To others, it may be the over-consumption of fashion. To a single person, a weekend in Paris could mean the world, maybe because it saved their relationship and prevented a burn-out or....

If you extrapolate that argument (and if you don't, you'd need to explain where to stop why), you would end up in a carbon-free pre-industrial world and yet would still have a huge environmental debt of the co2 we've already blown out. Not to mention 8 billion human beings which produce co2 and methane per their bare existence.

Humans, in general, react to immediate rewards (which is why addictions are a thing at all). So it would be nearly impossible to build climate policy upon abdications without risking revolts.

All human (civilizing) action is aimed at enlarging the space of possibilities. The solution to car accidents was not less traffic, but better cars. The solution to food shortage was not caloric restrictions but better agricultural tech (also worldwide, humans are suffering less and less from hunger), the solution to IPv4 shortage was not restriction, but a better protocol. The solution to handicaps in humans was not euthanasia, but development of medical devices. All that aimed at enlarging the space of possibilities. Why should it be different for emissions?

I agree with you. We cant ask to return to middle ages.

Emissions from transportation is different, since the true costs of air and fossil-burning-car travel compared to train travel is not reflected on the price.

> I agree with you. We cant ask to return to middle ages.

True. So, maybe high-speed trains are not the solution, yet. It might be that they're missing a technological pinch, yet. In the same way battery technology was a pinch to electrical cars (which are around at least as long as fossil burning cars, just not usable, because... battery...).

As long as a solution is dependent on politics or taxation, it is a sign that there is still some pinch to tweak, some idea to discover or some detail to improve.

> fossil-burning-car travel compared to train travel is not reflected on the price.

Partly agreed. It's difficult to find a price. What does the emission of one metric ton of CO2 cost? The sum of the actuarial costs of damages to property attributed to climate change divided by the total number of tonnes produced? Is it the sum of the costs of the effort to save such tonne?

Then, is a tonne a tonne? What if you emit CO2 to produce a material which reduces the damages to houses from thunderstorms? Will you get credited the part which led to lower costs of damages?

And even, if you found the right price. Who is the beneficiary whom this price is paid to? Is it the people? So, what if democracy decides to use (a chunk of?) these taxes to rise pensions? Or to support young families? Or to rescue people from drowning in the Mediterranean on their escape from violations of their human rights? Or to improve the healthcare system?

There is no such thing as earmarked taxes.

> Who is the beneficiary whom this price is paid to? Is it the people? So, what if democracy decides to use (a chunk of?) these taxes to rise pensions? Or to support young families? Or to rescue people from drowning in the Mediterranean on their escape from violations of their human rights? Or to improve the healthcare system?

Yes to all of those. If you said "to pay Microsoft licenses" I qould squirm and say yes. Taxation, then democratically elected representatives get to decide what to spend the money on, even if I personally dont agree.

> Yes to all of those. If you said "to pay Microsoft licenses" I qould squirm and say yes.

Then the carbon tax is -- as I said -- just a tax like every other tax: Putting someone's money in someone else's pocket. How would that help the climate then?

> Why should it be different for emissions?

Because we clearly don't know how to do it properly. And individual wishes are not important when we talk about the future of mankind. It's all fun and games when we talk about one dude, multiply that by 8b and you're doomed, there is just no way to make it work.

> you would end up in a carbon-free pre-industrial world

Cut off the worst causes of pollution, what's hard to understand ? We don't have to go back to a pre industrial world, we simply need to adjust the balance, we're clearly fucking it up right now. Just don't spend 4 weekends a year 1000km away from your home, stop shipping fruits from the other side of the world, don't drive a V8 when you can drive a small 3 cyl car, don't eat meat at every meal / every day, don't buy the next iGadget as soon as it's released. Are any of these going to seriously impact your well being ? nope.

It's not like getting shitfaced on a beach in Ibiza or taking pictures of the Eiffel tower is going to deeply change your life (because let's be honest 5 min, the majority of travel is for leisure). If you put personal needs above everything else we're toast, 8b people living like the average American would destroy the world in a few years. Travel is a luxury, not a right, people need to understand that, it might be cheap money wise but you're selling away the future of mankind.

> All human (civilizing) action is aimed at enlarging the space of possibilities.

Remember all the ancient civilisations that expanded too quickly or were not able to sustain their lifestyles ? I'm sure they were thinking just like that.

> Remember all the ancient civilisations that expanded too quickly or were not able to sustain their lifestyles ? I'm sure they were thinking just like that.

What makes you think, this civilisation is collectively going to behave more sensible? We (broadly) accept the idea of evolution in biology. I'm pretty sure this works well on sociology, too. Or, put differently: We _will_ fuck it up. If it's not the climate crisis, it will be something else. Or: In a world where one nation alone has enough weapons to literally nuke the whole world, it is a strong bet to say that we'll be doomed on pollution.

> multiply that by 8b and you're doomed, there is just no way to make it work.

I believe the the 8bn are a problem on its own.

Yes we will fuck it up no matter what, that's why we have laws, you can't run straight pipes on a car, you can't burn the furnitures you don't need anymore, you can't kill someone, you can't throw mining byproducts into rivers &c. Why couldn't we limit the amount of plane travel people are allowed for leisure ? Ban imports of unnecessary goods ? limit product cycles (Do we need 200 new models of phones per year ?) ? Prevent subsidisation schemes ?

Nobody expects the individual to care for the planet or to even to be interested in the topic, that's why we rely on higher authorities to enforce laws.

8bn isn't a problem in itself, the hard cap is at least 50% more. The problem is that we live like there is no problem and that we deify "technology" as if progress just happens by itself and will save us if we continue in that direction. It's a textbook definition of wishful thinking. Somehow anything short of the status quo became "getting back to the middle ages" ...

> Why couldn't we ...

Steps involved:

  - Convince people that it's necessary ("do we really need it?")
  - Find a commonly accepted measure ("how much can I personally still travel")
  - Prevent loop holes ("But my neighbour has been to Mallorca recently")
  - Put laws into power. Globally (And one small country won't join the stuff and you'll end up full of envy at the point before, but on a higher scale).
  - Enforce the law. Globally. Fight corruption.

Sure, we could... But try to limit gun posession in the US, or speed limits in Germany. Whatever people feel will reduce their freedom will make them oppose.

If your idea is to implement all this democratically, it's a very weak selling point for politicians. If you pitch it, you're even missing the pain point. Most people do care way more about their next weekend than about the "future of mankind".

> 8bn isn't a problem in itself, the hard cap is at least 50% more.

Also a strong claim. What is it based upon? If we cannot scale the western life style for any of the 8bn, even if we could technologically, we're already behind the hard cap. It's not just "feed" them all, it's making them all "happy", reducing "envy" etc. More people, more conflicts.

8bn is a number this planet has never seen before (like it has never seen before this amount of pollution), and yet you claim that this "experiment" can be enlarged by 50%?

> Somehow anything short of the status quo became "getting back to the middle ages"

According to climate science, ~0.6t - 1.2t is the annual budget per person, if you want to stop climate change[0]. Now, look at this map[1]:

Below 1 tonne per person is the lightest colour on this map. Compare the living standard of these countries to the middle ages and you'll come close.

[0]: https://www.quora.com/What-should-be-a-persons-average-carbo...

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...

> 8bn is a number this planet has never seen before (like it has never seen before this amount of pollution), and yet you claim that this "experiment" can be enlarged by 50%?

no no no, if we lived _sustainably_ Earth could handle way more people. Right now with 8bn we're already way past the equilibrium point, we both agree on that. That's what we get when some people consume their life carbon quota every single year.

> If your idea is to implement all this democratically, it's a very weak selling point for politicians. If you pitch it, you're even missing the pain point. Most people do care way more about their next weekend than about the "future of mankind".

But then again what's your alternative ? Wait until "technology" saves us ? If the human race prefers autodestruction over self restraint, let it be... You better start planning the pitch you'll give to your grandchildren now though, this one will be much more of a hard sell than mine.

> But then again what's your alternative ?

I don't wish for an alternative to "sustainable" living, just to be clear. Only I doubt people will voluntarily give up all the amenities of our unsustainable way of living.

> Wait until "technology" saves us ?

Is that really too far fetched? Like "technology" saved us from food shortage [0], bacterial infections [1], horse manure [2] and so much more.

Technology like airplanes also saved us from being unable to leave our home town in a lifetime.

Today's problems are mostly side-effects of yesterday's solutions, often accelerated by greed and selfishness.

> If the human race prefers autodestruction over self restraint, let it be.

Maybe the next iteration of intelligent life on this planet is less selfish and more sensible? Less prone to social traps [3]?

> You better start planning the pitch you'll give to your grandchildren

That's not a pitch. If that happens, it's more like "We fucked it up, we're going to die. End of the story". Nothing someone needs to buy. No one "pitched" the demise of the Ancient Rome to the people. It was just inevitable, yet painful.

> this one will be much more of a hard sell than mine

It would be a more fateful talk than yours, but your's is a big one to sell:

"We've identified a bunch of problems, like nuclear weapons and climate change. Climate change is the only thing, YOU personally can do something about. So, yes, you would be able to buy an iPhone every year, watching TV on a big plasma while bbq-ing pulled beef and fly to any beach you can dream of just to get plastered with cheap beer over there, BUT we take ALL this away from you to save the planet. You can emit only as much CO2 as the poorest people in the world do. Yes, we try to reinvent all this stuff from scratch, but in a sustainable way, but this could take ages - if it happens at all. We don't really believe in technology, which is why we need to take it away from you NOW, but we hope for the best.

The nuclear weapons and stuff, you ask? Yes, we talk to the world leaders. They are unregenerate at the moment, but YOU will join us for the good cause, won't you?"

My point here is not that we would not be better off, if we all lived sustainable. But taking a single threat to humanity out of a big list of threats and conventionalise the one with the solution imposing the biggest cuts on an individual level, to the most detrimental one, might do more harm than good.

And, according to science, every cut above these 0.6-1.2t per capita per year would just delay the catastrophe to the grand-grand-children. So, yes, this would sound a bit like "middle ages" to most people.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_productivity

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penicillin

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_horse_manure_crisis_of_1...

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_trap

> Why couldn't we limit the amount of plane travel people are allowed for leisure ?

Why for leisure? If you want to get rid of 200 new smartphone models a year and other irrational consumables, you'd need to rethink the whole economy anyway, so that it is no more rewarding to rely on unsustainable consumption.

This may sound like utopia, but is not necessarily a bad idea.

So why not limit business trips instead of personal ones? The CO2 budget which is now wasted by producing planned obsolescent gadgets could partly be used by individuals to get more mindful by traveling, by getting in touch with different cultures, by having a better meaning of life than working their ass off to buy such gadgets. For a little more than four iPhones you can already have a flight from San Francisco to Las Vegas and back [0][1].

If you can't think of this utopia, you're mentally stuck to the growth based capitalistic economy we already have. In this case, limiting these resource wasting consumption goods would turn us right into recession, no?

[0]: https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-iphone-x-environmental-repor...

[1]: https://co2.myclimate.org/de/portfolios?calculation_id=23389...

> If you can't think of this utopia, you're mentally stuck to the growth based capitalistic economy we already have.

Oh believe me I can think of it. But see, as soon as you say "maybe we should be careful about what we're doing" you're met with "hold on we can't do anything because we would go back to the middle ages". If we can't get people to do the most basic things I don't see how you realistically can shift to a whole new paradigm.

> maybe we should be careful about what we're doing

> realistically can shift to a whole new paradigm.

I wish it was different, but I believe that a smooth transition (i.e. evolution) from wasting everything we have to "let's all live a little bit more sustainable" is not a choice. The price tag of such a shift in paradigms may be a revolution. For example I could think of a very very big market crash which would reveal any of these dirty bookkeeping tricks which delayed the crash so far. After such a clearing with all assets set to zero, humanity might be ready to try the next social system experiment, whatever that may be.

That would be an event with immediate consequences.

But telling John Doe that "the planet is in danger because it gets a few degrees warmer, may not buy you his support for taking away his beloved smartphone and weekends in wherever...

> I don't think the future of "solving climate change" involves owning private cars, even electric, and carrying it around in trains, there is no way this would be scalable to the amount of people traveling by plane.

Of course, it would not scale, it would only be an incentive to bring more passangers to trains in the beginning.

Well, as a tech enthusiast, I really doubt the "return to live as in middle ages" will work to solve anything, and that is not necessary. Technological solutions exist, and we will be able to travel without destroying for future generations, high speed trains are such a solution.

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