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Comment by lucb1e | Hacker News Reader

As a Dutchman, I would 100% use this. Been meaning to see more of Scandinavia (without flying there for pollution reasons) and I've also been meaning to use a night train after reading an article about it via HN, both for about 2-3 years now, but haven't gotten around to either yet!

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I appreciate your emphasize on reducing flying. This seems like an unfortunately rare attitude though perhaps changing quickly.

If we reduce flying by half, how much would that reduce the climate change problem?

The world is still generating an incredible amount of electricity using coal.

http://h4labs.org/ive-got-another-stupid-idea-to-deal-with-c...

I was pleasantly surprised to see BlackRock recently come out against coal:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/16/blackr...

so we do nothing? attitudes like this don't help

I didn’t say that we do nothing. We have a few large problems like coal that have been known for decades.

https://www.google.org/rec.html?theme=greenz_dev

We’ve lost another 15 years and the now the idea is to guilt people into reducing a few percent a year.

Do the math. It’s not going to work.

> If we reduce flying by half, how much would that reduce the climate change problem?

You could say that about any sector of the economy. while coal is responsible for more ghg than aviation at the moment, air travel keeps growing. In general, there is no one low hanging fruit to solve the climate crisis. It will take lots and lots of different solutions all across the board. And just because BlackRock came out against coal, it doesn't get you off the hook.

Remember 13 years ago when Google identified coal as a huge problem? RE<C

https://www.google.org/rec.html?theme=greenz_dev

IIRC taking a single long flight per year (~5 hours in the air) is equivalent to commuting an hour by car each day (regional fuel efficiency notwithstanding). Airplanes burn the most fuel during the take off stage which makes short haul flights particularly bad. Replacing those flights with night trains and high speed rail would be an easy win for the environment.

Furthermore, while there are few practical alternatives to planes for intercontinental travel, we already have the means for fast, affordable, comfortable travel at the regional level (trains). So it makes a lot of sense to target short-haul air travel in densely populated areas for replacement by trains.

That sounds slightly excessive if flying long-haul is about on par with solo car travel per passenger per km. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49349566

Agreed with rest of points, it's a shame flying is so much cheaper. In the end it doesn't matter whether something is available if it's too expensive for mainstream use.

It's more about trying to prevent flying from increasing by 5x as huge new populations become affluent enough to start using planes regularly. Pushing back against the culture of flying while supporting alternative technologies that are easier to make zero carbon in the near term is the goal.

40% of the electricity globally is generated by coal.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption#Ele...

80% is fossil fuels.

I’d be more worried about their daily electricity usage than one or two flights a year.

I think that attitude is becoming more common. Maybe it's just my bubble of the kind of friends I retain, but in general, at least everyone is aware of it and in my bubble most people actively consider at least some of what they do.

The biggest problem I find is people saying "we can't do anything anyway" or "it's never enough". I dunno man, if you actually thought you could make a difference, maybe we all together could? Look for green energy providers that actually invest in building new renewable energy plants, buy more second-hand items, don't fly short-haul when you can take a train or tell your boss that you want to at least offset such emissions, and break the pattern of going everywhere by car (if possible, I understand transit is difficult in the USA). And of course, vote the right way.

All of that shifts where your money goes and very few of these things would actually impact your daily life, perhaps the only major one being your commute if it is realistic for you to use the bus/train instead of a car. It might get a little longer, you'll have to accept that you get near other humans that you haven't hand-picked, but if coexisting is too much to ask...

We can do it, if only we accept the idea that we can tackle something bigger than any individual or even an individual industry.

As a Danish resident, I would 100% use this too

As a Dane living in Stockholm but with family in Belgium I would start living on that train. This would be amazing..

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