Comment by delroth | Hacker News Reader

Comment by delroth | Hacker News Reader

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No, France didn't ban short-haul flights. France banned 34 daily flights on 6 routes (ORY <-> {LYS, NTE, BOD}), and those flights were already not operating since 2020. No domestic flights from the largest airport was banned (CDG), no flights to/from MRS or RNS, etc.

This is because the law was pretty much designed to be useless. Flights are banned if you can make the trip by train within 2h30, with no changes, and with sufficient frequency and early/late enough trains to allow for an 8h day trip. Except that in the case of CDG they decided that it's not enough to be able to make the trip within 2h30 from Paris, you need to be able to do so from the TGV station at CDG airport. That's absurd, the vast majority of flights from CDG are from passengers in Paris, not passengers that start at CDG airport.

Because of that, CDG-BOD is still OK even though it's 2h05 by train from Paris. And CDG-LYS is also still allowed because they considered that there aren't early enough trains leaving from CDG airport currently.

It's basically just good PR with no teeth, and the journalists have been eating it up with zero fact checking.

It's a good way of distracting people from what actually puts CO2 in the air. It's not airplanes or even cars for the most part. But hey, most people know about cars and airplanes so it is more relatable

Airplanes and cars are both huge contributors, though, and it's valid to discuss them

https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector#per-capita-gr...

After electricity and heating transportation is, by a considerable margin, the second largest source of emissions. And as the article points out, on a per capita basis domestic flights and single person car usage are several times more emission heavy than other modes of transport. So this is certainly one of the most important sectors to tackle.

"per capita" is misleading here. We don't measure concrete production per capita like that for example

it's not misleading at all. Not only are those two methods of transportation also the largest in absolute terms. Per Capita costs are what matters because that indicates the efficiency of that particular mode of transportation. we definitely should measure concrete usage that way. If country A houses ten times more people with the same amount of concrete as country B, A is vastly more environmentally friendly.

I don't think it's only effect will be good PR.

A likely (although not sure) consequence might be for other governments to pick it up. If not directly, then at least as putting some pressure. These who believe the governments work in a mostly reactive way should be happy. Here is something other govs can react to.

The lines were not operating, but now the law prevents them from being reopened.

It's like a one-way valve, and IMHO a good way to go about domestic companies that are still subject to international competition.

> Except that in the case of CDG they decided that it's not enough to be able to make the trip within 2h30 from Paris, you need to be able to do so from the TGV station at CDG airport. That's absurd, the vast majority of flights from CDG are from passengers in Paris, not passengers that start at CDG airport.

Doing so would ban connecting flights.

Imagine instead of just going to the connecting terminal if you had to leave the airport, grab all your stuff, go into a local train, then to the train-station...

I've done this many times in many European airports. It's often no more inconvenient than walking to another terminal in a large airport.

The law doesn't apply to connecting flights anyway.

short-haul-washing

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