France bans short-haul flights to cut ‘carbon’ emissions
France has banned domestic short-haul flights where train alternatives exist, in a bid to cut ‘carbon’ emissions
The law came into force two years after lawmakers had voted to end routes where the same journey could be made by train in under two-and-a-half hours.
The ban all but rules out air travel between Paris and cities including Nantes, Lyon and Bordeaux, while connecting flights are unaffected.
Critics have described the latest measures as “symbolic bans”.
Laurent Donceel, interim head of industry group Airlines for Europe (A4E), told the AFP news agency that “banning these trips will only have minimal effects” on CO2 output.
He added that governments should instead support “real and significant solutions” to the issue.
Airlines around the world have been severely hit by the coronavirus pandemic, with website Flightradar24 reporting that the number of flights last year was down almost 42 percent from 2019.
The French government had faced calls to introduce even stricter rules.
France’s Citizens’ Convention on Climate, which was created by President Emmanuel Macron in 2019 and included 150 members of the public, had proposed scrapping plane journeys where train journeys of under four hours existed.
But this was reduced to two-and-a-half hours after objections from some regions, as well as the airline Air France-KLM.
French consumer group UFC-Que Choisir had earlier called on lawmakers to retain the four-hour limit.
“On average, the plane emits 77 times more CO2 per passenger than the train on these routes, even though the train is cheaper and the time lost is limited to 40 minutes,” it said.
It also called for “safeguards that [French national railway] SNCF will not seize the opportunity to artificially inflate its prices or degrade the quality of rail service”.
See more here bbc.co.uk
Header image: Wikipedia
Editor’s note: the Covid ‘pandemic’ was used to as a test to see how populations would respond to restrictions on their movements ‘for the greater good’. Seeing how well the public responded, the same people behind both the ‘pandemic’ and ‘climate emergency’ are instituting policies to further, and permanently, restrict the movement of people, as static populations are easier to control than those that have freedom of movement.
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Dave
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Idiots
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aaron
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what else is there to say
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D. Boss
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Utter nonsense! Outright fraud and lies as to the CO2 emissions of transport modes too. A basic high school level of introductory chemistry can easily fact check these false numbers with a little research on fuel consumption and how much CO2 is emitted per mole of fuel, and the density thereof etc. Rudimentary arithmetic is all that is required.
I’ve done this for planes cars, etc. And I just checked on passenger trains. Trains are worse than cars and worse than airliners! Here is an honest analysis showing all modes, including walking and bicycling:
https://truecostblog.com/2010/05/27/fuel-efficiency-modes-of-transportation-ranked-by-mpg/
Now miles per gallon is not the CO2 emission, and fuels vary in their ratio of CO2 mass emitted vs fuel mass. (jet and diesel fuel are 3.106 lbsCO2/lb of fuel and gasoline is 3.088) But the general ratios expressed in the above chart hold. Pedestrian or bicycle is the worst emitter, and trains next, airliners next and cars and busses are best.
Cars are only marginally better than airliners, but passenger trains are indeed higher CO2 emission than airliners!!! And only a business jet emits slightly more than by train, but try to cross an ocean in a train!
This aligns with my more rigorous analysis of CO2 emissions by mode and fuel composition and combustion chemistry:
Human = 1200 miles/yr; 530 lbs/yr CO2 = 0.442 lbs CO2/passenger mile
Gulfstream G550 (business jet) 14 passengers; 0.314 lbs CO2/passenger mile
Passenger train = 150 passengers; 44 lbs CO2/mile = 0.293 lbs CO2/passenger mile
Boeing 747-400 = 400 passengers; 0.239 lbs CO2/passenger mile
Boeing 737-800 = 160 passengers; 0.222 lbs CO2/passenger mile
Car = 4 passengers; 22 mpg; 0.221 lbs CO2/passenger mile
The train figure is based on Amtrak 7 coach inter city runs, with 150 passengers, and consuming 2 gallons of diesel per mile. Diesel and jet fuel produce 3.106 lbs of CO2 per lb of fuel. (we add a lot of oxygen to provide combustion which is why you emit more CO2 mass than fuel consumed) And both fuels are roughly 6.8 lbs per US gallon.
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