This will not slash carbon emissions by 20%. Blended wing body will make flying cheaper, and increase the number of flyers.
[0]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/193533/growth-of-global-...
[1]: https://www.iata.org/contentassets/d4b60cffceeb4213bb5993d5f...
[2]: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318691221_Subsidies...
If we're gonna slash subsidies and introduce carbon tax on flights, it needs to hit corporate and expensive tickets as hard as possible whilst sheltering cheaper tickets as much as possible.
There's so many things HN proposes should be taxed / excised extra: cars, flights, gas, soda, alcohol, meat, rare metals in devices, batteries, electricity consumption etc etc.
They aren't bad ideas (hell, I agree fully with the sentiment of most of said ideas) but it's so easy to be blind to the fact that you'd basically be turning daily life into a two caste system where only the rich are allowed vices.
If you don't like inequality then there are other ways to deal with that - rather than using it as an excuse to keep flying.
I do however agree that a frequent flyer tax would be a good start, though be aware that a lot of airline routes are effectively funded by business class seats, so you might find flight frequencies dropping - but that's the point right?
Is it not already primarily upper-class people vacationing far abroad?
I don’t think of someone who makes $400k+ a year working as a software developer as necessarily upper class. In my view, upper class means someone who is financially independent and can afford to not work for money for a year or longer without a change of lifestyle.
A salary of 2x expenses will put you in the upper class within 22 years (with average market returns), and passive income will fully replace the salary within another 8 years, but until then, that's still middle class.
Basically, if you can afford to invest 1/6 or more of your income, you can make it to upper class within your lifetime, and still have time left to enjoy it.
Sorry but I think we need to be real. We are not the middle class. We are poor working class people. Most of the 10% is squarely the middle class. I'd imagine a big chunk of the 1% is middle class because one medical crisis could likely bankrupt them. Look at the wealth distribution graph.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Wealth_d...
People from the Bay Area really need to get out more. Source: I come from the actual poor working class.
https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0912/which-incom...
Here's a bit from the Washington Post in 2017 talking about the difficulty of defining what is "middle class" in the modern era. They arrive at an umbrella of $35k-$122k. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/10/25/is-10...
Saying that you're part of "poor working class people" when you earn in a year what a significant number of your compatriots wouldn't earn in a decade is a ridiculous thing to say.
I commend you for being outraged at the insane inequalities in our civilization and I largely share your concerns but you really need to work on framing that better IMO.
Remember when the big tech co's were conspiring together against their own employees?
"Apple and Google's wage-fixing cartel involved dozens more companies, over one million employees"
https://pando.com/2014/03/22/revealed-apple-and-googles-wage...
You're just buying into "The Man"'s propaganda to keep the working class divided, yo.
(It reminds me of a joke from Futurama. Leela gets a bunch of valuable stock and says, "Wow! I suddenly have an opinion about the capital gains tax!")
Anyway, I am "really middle class".
Heck, I was homeless for about four or five years.
When poor serfs complain about less-poor serfs I like to point out that it's the lords they should be grumbling about, if anyone.
Someone making $400k/year should easily accrue the savings to do that.
If they're not after a year, they need to re-evaluate spending habits.
If it's primarily $400k+ software developers who currently vacation abroad, then that wouldn't be that strong of an argument against removing the tax incentives.
I am not opposed to a more progressive income tax. In fact, I firmly support higher income taxes on everyone. I could never run for political office in the US because how will I ever walk up to a constituent and say "I want to drastically increase your taxes?" and at the same time walk up to public sector employees and say, "I want to take away your benefits".
Yes, we need to address climate change. However, I think we also need to encourage travel so we can facilitate movement of people and ideas across the world. Not everyone who travels will change the world but I'm sure it can't hurt.
I think you got my statement backward. I was advocating for the removal of taxes, since AFAIK subsidies generally utilize tax money. Maybe as you suggest, "hit corporate and expensive tickets hard" to subsidize the flying for the poor (economy) classes (which I'm assuming already happens).
I'm sorry, why? I don't see being able to travel across the world at high environmental cost to be some god given right. It's not sustainable, especially as use of long-distance travel continues to grow with no end in sight. Make it expensive for everybody, instead of subsidizing it for whatever group you have a bias for.
Whether "it" is international travel, point-to-point personal transportation, or whatever, make it sustainable for everybody, instead of criticizing it for whatever group you have a bias against.
Currently 70% of the flights are made by 15% of the population (1). If you start adding increasing taxes on each additional flight you take, it would rapidly curtail a lot of the travel I'd expect.
I am sure a lot of us in Europe (and perhaps USA? Not sure if it is as prevalent) in the past have been guilty of taking a "weekend break" somewhere that is a 1 or 2 hr flight away where the tickets usually cost something like £30-40 return on Easyjet or Ryanair (and often cheaper than a taxi to get to the airport!)
E.g. after 2 flights a year, start adding £50 per flight (so 3rd is +£50, 4th +£100, 5th +£150 etc etc). Suddenly your £30 return flight from London to Lisbon/Rome/Dublin/Barcelona/Berlin etc is no longer so absurdly cheap. Put all the proceeds from the tax into decarbonisation and fast intercity rail.
That would soon make people (myself included) think twice about taking "frivolous" city-breaks every month or so where you fly out after work on a Friday and come home again Sunday night ready to be back at your desk on Monday morning.
1 - https://fullfact.org/economy/do-15-people-take-70-flights/
Tax flying in the EU, and people will likely take more trains. Try it in the US, and you're just pushing people back into their cars.
One can adjust the flight profile for maximum fuel efficiency, but this tends to be uncomfortable for the passengers and crew, and it takes longer to reach the destination. Most US passenger airlines don't do that, but military and cargo carriers will.
That aside, some portion of the fuel is spent continuously keeping the weight of the aircraft aloft, and with ground vehicles, the equivalent expenditure is the rolling resistance of the tires. Furthermore, an airliner plane tends to carry all the fuel it needs for the entire flight on takeoff, which translates to additional weight, whereas the ground vehicle can refuel enroute at a truck stop or gas station. Some aircraft can refuel in flight, but another plane has to carry it up there and maneuver it into place. A train on electrified rails need not carry any fuel at all.
So to some extent, it depends on the ground vehicle and the aircraft. In a contest between an ultralight or powered paraglider and a heavy pickup truck towing an RV trailer up in the Rocky Mountains, the flyer might have a lower footprint. But for a trip over flat ground, such as Chicago to Indianapolis or Cincinnati to Cleveland, in a medium-sized hybrid ICE+battery sedan, driving at or below the posted speed limits on US Interstate or Autobahn-like restricted access divided highways, I think the car will win against anything other than a solar-powered lighter-than-air craft.
I haven't done the bar napkin math, so I could be wrong.
AFAIU currently kerosene is very lightly taxed, if at all. If there is taxation of fuel or fuel-based payments for airlines, it will be reflected on ticket prices more than currently.
So the airlines can claw some of that back by introducing more efficient planes. But they will be expensive to develop and build, which is again reflected in ticket prices.
More subtly though, yes you are right; we need to dedicate some money to carbon offsets and not pass all of the savings to passengers.
So it is looking like jet fuel is around $2 a gallon for airlines right now.[1] A 737 Max takes a total of 6,820 gallons.[2] Since the flight from New York to Paris would be almost the max range we can assume all of it would be burned to transport the 172 passengers.
So ($2 * 6820 Gallons) / 172 People = $79 per person in fuel.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/197689/us-airline-fuel-c...
The price was less than 1 euro.
Telling me that there better ways to lower co2 emissions than not flying. (Or creating new airplanes.)
But you are right. The price going to purchase the CO2 offset is probably less than what I would be paying.
If the true price were actually that low, it would be easy to solve.
a) Flying is basically the only practical option for long-distance travel (edit: by which I mean humans travelling to be at a destination, not cargo/goods).
b) Travel is a hugely important good for society (debatable, but consider: experience of diverse cultures, being able to visit friends / have relationships, generation of economic value by skill sharing / conferences / etc).
I would argue that anything that increases the amount people are flying / lowers barriers to travel is a good thing.
Obviously if we can lower carbon emissions from airlines then we should, but I'd much rather curtail ANY other industry that produces huge amounts of emissions before trying to cut down on human travel.
Traveling is nice. I'd argue that most flying done nowadays does not increase cultural understanding. Hitchhiking or slow and uncomfortable means of transportation do increase cultural understanding, because they force people to share something. Modern traveling technologies offer a chance to travel half the globe while staying in a safe bubble. By the way here's an interesting phenomenon that you can notice when people talk about their travels. Stories always revolve around technical issues. Flight was cancelled, they had to take a cramped bus through the mountain, something was broken in the hotel, they got delayed when crossing a border. Traveling is often a game of moving around in unusual and adverse circumstances, and somehow making it work in the end.
Climate change is currently hurting economies, and the trend is worsening. Something that contributes to climate change is bad for the economy.
Having friends far from home is a bad choice. I've done it myself and it does have something attractive. But it makes life more difficult and these friends won't be there when you need them, simply because it's not practical. Of course it might sound great to say that someone flew thousands of kilometers to visit you. It sounds great because it's a huge waste, like showering a loved one with flowers.
Moving on.... you're playing with words, they are talking about specific flights.
At to a global level it might be a 15% reduction or maybe 18% for these specific flight routes. But they make no claim to know that figure. It's hard to know. They just are presenting facts.
And for the 2% or 5% or whatever difference to the 20%, that's people making flights that couldn't before. That's people exploring the world. That has amazing value as well. It's not just 'less than 20%'
What's the argument that that's garbage - or is my description not a good one?
No, it's the usage of the resource made efficient will be more than before, not the product.
The reason people believe it, other than annoying blogs saying it's true, is we can see as efficiencies increase price goes down and we will use the product more, so it mind hacks people about the resource
But it's really hard to ever intuitively see if the resource gets used more.
I think the original idea seems legit, it's just never been reproduced that I've ever seen. I've never seen a legit example of Jevon's Paradox outside of the original idea.