alt Hacker NewsFlying is a bit unique in that there aren't really viable alternatives. It also accounts for a fairly small portion of emissions. Land transport (cars and trucks), power generation, and heating are where the big wins exist with viable alternatives.
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It only represents a small portion of emissions because so few people fly. For the people that do fly it represents a large portion of their emissions.
It’s also the activity least likely to be decarbonised.
Of course there are alternatives, I haven’t flown on a plane since 2001.
There are plenty of alternatives. Most importantly: traveling locally. Nobody needs to visit 30 countries by 30 years old or whatever dumb social media excuses they have.
Air travel is a very recent modern invention(1960s, at least for everyday folk) and people act like flying around the world is a right.
Modern capitalism is an excess machine and it'll feed us constant excuses for why our reasons are valid. Air travel is a great example. Travel and tourism are seen as "musts" by people nowadays. It's insane how destructive and unnecessary it is. It's wild how entitled everyone is nowadays. I'll happily take down votes for calling out the insane excess that we have nowadays. We're killing ourselves one funco pop at a time and we all deserve that funco pop according to the latest excuse(won't someone blame the rich!!!)
I think if high speed rail was a viable option in the US and Europe those numbers would look a lot different.
What?? In Europe there are lots of viable alternatives. Same as Asia!!
Per person, it is reliably the single most polluting thing you will do. The reason it accounts for a "small proportion" of emissions is that most people in the world do not fly at all. Indeed, a tiny (<1% IIRC) elite of the world's population account for most of the world's flight kilometers. Flying is an absolutely unscalable form of transport in a world of 8 billion people.