France bans short-haul flights to cut carbon emissions

Elevating news, there's hope yet for reining in air travel emissions by more realistic means than pie in the sky tech solutions.

Everyone seems to be missing the major point— connecting flights are excluded. This measure is largely symbolic and will have no impact.<p>On the other hand, it would be great to see airlines forced to accommodate passengers who miss flights due to delayed trains (and vice versa) as well as greater cooperation between rail and air carriers.<p>Hopefully countries with poor rail infrastructure such as Germany do not adopt France’s approach.

So now anything that was on a plane must now travel on the roads. It&#x27;s not like the need to move from point A to B has been removed. Road travel has a much higher net impact on climate. How is this in any way good? The law of unintended consequences really applies here.

Flights within the European Economic Area are already subject to the EU ETS[1], so banning certain flights may not have the intended effect of lowering emissions. It will just free up emission rights for other emitters.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;climate.ec.europa.eu&#x2F;eu-action&#x2F;eu-emissions-trading-system-eu-ets_en" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;climate.ec.europa.eu&#x2F;eu-action&#x2F;eu-emissions-trading-...</a>

Meanwhile, China is building coal plants like there&#x27;s no tomorrow... <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.npr.org&#x2F;2023&#x2F;03&#x2F;02&#x2F;1160441919&#x2F;china-is-building-six-times-more-new-coal-plants-than-other-countries-report-fin" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.npr.org&#x2F;2023&#x2F;03&#x2F;02&#x2F;1160441919&#x2F;china-is-building-...</a>

&gt; same journey could be made by train in under two-and-a-half hours<p>If the trains are on strike are you allowed to fly then?

Does this, like so many other climate related laws, have a private jet exemption?

I would be curious to look at the raw numbers and how they were computed. France has been a net importer of electricity for a few years now, since we decided to shut down a few nuclear facilities. As a result we&#x27;re importing a mix of electricity produced mainly by surrounding countries, like germany, where electricity is emitting far more CO2 than our local one (probably by a factor of 100x).

Taxation &gt; regulation