This is a real question. Bans "seems" to me as an efficient tool, but I have no source either...
Using some other random website, the same trip for one person on train is calculated to be 2kg.
So that makes it a factor of about 100x. How much could the tax be that would still make it distinguishable from a ban? How would people react if say the tax would be 1€ per kg?
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.
Hopefully countries with poor rail infrastructure such as Germany do not adopt France’s approach.
Germany does not have a poor rail infrastructure.
The purple lines are the high speed ones, and the (very few) yellow lines would be considered high speed in America.
The system is a miracle.
Tell me you know nothing about France without telling me you know nothing about France.
Or Spain, for that matter. Or Germany. Or...
[1] https://climate.ec.europa.eu/eu-action/eu-emissions-trading-...
But this legislation has other more important effects the immediate ones - it's a symbolic act that opens the door for more similar legislation. And eliminating sectors of emissions will make room in the ETS system for more essential uses, decreasing prices in other sectors.
I'm worried it might make room for less essential uses. Each buyer removed from the market, lowers the market price. So it will bring back the buyers that were previously priced out.
Yes, this does presume that the maximum price a buyer is willing to pay, corresponds to how "essential" their use is. But I guess that's the premise of ETS.
If the trains are on strike are you allowed to fly then?
So pro-nuclear that I prefer airplanes to electric trains is a new and exciting angle on the climate discussion though.
two recent case in point : they've been closing nuclear power plant in france and germany non stop, and as a consequence we're burning even more russian gaz than before, and since the war the horribly polluting gaz imported from the US.
Second example : they've passed a law in france to force home owner to better insulate their housing, but the implementation details are so messed up that all they've managed to do is make renting even more impossible for students.
So now, every time i see a law beeing passed under pressure of green parties, i look at where the horrible side effect is going to be this time.
Taxation was the compromise, and it was not taken up in a serious way. Regulation is the next step. Now the onus is on other parts of the economy to realize that they need to handle externalities or they will be regulated too.
I'm seeing a lot of this (failing to realize one is in a position where compromise is necessary); the idea that we have 50 years to spar affably over this is now going to come to an end.
This a problem across the political spectrum.
Good advert for citizen climate assemblies.
and the German one: www.smard.de
Not sure about yearly data but France seems to export lots of electricity right now. As you say, France has very low co2 emission per kwh compared to Germany, that is due to the atomic electricity production.
The ban is relative to "how long does it take to go there by train", I agree it's weird to compute that. Especially thinking about the potential of SNCF and AirFrance maybe considering their impact respectively. It's a good concern and we need to watch that.
It's now at a point where we're trying to catch up with the latest tech in nuclear powerplant building coming from the US ( and probably china), with close-to-retirement engineers while they're still working, instead of being at the forefront of that technology.
This means more stations, more switches, and more road crossings. It also means when you need to do maintenance to the track you are more likely to be in a populated area which brings noise constraints, so possibly no working through the night. It means more road closures or interruptions, which may require traffic control.
Ironically it's going to be more expensive today than it was in the past when things like noise in the middle of the night was allowed and roads didn't have any car traffic to manage.
TGV Sud-Est is 350000 / 174 ~= 2012 flights per day.
There's no airport in the world that handles traffic like that. ATL comes close at 1970 flights daily, but this 2012 is only the capacity on TGV Sud-Est. This doesn't count any of the other lines, of which there are many: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_TGV_services
Trains are really intense.
But if you’re going from Brittany (in the NW) or Nantes to the SW (Toulouse or Bordeaux), driving is going to beat the train.
"Within the transport sector, aviation was responsible for 13.2 % of GHG emissions(144.3 megatonnes CO2 equivalent (Mt CO2e) and rail for 0.4 % (4.3 Mt CO2e). The latter refers to the emissions by diesel trains only. This compares with a share of 71.8 % for road transport and a share of 14.1 % for navigation (EC, 2020b)" (EEA Report No 19/2020)
There is a good reason why trains are commonly used between mines and ports. A single train can have around 70-100 of cars, each loaded with 100 tons of Ore. To do the same with planes would be impossible expensive and the emissions would be insane.
The only thing that can get near in terms of capacity and emissions are boats, although that sector is in large need of modernization. They discussed this in an other article about France, since they got several large rivers that could see increased utilization by the transportation sector.
Obviously in both cases, transportation will take longer. I would assume that some delivery services will be exempted when a slower transportation is not suitable.
But also, we prohibit lots acts that are harmful to others, instead of taxing them. It's also a moral thing. Values are changing and increasing share of people are seeing unnecessary emissions as a wrong.
Taxing liquor would have been a far better approach.
A clear well defined ban seems more efficient and straightforward, as long as it can be enforced. In this case - unlike for prohibition - it can be enforced like you point out.