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GROWTH ENCOURAGED, SHUNNED

As Terry McCrann observes, there’s a curious duality of views at the Age on the subject of air travel. For example, this editorial from last Monday calls for increased flights to and from Melbourne:

International airlines are bypassing Australia’s second city in favour of Sydney, which has consolidated its position as a hub for flights to Europe, the Americas and places between. Three recent decisions exemplify the problem. British Airways cut Melbourne from its itinerary last year; Austrian Airlines will cease flights from the Victorian capital in March; and just last week, Etihad Airlines, which became the first foreign airline to be granted access to Australia in more than a year, announced it would fly to Sydney.

To add to the sense of abandonment, Qantas scheduling increasingly causes flights originating in this city to stop in Sydney, with passengers from Melbourne to Tokyo, for example, frequently obliged to spend time on the ground just an hour after take-off. Any significant growth in tourism depends on attracting international visitors, both for business and leisure purposes.

Yet here, the Age offers this solution to global warming:

Fly less. Plane travel emits about three times as much greenhouse gas as a train journey.

What’s it to be, Age? More flights or less? Attracting international visitors or appeasing Gaia?

Posted by Tim B. on 02/04/2007 at 10:01 AM
  1. Fly less. Plane travel emits about three times as much greenhouse gas as a train journey.


    I’ve always wanted to visit Australia, but Amtrak doesn’t go there. Hell, they don’t even go to Hawaii, and that’s in the United States.

    Posted by ErnieG on 2007 02 04 at 10:25 AM • permalink

  2. I’d take the train to Melbourne. Is it leaving on Track 39?

    Posted by Some0Seppo on 2007 02 04 at 10:46 AM • permalink

  3. Fly less. Plane travel emits about three times as much greenhouse gas as a train journey.

    That’s because lots of the trains in Melbourne don’t work. So naturally plane travel emits more greenhouse gas. Not to mention it probably adds more to the greenhouse gases emitted when the train has to reverse to get to the station.

    Posted by Ash_ on 2007 02 04 at 10:54 AM • permalink

  4. Heh! The French government is in a similar quandry. They say air travel is bad and want “carbon taxes”, while at the same time they are propping up Airbus and cutting deals around the world to sell large airliners.

    Which is it? If “global warming” is caused by mankind releasing carbon dioxide, why is France encouraging this?

    Posted by Lou Minatti on 2007 02 04 at 10:55 AM • permalink

  5. It’s because envirosocialists don’t realize that stopping planes from flying actually means… well… stopping planes from flying.  It’s all too complicated and icky to have to puzzle out logical consequences, don’t bother them with that stuff.

    Posted by RebeccaH on 2007 02 04 at 11:07 AM • permalink

  6. Aren’t the per head GHG emissions from flying actually pretty low?

    Posted by aaron_ on 2007 02 04 at 11:41 AM • permalink

  7. “Aren’t the per head GHG emissions from flying actually pretty low?”

    No, especially if you’re a politician or celebrity who supports Kyoto and flies to photo-ops in private jets.

    Posted by Lou Minatti on 2007 02 04 at 12:06 PM • permalink

  8. Tim,

    This is easily reconciled. According to “The Age” Australia must encourage “growth in tourism (that) attract(s) international visitors” who are willing to take a “train journey”.

    Now, don’t you feel silly?

    Posted by Birkel on 2007 02 04 at 12:28 PM • permalink

  9. Huh.  I haven’t flown since 1999.

    Let’s propose a scheme where a non-flier is paired with a frequent flier and…paco and Rebecca H will have to work out the middle part, and money exchanges hands.  GREEN money.

    Posted by ushie on 2007 02 04 at 12:29 PM • permalink

  10. Some0Seppo,

    The train leaves from Platform 8 and 3 quarters, silly. Everybody knows that!

    Posted by Birkel on 2007 02 04 at 12:30 PM • permalink

  11. Energy Intensity is comparable to driving.  I don’t know, but expect, that emissions are corollary.

    Posted by aaron_ on 2007 02 04 at 01:00 PM • permalink

  12. What’s it to be, Age? More flights or less? Attracting international visitors or appeasing Gaia?

    Doncha get it?  Its both actually.  They want the elites to be able to travel and gad about at their leisure and they want us lumpen proletariat to appease Gaia so they don’t feel guilty.  Oh, and in the case of Americans, then they want to make fun of us because we don’t have passports and we never travel anywhere.

    Posted by Vanguard of the Commentariat on 2007 02 04 at 01:01 PM • permalink

  13. Birkel, I was hoping to hop aboard the Yarra River Choo Choo but I got the track number wrong.

    Pardon me, boy
    Is that the Yarra River choo choo?
    Track twenty-nine
    Boy, you can gimme a shine
    I can afford
    To board a Yarra River choo choo
    I’ve got my fare
    And just a trifle to spare

    Posted by Some0Seppo on 2007 02 04 at 01:05 PM • permalink

  14. #4

    Which is it? If “global warming” is caused by mankind releasing carbon dioxide, why is France encouraging this?

    Ah, Lou, they’re French. Protecting and promoting all things Françoise comes first, then “saving the planet”. And no Frenchmen will ever consider that to be the least bit hypocritical.

    Posted by Spiny Norman on 2007 02 04 at 01:07 PM • permalink

  15. #1 I’ve always wanted to visit Australia, but Amtrak doesn’t go there. Hell, they don’t even go to Hawaii

    ErnieG: Based on my years of experience as an AmTrak “road warrior”, they rarely go anywhere - or if they do, not on any reliable time schedule.

    Posted by paco on 2007 02 04 at 01:45 PM • permalink

  16. I dunno paco, my wife and I once took the Amtrak to Chicago, but it didn’t go back.  Maybe they just drop you off.  (Silly me, I thought trains could go thru a little snow better than automobiles could.)

    Posted by JorgXMcKie on 2007 02 04 at 03:01 PM • permalink

  17. Does this mean they want you to deal with Connex trains now?  Didn’t Terry Grand Macbeth Canyon Lane got the memo from editorial?

    Posted by richard mcenroe on 2007 02 04 at 03:08 PM • permalink

  18. “Let me explain to you how this works: The corporations finance Team America. And then Team America goes out, and the corporations sit there… in their corporation buildings. And they’re all corporationy. And they make money.”

    Posted by Dash on 2007 02 04 at 03:45 PM • permalink

  19. So next time we take the train from Sydney to London??

    Posted by Torontosteve on 2007 02 04 at 04:22 PM • permalink

  20. I’m irritated by the first sentence, actually.

    Airlines will go anywhere if there is demand from travellers. It’s the old trick of tourism boards and governments blaming the carrier when people don’t go to their city.

    Create the business, airlines will follow.

    Posted by Ozwitch on 2007 02 04 at 05:02 PM • permalink

  21. “International airlines are bypassing Australia’s second city in favour of Sydney..”

    Well, given the large number of liberal arse-hats there are in Melbourne, frequently appearing in the “Newspaper” the age, it’s not surprising that the vast majority of folks, like me, prefer Sydney and Melbourne Darwin.

    Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2007 02 04 at 05:49 PM • permalink

  22. #4 Lou, the French example you provide reveals the truth of the matter. Nobody believes, or gives a damn, about this hysterical hoax. It’s simply a means to make money and create a larger bureaucracy on the path towards a socialist world government.

    Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2007 02 04 at 05:53 PM • permalink

  23. #19 Torontosteve, that’ll probably happen before we can take a train from Orleans through downtown and out to Kanata.

    Why?

    Because you’re talking parabolic whilst the train thingy up here in Ottawa is hyperbolic.

    Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2007 02 04 at 05:58 PM • permalink

  24. Commercial flying if more energy efficient than driving, not even considering the time, safety, and traffic effects. Rail is ~1/3 more energy efficient than flying, but limited in capacity and in the US often not very time efficient.

    Posted by aaron_ on 2007 02 04 at 06:07 PM • permalink

  25. #20 No water, (they won’t build dams, because Gaia said not to) at one stage no electricity, a crappy rail system, and over regulation. No, I see the airlines point of view. Melbourne is probably no longer the once popular destination it was.

    Posted by BJM on 2007 02 04 at 06:08 PM • permalink

  26. Plane travel emits about three times as much greenhouse gas as a train journey.

    Only three times as much?  Given that one of these forms of transport actually has belching jet engines attached to it, that’s a pretty damning indictment of ‘clean’ electric train travel.  Or else it debunks the moral panic about air travel.  Take your pick.

    Posted by cuckoo on 2007 02 04 at 06:24 PM • permalink

  27. Has anybody noticed how addicted to air travel the Left is? Gore flies the world preaching about you-know-what in a private jet. George Moonbat and Tim Flannery think nothing of flying a zillion miles to flog their books, even Robert Fisk and John Pilger flit all over the globe preaching their messages of hatred of America. I suppose when it comes to hating America, your average Lefty exempts Boeing and the actual oil drilled to fill their planes. I suggest, the looney Left boycott Boeing aircraft and only fly with Froggy Airbus. We’ll see how long that lasts!!

    This is why the loony Left are so open to derision and ridicule. With them, it’s one idiotic contradiction piled upon another.

    Posted by Bonmot on 2007 02 04 at 06:45 PM • permalink

  28. Plane travel emits about three times as much greenhouse gas as a train journey.

    Except the trains are empty and the planes are full. On fuel per passenger, the non-surburban trains in Australia are as inefficient as driving the distance in a 1968 Monaro V8 stuck in first gear.

    Posted by Contrail on 2007 02 04 at 06:59 PM • permalink

  29. George Orwell pre-described the Age’s peculiar talent in “1984”.

    Doublethink: “The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”

    Assuming, that is, that the editors of the Age have minds….

    Posted by unkraut on 2007 02 04 at 07:00 PM • permalink

  30. How much greenhouse gases do our VRWC secret hover cars emit. No, don’t answer that. I’d be disappointed if it wasn’t extreme.

    Posted by Penguin on 2007 02 04 at 07:55 PM • permalink

  31. Penguin—you ARE passing your exhaust through the ahem, ‘optional’ coal-burning stove/chamber, yes?

    Posted by richard mcenroe on 2007 02 04 at 08:11 PM • permalink

  32. #25
    Add major gas supply outages.

    Posted by egg_ on 2007 02 04 at 08:39 PM • permalink

  33. #31 RM

    I assume that is the contraption which gives the hover car the deep throated (but completely superfluous) sound of a V8, belches pure black smoke, and causes birds to fall dead from the sky?

    Last time I engaged that baby, there was a flood in Bangladesh that killed thousands. Coincidence?

    Posted by Penguin on 2007 02 04 at 08:54 PM • permalink

  34. #27
    ... or Airbus fail to meet future EU emissions regulations and Boeing succeeds?

    Posted by egg_ on 2007 02 04 at 09:11 PM • permalink

  35. Penguin—sounds like you haven’t removed the spark arrester.  I won’t have to report it if you take care of it at once.

    Them wildfires don’t start themselves, ya know.

    Posted by richard mcenroe on 2007 02 04 at 09:27 PM • permalink

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