In recent times, in view of the verification of the climate emergency, there are several calls that urge us to reduce the number of air travel, or even eliminate them. However, the plane is generally the means of transport with the highest carbon footprint – a London-New York flight, for example, produces about 986 kg of CO2 per passenger, more than what an average person in a country like Paraguay generates in a whole year –.
Some European parliaments are considering banning short-haul flights, for which there are more than competitive train alternatives in terms of time, such as the Amsterdam-Brussels trip. In order to incorporate the environmental aspect into our decisions about the mode of transport to use, the web tool EcoPassenger< /a> allows us to compare the different alternatives that we can use in a displacement, and thus be able to decide individually with greater knowledge. With the help of EcoPassenger, we discovered, for example, that the train journey from Amsterdam to Brussels lasts less than by plane (2:04 vs 2.19, taking into account the processing time at the airport), and generates up to 93% fewer emissions greenhouse effect.
With more concrete knowledge, we can get around modes of transportation that sometimes have a larger footprint than our intuition would indicate. To put a case, while in Europe the train is the most efficient transport, in the USA USA The antiquated long-distance train network generates more CO2 per passenger than buses, due to the use of diesel. As for sea travel, some types of ferries can be more polluting than air flights, while in others they can be among the cleanest modes of transportation.
In any case, if we decide to take a plane, we can think out of personal responsibility that it will always be better to buy an economy class ticket, so that the weight of CO2 can be distributed among a greater number of passengers. Traveling first class has a carbon footprint of up to 9 times older.