eli5: why is taking a plane or helicopter worse for the environment than a train or a boat?
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Protip – environmental footprint is pretty much proportional to pricetag as it represents overall labour input required to provide a good or service and that labour has its own environmental footprint which sort of evens out to not depend so much on type of good and service, but on merely the cost.
I mean yeah, plane burns a lot of fuel, but most of the cost is labour – that labor drives cars, heats homes, consumes things, and that all has way more of an environmental footprint that tank of fuel the plane burns directly.
Helicopter ride has more of an environmental footprint than train ride because it plain costs more, drastically so. Plane, well its not so straightforward. For long distances, airplane is cheaper and more environmentally friendly, high speed passenger rail isn’t so cheap and environmentally friendly at all, the infrastructure requirements are absolutely massive. For short distances, rail of course wins out and cargo rail that doesn’t need to be fast also wins out easily over air cargo.
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