Most plane passengers are already relatively wealthy.
Thats about 230m people, but flights carried four billion passengers in 2017.
So the average flyer takes eight return flights and aeroplanes rack upseven trillion air miles each year.
Rationing might be a fairer and more effective alternative.
Flight rationing
Every person could be allocated a maximum number of flight kilometers each year.
This allowance would increase the longer a person abstained from flying.
It would take seven years to accumulate enough to fly from the UK to Australia and back.
These journeys could be as fast as aeroplanes in some instances andemit 90% less CO2.
Solar-powered train journeys are already a reality in Australia.
The demand wont go away, so what could replace carbon-intensive air travel?
The worlds first all-electric commercial airliner was unveiled in Paris in June 2019.
Its expected to enter service in 2022.
The fossil fuel costs of small aircraft are aboutUS$400 per 100 miles.
How much energy each battery can store isincreasing rapidly.
But there are also strategies which can make electric planesmore efficient.
Capacitors are lightweight batteries that can hold a huge charge but only for short periods.
Bring back the zeppelin?
Unlike jet aircraft, once airships are aloft they dont need lots of energy to keep them there.
At that point, energy costs becomecomparable to rail travel.
Think of them instead as air cruises.
Still, the materials needed to build it already exist.
An orbital ring is a strong steel cable in orbit just above the atmosphere 80km above Earth.
Bold ideas are one thing, we need radical action to revolutionize how we travel the world.
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