That high speed rail is not electric unlike high speed rail in Europe or Japan or China. It doesn't deliver enough climate benefits.

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ackfoobar 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

A diesel train releases orders of magnitudes less CO2 than flights though.

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wizzwizz4 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's pretty easy to convert a diesel line to an electric line. It's rather difficult to convert a road to an electrical line. Progress is progress.

"It doesn't deliver enough net benefit" is a bit of a silly thing to say: when speaking of net benefit, anything is better than nothing.

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kccqzy 4 days ago | parent [-]

The climate problem is an emergency. Reaching net zero in 2100 is going to be at least one more century of suffering for our offsprings than reaching net zero in 2040.

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wizzwizz4 4 days ago | parent [-]

And things that are a net improvement do not preclude other things that are net improvements. It is a tactical blunder to attack people who are improving things, for not improving them "enough". The journey of a thousand miles, etc etc.

Rather, become one of the people who's improving things – or, if somehow your only skill is attacking, attack the people who are making things worse.

By the by, "net zero" is not enough. The vast majority of offsetting schemes are little more than accountability laundering and on-paper games, not translating to any concrete offsetting in the real world. We need gross zero.

	▲	ackfoobar 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		> things that are a net improvement do not preclude other things that are net improvements. That's a good framework to think about things. Going all-in on renewables implies keeping fossil fuels around, because storage tech is several breakthrough behind. Renewable proponents like to point out that every kWh not produced with CO2 emission is still a win. Yet deploying renewables means they flood the market with cheap electricity when the weather is good, hurting the profit, thus viability, of (i.e. precluding) stable low-carbon sources (in other words I'm butt hurt about nuclear). > The vast majority of offsetting schemes are little more than accountability laundering and on-paper games, not translating to any concrete offsetting in the real world. A case I heard is that they count the carbon captured by planting trees, yet ignore it when the carbon is released back to the atmosphere in a wildfire.

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slt2021 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

modern diesel is extremely clean, and when compared to air travel, the benefits are clear, both in cost and in carbon emissions