This is a dangerous meme, it&#x27;s a complete fantasy...<p>Cars in the US do about .4 kg of CO2 per mile on average and flights 0.2. There&#x27;s 2x.<p>In addition, air travel has a much more damaging effect than the same amount of CO2 emitted on the ground. [1]
There&#x27;s another 2x-4x.<p>So you end up getting a 4x-8x bigger warming effect contribution per passenger mile. And since you are going about 10x faster in an aircraft, an hour of air travel is 40x-80x more harmful to the atmosphere than an hour of car travel.<p>The per hour figure is much more relevant because these people would not get around to emitting nearly as much travel co2 in cars even if they drove them every day for 10 hours. Their 2-day trips would turn into 2 week trips. IOW the vast majority of the trips of &quot;elite flyers&quot; would just not get taken.<p>--<p>[1] &quot;The IPCC, for example, has estimated that the climate impact of aircraft is two to four times greater than the effect of their carbon dioxide emissions alone.&quot;<p>- <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.davidsuzuki.org&#x2F;issues&#x2F;climate-change&#x2F;science&#x2F;climate-change-basics&#x2F;air-travel-and-climate-change&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.davidsuzuki.org&#x2F;issues&#x2F;climate-change&#x2F;science&#x2F;cli...</a>