The point about aviation is that we need to reduce the need for flights. Short flights, especially those that are under 600 miles over land, are prime to be replaced by high speed rail.
No amount of SAF is going to make the short flights less polluting than a robust high speed rail system between those city pairs.
Also, you called the IRA deeply unserious, not me. I called Biden’s tariffs against Chinese renewables and EVs deeply unserious because they are.
Yeah, the IRA and Infrastructure Bill steer about $67 billion to railways, $80 billion to transit systems. And even though a lot of the other spending goes towards the status quo of car-based passenger transportation, electrifying that will go a long way towards reducing carbon emissions.
And there are some more ambitious ideas baked in, too: redesigning cities to require less car infrastructure and overall energy use, etc.
I thought it was a big deal when passed and honestly can’t understand why people who care about climate don’t acknowledge just how big of a deal it was (and how devastating that so much of the money authorized will now be in control of a Trump administration).
