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While more people opt for travel by car and private transport, the number of passengers that trains and buses can carry has also been reduced to meet social distancing guidelines. This means that people from different households must keep one to two metres apart. So, once a seat is taken, surrounding seats must be left empty.
This has had a profound effect on the climate impact of train and car travel. When running at normal capacity, public transport is more environmentally friendly than travelling by car. Although a train or bus can produce more C0₂ than a car, they transport far more people, so emissions per person are lower overall.
But under social distancing conditions, and assuming that any unfilled seats correspond to a commuter driving to work instead, diesel-powered public transport produces more C0₂ emissions per passenger than a small car.
Can passengers be seated so public transportation can be more efficient than cars while maintaining social distancing?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 18 2020, @08:11PM (8 children)
For perspective there are only 4 billion hectares of forest. The world's total land area is about 15-60 billion hectares (depending on whether you count the extra area from sloping surfaces etc). One hectare is about two football fields in area.
So if everyone lived all spread out there wouldn't be many undisturbed and undamaged places for wildlife to live.
Having most people live in cities does make pandemics more dangerous, but millions of humans dying tends to lower our environmental impact too... ;)
So assuming we will continue to have billions of people around for decades or centuries, the solution is to have most people live in cities AND make cities more environmentally friendly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 18 2020, @08:32PM
You can have your rabbit hutch.
I'm living in the 'burbs and you cannot take it away from me, and if you try, I will fight your efforts tooth and nail and will elect likeminded politicians. Sorry, not sorry.
P. S. My wife and I have also added more humans to the planet!
P.P.S. Population growth is only a problem in the Third World. Everywhere else, the reproductive rate is below replacement, i.e., not my fucking problem. You can eat insect protein to virtue signal; I'll eat real grass fed beef.
(Score: 2) by legont on Sunday July 19 2020, @03:53AM (6 children)
My on the back on the envelope calculation show that we are going to have at least 1% population reduction per the virus wave. The waves will come 4-9 months apart. So, say 3% per year decrease? No need to worry about the environment, overpopulation, and the people will move to the countryside themselves.
If by any remote chance we eliminate this virus, I am sure our friends will make more. It's a school lab exercise at this point.
Regardless, cities are not more environment friendly. Perhaps they could be made so, but my guess it will be more difficult to do than countryside.
This is especially true since there is no economic incentive to keep people together any more. Sweat shops, physical or intellectual, are mostly gone. Only hardcore will stay in the cities and they will be poor and die of diseases.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Sunday July 19 2020, @10:32AM (5 children)
What virus is going to do that? Covid hasn't come within three orders of magnitude of reducing population by 1%.
Who would these "friends" be? Nobody has shown that a man-made disease has made it into the wild yet.
Are not more environmentally friendly than what? What better configurations of 7.5 billion people are there?
(Score: 2) by legont on Monday July 20 2020, @03:33AM (1 child)
Let's check on your points in two years.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday July 20 2020, @10:48AM
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday July 20 2020, @12:13PM (2 children)
Math error. Global deaths from covid could be underreported too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 25 2020, @07:22PM (1 child)
The secondary damage (economic etc) could cause stuff like famines, major civil unrest or even wars. Fewer people are immune to no food for 1 month...
But there will likely still be billions of people around - we've already figured out how to produce enough food for billions and we don't need high levels of tech to do so. Most of the farmers in India helping to feed their 1+ billion people aren't using robotic combine harvesters.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday July 29 2020, @05:05AM
"Likely" by what standard of evidence? It's interesting how much terrible advice has been given here on SN about this subject by ACs. First, smoking was alleged to increase resistance to COVID. Then it was that masks don't prevent the spread of COVID while simultaneously ignoring how masks do that. Today it's this crap and the claim that wearing masks makes one susceptible to covid (in other words, it's somehow better to get repeated COVID infections than not).
What secondary damage?