It's official: France bans short haul domestic flights in favour of train travel:
France has been given the green light to ban short haul domestic flights.
The European Commission has approved the move which will abolish flights between cities that are linked by a train journey of less than 2.5 hours.
[...] France is also cracking down on the use of private jets for short journeys in a bid to make transport greener and fairer for the population.
Transport minister Clément Beaune said the country could no longer tolerate the super rich using private planes while the public are making cutbacks to deal with the energy crisis and climate change.
[...] The ban on short-haul flights will be valid for three years, after which it must be reassessed by the Commission.
"[This] is a major step forward in the policy of reducing greenhouse gas emissions," transport minister Beaune said in a press release.
[...] Sarah Fayolle, Greenpeace France transport campaign manager, told Euronews that there were both "negative and positive aspects" to the European Commission's decision given that only three routes are affected.
"It's going in the right direction, but the initial measure is one that's (not very) ambitious. We must go even further," she said.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday December 15 2022, @11:41AM (1 child)
>That's how they got there in the first place!
Yep, we are all descendants of refugees, my family were kicked out of Europe mostly as indentured servants who ended up in East / Central Tennessee in the early 1800s.
Thing is: refugee life is nothing I aspire to, and it's not great for the places the refugees end up, either. Ask Europe how they are liking their latest wave...
Relocation by choice to significantly better circumstances is one thing. Relocation because your food and shelter are insufficient to support a family with 2.1 children just sucks for all involved.
>
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday December 15 2022, @11:55AM
Somehow the cell phone hit submit for me, I think it's the rubber case conducting sporadic touch signals...
>by doing so, they can help those generations of family, friends, and people relocate to those better places.
Yeah, because that's how it works in fairy tales and a tiny minority of real life cases. I despise lottery culture: people who base their ideas of how to govern on what is possible for one in a million and trying to ignore the unpleasant reality lived by everyone else.
>If this network is so good, then it can fund its own internet connections and other such infrastructure, right?
As previously covered, that would be the national network of support which has rolled out all the previous national infrastructure projects that we enjoy today. Interstate highways looked like an expensive luxury / boondoggle when they were first constructed, still do to me in places like west Louisiana - hundreds of miles of lightly traveled four lane limited access for what? But they still drive connectivity and economic activity wherever they go. The payback is obvious, decades after the initial construction.
🌻🌻 [google.com]