Frequent and cheap air travel is a recent phenomenon, we can abandon it without going back to the Stone Age.

Who has no choice but to fly three or more times a year? Do they really have no choice?

I am reminded of an acquaintance of mine who once told me he had no choice but to drive, because he lived in a little village with one bus a day, but commuted into London. What he had overlooked is that he'd chosen to live in this village.

Pretty sure it doesn't take a literal ton of fuel to move me across Europe in a train. In an airplane, it does.

Depends on the plane and the load factor. Assuming a conservative 80 mpg per seat a flight from Moscow to London would consume the following to move your tail between locations:

1554 miles / (80 miles/gallon) * 6.8 lbs/gallon = 132 lbs

I was actually a bit surprised how little it is. It gets better in newer aircraft assuming all seats are taken.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_fuel

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft#Mediu...

Time is more valuable.

Indeed it is.

There'll be time after us.

You aren't against pricing in more of the externalities though, right?

For example, a round trip flight between NY and London is said to melt 3 cubic meters of arctic ice per passenger. So it wouldn't be unreasonable for airlines to be required to offset that in some way?

If so, then we just disagree on how to structure the tax but mostly agree on the need to reduce damaging flights.

What remarkable luck they were born after planes were invented!