Fwd: Just plane wrong | The Guardian
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From: Down to Earth <in...@email.theguardian.com>Subject: Just plane wrong | The GuardianDate: 23 October 2025 at 1:08:29 PM GMT+2
When planes are pricier than trains, there’s a heavy social, financial and environmental cost
Ajit Niranjan If I want to get from Barcelona to London, I face what should be a simple choice: either I take the plane, and pump out about 280kg of pollution that heats the planet, or the train, and spew just 8kg.
That is not the calculation travellers are presented with, nor is it the one they care about most. Because while the plane ticket would cost €15, an analysis from Greenpeace found this summer, the train ticket would cost a galling €389.
That 25-fold difference in price is an extreme example of a barrier that crops up across the continent – and frustrates even the most climate-conscious travellers. This week, we’ll be looking at how Europe runs a system that favours planes over trains in spite of its green ambitions.
But first, this week’s climate headlines.
In focus
International rail travel is not new to Europe. The first tracks that crossed borders opened nearly 200 years ago, as coal-burning steam engines spread the Industrial Revolution through the continent and enabled the mass movement of people and goods.
But the rise of cars and planes have made train journeys less appealing, and today, even as Europe seeks to clean up its economy, the railway system is burdened by high prices and fragmented systems. In some countries – such as Germany, which long distance travellers will struggle to avoid – chronic underinvestment has led to frequent delays that can ruin a holiday or work trip.
Some of these problems seem easily fixable. When I travel from Berlin to London, a journey I make a few times a year, I have to book two separate tickets. If the first trains are late, which they often are, and I miss my connection, I can’t just jump on the next available train across the Channel – I have to buy a whole new ticket.
Similar issues occur at the booking stage, with many operators blocking external platforms from selling their tickets, according to nonprofit Transport and Environment (T&E). Some even hide competitors’ offers on their own sites.
This already puts people off climate-friendly transport. A YouGov pollcommissioned by T&E and published on Wednesday found more than 60% of long-distance rail travellers have avoided journeys because booking is a hassle, while 43% would use rail more if booking online were easier.
The EU has promised to address these issues with a single ticketing regulation, which is to be proposed before the end of the year – essentially, allowing you to book the cheapest route with just one click – but customers and green groups are still frustrated that little is being done to help trains compete with planes on price.
The Greenpeace study this summer looked at 109 cross-border routes in Europe and found that trains beat planes on just 39% of routes – a small improvement since they first ran the analysis two years ago. In France, Spain and the UK, trains were more expensive than flights on more than 90% of the cross-border routes they examined.
Why is it so much cheaper to fly than take the train? A big reason is tax. Unlike drivers and train travellers, fliers do not have to pay tax on jet fuel, and plane tickets are mostly exempt from VAT.
Transport scientists have found that removing the exorbitant subsidies that the aviation industry enjoys would help level the playing field and free up public money to invest in crumbling railways. They have also suggested policies such as frequent flier levies – which increase the tax on each subsequent flight a person takes in a year – could spread the burden so business travellers and extreme jet-setters shoulder most of the costs.
Much of the motivation for this is to address the societal costs that flying brings. If you factor in the damage that planet-heating pollution does to economies – from hotter heatwaves to stronger tropical cyclones – then aviation becomes even less attractive for a government to prop up. The UN-backed Corsia system to offset and reduce emissions, which becomes mandatory in 2027, addresses only a fraction of these costs.
Think about it another way. Last year, a study pegged the “social cost of carbon” at about €244 per ton. If trains and planes factored in the social cost of carbon, a train from Barcelona to London would cost just couple more euros, but it would make the flight nearly five times more expensive.From that perspective, the question is less, “Why are flights so cheap?” and more, “Who actually pays for them?”
Read more:
The most important number of the climate crisis: 424.4 Atmospheric CO2 in parts per million, 14 October 2025 Source: NOAA
Climate hero – Ian Falconer
Profiling an inspiring individual, suggested by Down to Earth readers
Where many of us see despair in plastic waste, Ian Falconer sees opportunity.
Inspired by the mounds of discarded plastic fishing nets he would see in Cornwall, England, the 52-year-old came up with an idea: “shredding and cleaning the worn out nets, melting the plastic down and converting it into filament to be used in 3D printing”.
“Every year, up to 1m tonnes of fishing nets are discarded,” Falconer told Rupert Neate. “Most of that ends up in landfill or is burned, or worse still finds its way back into the oceans. This showed there was another way.
His company, OrCa, raised more than £1m investment, which has turned into equipment that “can convert more than 20 kilos of nylon fishing nets an hour”. Rupert reports that “the nets that go into the shredder come out as small blue-green beads that Falconer sells to 3D printing companies, which convert them into strings of filament used in 3D printing. They also get sold around the world to replace new plastic in more conventional products that are made using injection moulding.”
If you’d like to nominate a climate hero, email downt...@theguardian.com
Climate jargon – Migration routes
Demystifying a climate concept you’ve heard in the headlines
The word “migration” may bring to mind birds banding together to head south to avoid chilly northern hemisphere winters. But all across the planet, migratory species follow seasonal or annual patterns of movement to get by. But for many, those routes are worsening as a result of the climate crisis and, increasingly, the actions of humans.
For just one example, Patrick Greenfield reported from Kenya this week on the elephants finding it harder to head to their usual sanctuaries – braving railway underpasses, bottlenecks or, worse, not moving at all.
Picture of the week
One image that sums up the week in environmental news
Credit: Stephen Axford
Mycologist Tom May has collaborated with renowned wildlife photographer Stephen Axford to produce Planet Fungi, a beautiful new book of photographs all about the weird and wonderful of, you guessed it, mushrooms and much more.
This Guardian gallery previews the book, with pictures of electric blue Entoloma eugenei, spores of Gibellula “inhabiting” spider corpses, the above charming Nidula niveotomentosa and so many other fungi.
For more of the week’s best environmental pictures, catch up on The Week in Wildlife here
But – if you can afford to do so – here are three good reasons why you might consider becoming a Guardian supporter today:
