I first wanted to write about what a protein is, but I don’t get it so I will not. Also I will not finish this article but put it out before I am done.
On a simpler topic: I tend to argue that flying is one of the best uses of carbon that exist. As in, if I had a budget of one ton of carbon, I would probably use as much as possible for flying compared to eating meat, pieces of clothing, etc. This clearly is a personal choice - if one does not need/want to travel then clearly restricting flying to zero makes sense.
Data Co2 Gram per Passenger per KM:
Planes: 90 (Source)
Train: 32 (Source)
Car: 110 (Source)
Obviously there are dramatic simplifications, the car emissions do not take into account the carbon required to build the road and assumes one passenger. The train data is based on the mix of electricity in the grid in Germany 2022 and ignores the investment in the infrastructure. The plane data is used on revenue kilometres, so ignores the shuffling of empty planes.
Next up, speed:
Simply because of the amazing speed of an aircraft and the fact that it does not need rails or roads I’ll keep flying.
For easier maths, that is roughly 4 hours of private flight per month, that is 48 hours per year, let's say 50. The emissions per hour roughly 200 kg. This leads to 10 Tons of Emissions per year.
To offset these emissions, will require a price of carbon. In the EU the ton costs roughly 100€ which is fair - buying those leads to abatement somewhere else. For removal, cheaper options exist (see for example McKinsey) but arguably abatement is better than removal for now which is why reducing the supply in the European market is my preference.
In summary, with 10 ton *100 €/ton = 1000€ a year eliminates the cost of the damage to the climate but delivers 700/150= 4.6 times faster speed than train.