Ilia Smilga

@FreeMan - of course! But you need to think quantitatively. A train usually consumes 5 to 10 times less energy per passenger and per kilometer than an airplane.

@RyanfaeScotland Oh, sorry, I should have read your comment more carefully.

@RyanfaeScotland "I agree its the choice we would all make" -> well, I'm about to go from Moscow to France by train. I've done this round-trip about 4 times this year, always by train. So, no, global warming is NOT inevitable if you put in the effort :-) I agree, though, that there ARE circumstances where flights are pretty much inevitable. And, yes, transoceanic crossings are one of them (provided, of course, that forgoing the trip is not an option)!

I agree with the key point that the CO2 footprint of the flight itself dwarfs that of anything else that happens on that flight. If you are unable to take the train instead of flying (family emergency, unavoidable transoceanic trip etc.), your next concern should be to minimize the total weight of you and your baggage combined. On a 6000km flight, every extra kilogram of weight carried leads roughly to an extra 0.2L of fuel consumed. So that e.g. going to the bathroom just before boarding leads to a very significant CO2 reduction (seriously!).

@jamesqf: it would have made sense if I had needed the car on any kind of regular basis - like, at least once a week. Otherwise (I think) the insurance would have made it too expensive.

Of course :-) I've spent 3 years in the US, and most of the time I have managed just fine with a bike and public transportation. The one time I tried to rent a car and failed, though, was a really unpleasant surprise...

One word of caution, though: some rental car companies flat out refuse to rent you a car if you do not have a credit card.

@forest Well, concerning myself, I followed the link to the DMZ from this question: security.stackexchange.com/questions/199971/… . I actually had no intention to "join" the chat: apparently it just happened automatically when I followed the link. Since it was a question with a lot of views, this is probably how the other users joined it, too :-)

@forest: well, thank you! I updated my website link. Just curious: why were you interested in my profile? And why did you post the remark here (rather than a private message or something), while I did not post anything in this chat room before?

Maybe the camps you are thinking of are a bit further north, on the Petite Ceinture or something like that?

"head Northeast to the Avenue de Flandre. Proceed up the Avenue a few blocks and turn left on to any side street. There you will find a somewhat post-apocalyptic venue where migrants have created a camp site." -> are you sure? Looking on Google Maps, all the left side streets up to the Corentin Cariou station (so 1,6km, and at least four "blocks" by any definition), though by no means affluent, look like regular city streets with ordinary houses (well, mostly housing projects) and shops. I'd find it hard to believe that even one of them could house a migrant camp, let alone all of them.