Date published: 2009/06/09
The BBC says:
Policymakers must consider more than just "tailpipe" emissions when assessing the impacts of different modes of transport, say researchers.
Many analyses overlook greenhouse gases emitted in constructing and maintaining travel infrastructures, they added.
The team found that, based on passenger kilometres travelled, off-peak urban bus services were more carbon-intensive than flights by commercial aircraft.
...
The researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, said the importance of tackling emissions from transport meant that decisions should not be based on partial data."Governmental policy has historically relied on energy and emission analysis of automobiles, buses, trains and aircraft at their tailpipe," they wrote.
"[This ignores] vehicle production and maintenance, infrastructure provision and fuel production requirements to support these modes.
"To date, a comprehensive life-cycle assessment (LCA) of passenger transportation in the US has not been completed."
It is amazing how often the academic middle class people who run the country completely ignore life cycle analysis and instead focus on one narrow component of energy usage (which just happens to shore up their anti-car and anti-plane mentality). At least here this is one study which tries to go further. But this study itself is not complete because they ignore the indirect energy usage (and so emissions) due to labour.
_________________________________________________________
All material not included from other sources is copyright cambridge2000.com.
For further information or questions email: info [at] cambridge2000 [dot] com
(replace "[at]" with "@" and "[dot]" with ".").