Life-cycle research suggests aviation may cause less environmental impact than rail

Environmental life-cycle research done by Mikhail Chester and Arpad Horvath from the University of California, Berkeley questions the assumptions being made about the climate-change impact of the various passenger transport modes. The research includes the climate change impact of construction of the necessary infrastructure and vehicle manufacture (HTs to SciTechDaily and Transport Gooru).

The researchers have established a web site http://www.sustainable-transportation.com/ NEW that has links to the 8-page results summary of the research published on 8 June 2009 in Environmental Research Letters and some of the media coverage their work has received.

There are parallels in this research to that being done on so-called "food miles" (see previous post).

Will the Bishop of London now change his attitude to rail versus air transport (see previous post)? Perhaps not given that the 9 June 2009 BBC coverage of the research failed to include the conclusions on heavy rail!