If externalities were actually enforced on the air sector, it would be completely replaced with high speed rail except for travel across the ocean, and even then shipping would become more prominent. The problem of giving free passes is you are artificially strangling the alternatives. It becomes much more cost effective to build high speed electric rail when your only option for jet fuel is biodiesel or paying the real costs of climate impact.

Right, it’s a lot better to give somebody a better alternative first if you want the public on board. Build up public transit, build up regional and high speed rail and leave planes for long distances that are unfortunately suited for trains and cars (e.g. international, cross-continental, etc.)

for a minuscule impact on climate.

who defines what is miniscule here? what if an oil baron deems 20% to be miniscule? do we all go swimming in their blackened beaches?

how is 2% miniscule? and who says that emission reduction exercises have to stop at 2%?

it’s sometime very easy to minimise the seriousness of something with the clever use of generic statements. there are enough spin doctors already trying to pull the wool over our eyes–we don’t need to help them by also shooting ourselves in the foot.

It is not taking away vacations or delicious fruits, there are many lower impact alternatives for vacations and food, you just have to get out of the habits and trends, there are great things to discovers everywhere.
Also, I don’t advocate for prohibition but rather for reduction proportional to footprint. Your dream is to take the plane to go to another continent? Do it, but maybe once every 5 years instead of every year, and switch to train and discovery of your region with hiking for the other years.

If we don’t start taking away things that people enjoy then in a hundred years it won’t be an issue anymore 👍

That attitude is how you make no progress on climate

I start in a similar place but go the other direction. Airline travel is an important personal luxury, and crucial to global business or politics. While in the ideal it may be unnecessary, you’re not going to get people to give it up willingly, and they’d argue there’s no other option for such travel. So, what can we do?

The industry is great at adopting efficient technology but it can’t even keep up with growth in demand, much less reduce carbon emissions. So what else can we do?

1. We need to drive/incent/require widespread usage of Synfuel/biofuel. At least then you’re just moving carbon currently active in the carbon cycle, rather than adding yet more carbon that’s been sequestered for hundreds of millions of years.
2. Trains. We need to spend a lot more on trains. In this case we need to give people a more climate friendly option for travelling between cities up to 500 miles or so apart. We need trains to replace every short flight, so the carbon emissions from flying are at least only spent when there’s no other option. I read that France has started with bans on flights between a few cities with good rail service. Here in the US, we’re way behind with high speed rail but Acela is good enough to replace flying between a few cities, like Boston to NYC