{"id":42968,"date":"2022-03-28T10:23:40","date_gmt":"2022-03-28T01:23:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/commentisfree\/2022\/mar\/28\/planes-trains-and-the-climate-crisis-why-new-zealand-shouldnt-be-closing-its-railways"},"modified":"2022-03-28T10:23:40","modified_gmt":"2022-03-28T01:23:40","slug":"planes-trains-and-the-climate-crisis-why-new-zealand-shouldnt-be-closing-its-railways-robert-mclachlan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=42968","title":{"rendered":"Planes, trains and the climate crisis \u2013 why New Zealand shouldn\u2019t be closing its railways | Robert McLachlan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>While there are plans to expand airports, railways have been dismantled \u2013 so how will the country decarbonise domestic travel?<\/p>\n<p>For a people represented by a unique flightless bird, Kiwis do a lot of flying. While globally, aviation emissions represented just under 3% of carbon dioxide emissions in 2019, for New Zealand the figure was 12%. New Zealand ranks sixth in per capita aviation emissions, at one tonne of carbon dioxide per person, about 10 times the world average. It <a href=\"https:\/\/ourworldindata.org\/grapher\/co2-emissions-domestic-aviation\">ranks fourth<\/a> for per capita emissions in domestic aviation \u2013 just ahead of Canada, even though Canada is 40 times the size of New Zealand.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps this is not surprising. New Zealand is far away from most population centres. It has a large tourist industry and a population with globally dispersed families \u2013 27% of the population was born overseas, and an estimated one million Kiwis live overseas.<\/p>\n<p>Robert McLachlan is a professor in applied mathematics at Massey University<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/commentisfree\/2022\/mar\/28\/planes-trains-and-the-climate-crisis-why-new-zealand-shouldnt-be-closing-its-railways\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While there are plans to expand airports, railways have been dismantled \u2013 so how will the country decarbonise domestic travel?For a people represented by a unique flightless bird, Kiwis do a lot of flying. While globally, aviation emissions represented&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1865,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,65,56,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-environment","category-new-zealand","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1865"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42968"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42968\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42969,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42968\/revisions\/42969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}