As we worship our big steel Gods returning to Kingsford Smith and Tullamarine, a basic stat about our travel…

As we worship our big steel Gods returning to Kingsford Smith and Tullamarine, a basic stat about our travel obsession. An A380 burns 10-11 TONNES of fuel *per hour*. #auspol /1 https://t.co/31QlMZfcdK

Flying on one of these babies to London will therefore burn between about 260 tonnes of fuel. That's about half a tonne of fuel, per person. To fill one of these jets requires 6 or 7 of those fuel tankers you see filling up the tanks at your local servo. For one trip. /2

Obviously this is the 'normal' world we have pined for (nothing defines our whining about Covid more than our plea to get back in the air). A tonne of fuel for a jaunt to London and back, per person. Mathematical wonks say, yes but per km, this is still pretty efficient. /3

Uh huh. A flesh-and-blood creature who can walk at about 5 km/h, travelling 17,000km in a day is some indication of how fossil fuels allowed us to tap energy that took several millions years to form, and burn it inside 3 centuries. Our old normal can't survive. /end