Planes (and Trains) and Automobiles
WE’RE IN THE MIDDLE of one revolution—and are soon to launch another. These upheavals, both leading to a more sustainable future, are the products not of human conflict but of human ingenuity. Simply put, we’re utterly reinventing how we get from here to there. “Cars and trucks are undergoing their greatest makeover since the automobile’s inception more than a century ago,” writer Craig Welch notes in the first of this issue’s two stories on the future of transportation. Almost overnight, electric cars are proliferating, as carbon dioxide-belching internal combustion engines head for the endangered species list. In air transportation, the other mode we examine, change is more gradual. There are promising developments in sustainable aviation fuel made from waste products, planes fueled by “green” hydrogen, and aircraft with zero-emission, battery-powered electric engines. Most…