Honestly I think most aviation should just go away. There are legitimate reasons for people and high-value cargo and mail to use planes to get places in a hurry, but I'd rather people treat plane flights as a rare luxury rather than a routine thing. The energy costs are enormous, and civilization is kind of in a wile-e-coyote-ran-past-the-cliff-edge-but-hasn't-looked-down situation with respect to climate change.
Electric aviation might be a huge improvement over burning kerosene with respect to CO2 emissions, but also reducing how much we rely on planes would go a long way too. I don't see electric air taxis being a good thing in almost any situation -- they're tremendously inefficient and they make a lot of noise. Air taxis for emergency responders might be an acceptable tradeoff.
If someone can come up with a good way to run a large airliner off of batteries in a practical fashion, then by all means I think that's worth doing, but I feel kind of obligated to be a wet blanket on the idea of the aviation industry suddenly revitalizing itself and everyone flying everywhere just because they can.
Electric aviation might be a huge improvement over burning kerosene with respect to CO2 emissions, but also reducing how much we rely on planes would go a long way too. I don't see electric air taxis being a good thing in almost any situation -- they're tremendously inefficient and they make a lot of noise. Air taxis for emergency responders might be an acceptable tradeoff.
If someone can come up with a good way to run a large airliner off of batteries in a practical fashion, then by all means I think that's worth doing, but I feel kind of obligated to be a wet blanket on the idea of the aviation industry suddenly revitalizing itself and everyone flying everywhere just because they can.