@dredmorbius@toot.cat@tindall@cybre.space And some modes are notably efficient. Ships and trains, by units of mass*distance/fuel are phenomenally efficient, up to 500 ton-miles/gallon for rail, perhaps double that for marine or canal shipping.
Trucks are much less efficient but far more flexible. And passenger cars are comparatively abysmal.
With bulk cargo, scale again matters. Endpoint distribution is hard (the last-mile problem). Rural delivery is similarly difficult (package-delivery services love the high-margin urban areas, but defer to national postal services for rural delivery, typical of any networked-distribution system: mail, electricity, POTS telephony, cellular telephony, broadband internet, retail chains, ...).
The biggest impact of the automobile has been on land-use patterns.
#EnergyFlowDiagrams #SankeyCharts #LLNL #Sustainability #ClimateChange #CarbonEmissions #EnergyConsumption #Energy
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