It's the perfect symbol of Hacker News and Silicon Valley culture, overconfidence in using technology to automate something but making it worse in the big picture.
Only the broken headlines that would otherwise have been good are noticeable. The vast sea of bad headlines that are fixed or buried or discouraged from posting in the first place aren't visible.
I don't see how "525" contributes any value. I gather that the point of the post is to show off a data visualization of a lot of planes leaving Las Vegas. The number feels like an implementation detail.
Anyone else think banning private jets would be generally a much better thing for climate? I find it pretty shocking the rich are allowed to pollute the way they do.
All aviation, altogether, private jets inclusive, is less than 3% of world emissions. Getting people fired up about rich people using private jets is just a distraction from the truth in the same way that paper straws are. The reality is that a small handful of industries generate the majority of pollution, and they have no meaningful regulatory pressure to stop, and that even that mostly pales in comparison to the emissions generated by electricity production, which we need to decarbonize as quickly as possible.
>> 3% is a pretty big reduction for such a simple thing...
> You think getting rid of aviation is a simple thing?
That's not what was suggested, initially. Just the private jets. Then there have been some numbers thrown around, so it's not clear where the 3% comes from (1/2 of 7%?). Kneejerk opposition by taking the least charitable interpretation, is not constructive. One point is that something measurable, is action in the right direction, rather than whataboutism...even if it's only marginally effective, it's a mindset change for the following generations. Policies that are easy to understand (like banning personal jets) are more likely to be enacted than complicated carbon capture laws. That's another point being made.
The very first sentence in the parent comment is "All aviation, altogether, private jets inclusive, is less than 3% of world emissions." So your comment is completely off base.
Okay, and the person who replied was clearly talking about private planes. Hence the “so simple” part. Unless you interpret it uncharitably, like the person who replied to you said.
Hence, this is what I meant by choosing the least charitable interpretation. At least read through the thread to get the context and try to imagine different positions. Usually, people are trying to contribute to a conversation, even if they communicate it badly. If that's too much, get used to nobody caring about what you think or arguing until they get bored. It's certainly boring to talk to a wall.
Notice, it's a very common occurrence. People note that something posted is inaccurate, in their own personal interpretation. It's usually not directed at them, but there's a need to correct the posted because of their personal interpretation (re: xkcd Duty Calls). This is not to say, I've never been guilty of this (maybe this post is a great example). Sometimes I want to argue. Sometimes I want to explore my own beliefs, given another person's position, and get it recorded somewhere. That being said, I can recognize that it's not constructive for the conversation at hand and I'm trying to do better, while still growing my own understanding.
Very easy, easier you would thought Just drill few holes on top of the jets, pour hot water as long youll see the water leveling from windows, make it half. Pour also few bucket of yeast and ton of sugar. Shield the holes carefully, let the jet be in sunshine and follow from needed distance what happens.
I rather that aviation contributes 1.5% instead of 3%. Of course, industries that pollute more should work harder to reduce their pollution.
Rather than banning private jet, we could ask that private jet uses only carbon neutral fuels, since they could afford it. However, it might cause rich people to pollute more by using their cars instead of flying, so there's a balancing act.
> rather that aviation contributes 1.5% instead of 3%
This describes massively raising the cost of package shipment and air travel. (You can’t cut aviation emissions in half with only private jets or even all of general aviation.)
Were that to happen, I know my responses would probably include buying a larger car (to make travel more comfortable) and possibly expanding my house (since I can’t leave it as often). It would probably play differently in Europe, where passenger rail is a real alternative, granted.
> we could ask that private jet uses only carbon neutral fuels
> However, it might cause rich people to pollute more by using their cars instead of flying, so there's a balancing act.
Sustainable Aviation Fuel is ~$1/liter vs ~$.5 for regular fuel. For a "big" Global 7500 that burns 2kL/hr the markup is $1k/hr on a plane that usually costs $15-20k/hr to rent.
Doesn't seem like a big markup for people who care about their public image.
> we could ask that private jet uses only carbon neutral fuels
As was pointed out, this would be for "feel good" purposes only. Private jets are a small part of total aviation emissions, which are themselves a small part of global carbon emissions.
It would be a case of something like "statistical murder" where resources or dollars are spent on making a small difference when the same resources or dollars could be spent on something else that make a much bigger difference.
The elephant in the room is electrical generation. That is where all effort needs to be focused until we reach the point of diminishing returns and the tradeoff vs. other opportunities makes something else worth pursuing.
This is the NIMBY of polluting. Everyone can point to other emissions and say "mines only 3%, worry about those other 50% guys over there." when I bet one of the top "small handful of industries" you're going to point to is something like concrete that is literally making affordable buildings for the peasants to live in while homelessness is already far too high.
The real question is what actual reductions you think are easy to make on which particular industries that doesn't make housing, electricity, and heat more expensive for the global median income of $3k, while these people are private jetting to watch a football game in person that's on TV. Because when it comes to 0.5% of emissions, I know I'm going to pick taxing wasteful private jets rather than charge the global poor another $50 they don't have. Not to mention the messaging and optics, ffs look at that thread. Hypocritical private jetting is not how you get people collectively on board to fight climate change. If they have to sacrifice, you do too.
I know it's super in vogue to hate the rich or whatever, but if we want to effectively fight climate change we have to do so strategically, supported by data.
The data is pretty clear on this matter, the absolute priority is reducing the carbon footprint of electricity production, the second priority should be reducing the carbon footprint of cargo transport and agriculture, and the third priority should be reducing the carbon footprint of manufacturing. Aligned to each of these is a consistent reduction in how much fossil fuels we extract, especially natural gas which due to pipeline leakage contributes a huge amount of methane into the atmosphere, which is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.
I am /very/ specifically not doing some sort of whataboutism based fingerpointing to things that affect the poor in order to defend the rich. I don't care about rich and poor, we're all human beings, and we're all currently headed towards an extinction level event for our entire species because people are distracted by stupid things that don't matter and ignoring the data. Your heart bleeding for the global poor is smoke and mirrors in the face of it all.
We, as a species, cannot afford to bring everyone to the same standard of living that exists in the West today while combatting climate change. If we're being really blunt, the standard of living in the West must also be reduced. Perhaps if we ever completely get on renewable electricity production and find a way to turn excess energy into removing carbon from the atmosphere we can reassess what it takes to increase the global standard of living, but we're already fucked as it is just doing what we're already doing, expending more resources extracted from the earth to spew more waste into the atmosphere than we already are is an absolute non-starter.
My mindset is likely 95% the same as yours. However, it is also important to curtail wasteful private jet emissions, even if electricity and standards of living are bigger priorities. What I'm also trying to get at, is if you want political consensus on tackling climate change (which half of the US electorate doesn't give af about emissions currently), then we need to have better optics and put some self-sacrifice in. This reddit thread is a damning example that you can't tell everyone climate change is going to affect their standard of living, meanwhile "doesn't affect me, I can throw unlimited $ at private jets whenever I need to watch football."
There was a Bill Gates interview with some guy from the BBC doing a half hour sit down. He asked about the private jets, Bill waffled about having lots of meetings and that his work/investment was to help with projects that would reduce carbon use, etc. etc.
You could tell that 1st class on a public airline was below him and that was his red line. We can take his "help" with the private jet, or we can leave it.
These are elites that want US to change our behaviour. I'm sure a lot of people would rather drive their car than use public transport, Bill. Maybe you could lead by example...
Presumably any coordinated global action on climate change including from countries who produce semi and auto. If globe wants to limit emissions, they're not going to be taking 3% from billions who emit less than that. Gov that cares will lower your standard if living if they care enough. See France trying to ban domestic flights. I mean obviously no one is going to kill global aviation, but private jets, why not.
> Personally I don't want plastic trash polluting the environment.
Ban throwing them into the environment, then. I've never thrown my plastic straws into the ocean, that happens further down the line of trash disposal. So why should I be the one who's punished for it?
> PFAS were found in the majority of the straws tested and were most common in those made from paper and bamboo, found the study, published in Food Additives & Contaminants. [1]
I would prefer not to consume this with my drink [2].
Not every seemingly positive action is actually positive. Second order effects must be always considered.
> I'm happy if restricting single use plastic like plastic straws helps even a small amount to reduce plastic pollution.
Then well, okay. A small victory for you, a huge loss for the focus on solving the problem.
Is it a coincidence that the Media focuses on trivialities that are all about “consumer choice”? No. It’s so that we lose focus on the greater picture. Things like restructuring society.
Oh, everything in this store is wrapped in plastic? Nevermind that, shopper—use our reusable bags that cost way more energy and plastic to manufacture. Don’t be a plastic-sinner.
And you’re just gonna lose that battle. The Media can churn out thousands of concern-troll articles about plastic straws for every little nudge of care in a plebian comment section somewhere on the Internet.
The only reason the Media has to care a little bit about it is because of the absurdity of taking a private jet to Davos or whatever to discuss climate change.
> The reality is that a small handful of industries generate the majority of pollution
No, your argument is the distraction. "Lets do nothing, there's these big guys over here doing worse". And for whom do these industries generate goods and services for?
Please point to where I said "Lets do nothing" /anywhere/ on this issue? I think we need to do numerous things, immediately, and drastically. Distracting ourselves with complaining about the rich is not one of those things, because it /is/ a distraction.
The problem with this line of thinking in my opinion is that we have 30x3% problems... sure individually they would not make a difference but we need to act on all front.
The problem is that the idea is we should make personal sacrifices for the sake of the climate (I agree that we should generally speaking) and do things like ban gas stoves. Ok.
But when you tell me that and then I see people and companies writing off private jets as a business expense, all that makes me want to do is say get your hands off my stove because clearly this can't be that serious of a problem [1] if this is continuing to occur.
Nobody will be willing to make sacrifices voluntarily that wealthier people aren't and so we have a big marketing problem here. Raise the taxes on private jets and aviation fuel for them 5,000% and have those go to funding climate science (or some other general idea here) and we can talk about my stove.
> The reality is that a small handful of industries generate the majority of pollution
You can pick your pie chart, and they'll all be a bit different based on the categories they choose. I like this one from 2016 because, even though it's 8 years old, it seems to have all the sectors:
If you want to get to zero emissions, you have to replace or remove all of these:
Iron and Steel: 7.2%
Road Transport: 11.9%
Aviation Transport: 1.7%
Commercial Buildings: 6.6%
Residential Buildings: 10.9%
Cement: 3.0%
Those are all small percentages. There's really no one thing you can eliminate to solve the majority of the problem.
If you went by broader strokes, let's say you get rid of:
ALL of Industry: 29.4%
ALL of Transportation: 16.2%
ALL energy for buildings: 17.5%
ALL agriculture: 18.4%
So at that point, we're basically back in the stone age and the various waste categories will be zero too. But then you'd have 8 billion people huddling around fire pits, which isn't zero emission either.
If anyone is inclined to find another pie chart to contradict this one, make sure it's not focused on the emissions in just one tiny sector. We can say that everyone should have electric cars because ICEs are 99% of vehicle emissions, but fixing 99% of 11.9% of the total problem isn't going to solve the total problem.
No there's not. There's multiple things which need to happen. If you halve those commercial, residential, road and aviation figures that's a decent start. It's not the full answer, but it's part of the answer.
People have to see everyone doing their part though. Back in WW2 when food was rationed it didn't really make any difference if the 1% had 3 times as much, but if people saw that we weren't "all in it together" then nothing would get done.
I don't agree with that. It makes people feel good to say "every little bit helps" as they pretend they're doing their part, but I don't hear anyone saying that halving emissions is sufficient to stop any problems. And halving that list is less than 15% of the total. Little bits don't help - they're pointless gestures.
We might have been able to get away with a goal of non-zero if we had reduced carbon emissions 40 years ago, but now our goal is 0. So that means we must eliminate or sequester from all sectors, including aviation.
If you say "we should attack the bigger numbers first", well we have started those. We have started replacing electricity generation with renewables, started replacing ICE cars with electric, and started replacing fossil heating with electric heat pumps.
Banning private jets may be an unreasonable ask, but forcing private jets to 6x their fuel costs to use net-zero fuels is not an unreasonable ask, IMO.
Of course it has meaning to the people doing it. But this is one (of many) example of people who are so self-absorbed that they don't even think twice about doing harm to everyone else in order to engage in a recreational activity that could be done with far less impact. It's that disregard for people that I condemn.
You could do this for anything though. Eating meat for the frivolous reason of enjoying the taste even though it's far less efficient than eating plants.
Everything that doesn't impact ourselves is an easy target.
Sure, yes. What's a more realistic way to implement this in the USA while still allowing small-plane hobbyists to fly easily? Could the FAA mandate landing fees based on emissions / passengers?
Only when looking at things globally, and that's mostly because the vast majority of the world population is exceptionally poor with a matching low standard of living. If you look at things in developed countries, the difference in carbon footprint between rich and poor is not nearly so stark. We are /all/ to blame, and we are /all/ going to suffer for it, so we need to pull our heads out of our asses and stop turning this into some ridiculous "us" vs "them" situation that it isn't. There is no us, there is no them, we're all on the same spinning rock in space, breathing the same air.
"Only when looking at things globally" is a very interesting thing to say. I'm with you, generally, only that I consider myself part of the "them", and us v them definitely makes sense, given the absurd distribution of resource consumption.
Except that it literally is "us vs them", with "them" being the tiny fraction of humans with nearly all the money and "power" who want to keep right on with "business as usual" because money is more important than life, and "us" being all the rest of humanity who literally don't matter in the slightest to "them". We can all die a horrible death for all they care. They just don't understand (nor want to understand) that their actions are gonna end them just as surely as it's gonna end the rest of us. It just might take a tiny bit longer for them to die in their luxury doomsday bunkers.
Irrelevant. You don’t get major changes like this through individual action even when a large majority want it.
You have to regulate industry to achieve such change. Or regulate consumers to indirectly influence industry. “Well people evidently want them to pollute or they’d do something else” is somewhere in not-even-wrong territory—it can only come from not being familiar with the problem space.
And all those industries use 100% perfectly minimal pollution and carbon releasing systems, processes, and services right? What's that? They don't because it costs 2% more to sequester the carbon you release rather than just looking the other way and pocketing the money while you sell.
> You’d be better off getting cargo ships to stop using sludge for fuel
We're doing that. The thing is, cutting the sulfur aerosols emitted by bunker fuel burning ships has possibly led to a rise in ocean surface temperatures. The sulfur oxides were like a mini, constant Krakatoa. They caused a minor volcanic winter year round. Lots of anti global warming geoengineering projects involve emitting sulfur higher in the atmosphere to block the sun, and we were already kind of doing that. So it turns out we've really _really_ painted ourselves into a corner as regards global warming.
Might be helpful to define it for people - a pigouvian tax is a tax on something to balance out the negative externality it inflicts on society. A carbon tax like you’re suggesting seems like our best hope of averting disaster. I’m not sure what would get it done, though, it would be very much against the short term interests of the rich, since they’d bear the brunt, as the largest emitters, and would massively disrupt the status quo in terms of what products are most cost effective. Making it revenue-neutral by dividending out all takings would help with its political popularity, and make it so it would positively impact the poor (since they use less carbon per capita than the average). But still seems hard to get it passed. It’s a bit wonkish, which is a big problem compared to something that feels better, like “ban all private planes!”.
But that's not really what you want is it? You want to ban private jets being used for reasons that you think are idiotic. You presumably don't have an issue with private jets being used for sensible productivity enhancing reasons. The real question is, who would you like to determine which is which?
Note that this question covers much more ground then just private jets.
> You presumably don't have an issue with private jets being used for sensible productivity enhancing reasons
What are those? Could it have been a Zoom meeting? I'm not the person you're replying to, but I also have a problem with those jets you're mentioning..
I would assume by making decisions that push people towards technologies or lifestyles that have massive negative externalities but high profits (e.g. Car culture, unrepairable technology) or lobby for businesses/laws that are net negative for society (e.g. Oil & Gas, Pollution regulations for farming, energy and manufacturing).
The private jet attention I think is perfectly valid but is akin to blaming people for their "carbon footprint" when much of that footprint is a choice made on your behalf by not providing/burying alternatives and subsidizing polluters.
> I would assume by making decisions that push people towards technologies or lifestyles that have massive negative externalities but high profits (e.g. Car culture, unrepairable technology) or lobby for businesses/laws that are net negative for society (e.g. Oil & Gas, Pollution regulations for farming, energy and manufacturing).
See? “Pushing” and “lifestyles”. Clearly the framing is still centered on the “consumer” (apt word) even when the whole paragraph discusses the role that the rich play.
Yes. The rich helped build a country (or countries) of car-dependence. You can’t vote-with-your-wallet for country-wide road networks. Same with suburbs. And high-priced apartments in areas where the jobs are.
So you get the so-called suburbia lifestyle which is committed by the so-called consumers.
Commuting 1 1/2 hours a day in rush hour traffic because you live in suburbia in order to work in the city center where the “good jobs” are, the great lifestyle dream.
The extremely wealthy (think Koch and friends) probably have done a lot worse by influencing the world to remain dependent on fossil fuels much longer than it should have. If the strides we are making now were made in the 80s, we would be in a far better place.
I don’t understand the impasse. Do rich people have power or not? Are we complaining about them affording and using private jets and at the same time not believing that they have a large hand in shaping and ruling society as well?
Well I’m assuming that we are complaining about all the rich people and not just spoiled trust fund kids.
No, we should just tax the shit out of carbon emissions and then redistribute all proceeds evenly per-capita. Much better than spending limited attention and political energy/capital on piecemeal bans. We need to halt 100% of new carbon entering the carbon cycle, not just the stuff that seems egregious enough to get people riled up about, and we need to align the economic incentives to have a hope of getting there in the timeframe that we need to.
This is a plan that’s supported by a very large number of top economists, I’ve seen it called something like a “Carbon Dividend with Border Carbon Adjustment”: https://clcouncil.org/our-plan/
How would this work? A major political figure or celebrity just hangs out at gate A33 waiting for their flight while a mob gathers? Or are only certain people allowed to own private jets? Or are only certain destinations allowed if for "worthy" reasons?
I live in Canada, and it's strange that we are able to ban little things like single use plastic bags, cutleries, and straws, but not ban big ticket items like private jets.
As long as none of those people have lectured us or people below them about climate change then I'm fine. One flight from LA to Vegas is the same CO2 the same as 40,000 cars doing the trip?
I'm wondering if this stat is calculated correctly, because there's not room for 525 private jets to be sitting around at once there, let alone in the giant airplane parking lots in Arizona.
a random redditor who didn't link to a source said that they could accommodate 475 parked jets, and that the others flew in from other airports to drop off/pick up their passenger and immediately left
yeah i was going to say pick ups staged at other airports would be possible.
i saw the random reddit stuff too but still...it's got to be, if that is a count of departures, that they left off the arrivals that didn't stay.
i mean that's like O'Hare raised to the ATL exponent, as stated.
I'm honestly a little surprised it's not more. In the small SEC town where I went to college, there would be dozens of private planes that would leave shortly after a home football game. Not all were jets, but some where.
I don't know from experience, but I'd argue the entire point of private jets is to not have to share anything with anyone. These are a different class of people; they don't think like you or I do.
I agree with your point's sentiment, but I doubt anyone in here is chartering a bus or van to attend an event their neighbors are also attending the next town over.
They think the same way we do. We play the game at the level we can afford. Their game is higher level, but it is played the same.
Pulling my plane out of the hangar is no different than pulling the Subaru out of the garage. Thinking about sharing the ride never enters into it. I don't need to trade reduced cost for increased efficiency and reduced convenience. Neither do these 525 jet owners or charter clients.
Lots of comments in that thread more or less saying "The drive back to LA would be the same time as the flight"...
These people have never left Vegas on a Sunday and it shows. That drive is 4 hours, without traffic. With traffic it's an easy 7, I've heard of it being as high as 13. So yeah, if you've got a jet, and the money to fly it, I'd say that you can probably justify using it here, it's like half the time.
Though, even flying commercial would save almost the same amount of time, you might pick up an extra hour, much more waiting around, but, beats being stuck in the middle of BFE in traffic.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 210 ms ] threadAccording to this [1], 28% of US emissions are from transport, and for the aircraft it's 7% of the 28% for commercial and 2% of 28% private.
That does seem like mostly a non-issue.
[1] https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...
> You think getting rid of aviation is a simple thing?
That's not what was suggested, initially. Just the private jets. Then there have been some numbers thrown around, so it's not clear where the 3% comes from (1/2 of 7%?). Kneejerk opposition by taking the least charitable interpretation, is not constructive. One point is that something measurable, is action in the right direction, rather than whataboutism...even if it's only marginally effective, it's a mindset change for the following generations. Policies that are easy to understand (like banning personal jets) are more likely to be enacted than complicated carbon capture laws. That's another point being made.
Notice, it's a very common occurrence. People note that something posted is inaccurate, in their own personal interpretation. It's usually not directed at them, but there's a need to correct the posted because of their personal interpretation (re: xkcd Duty Calls). This is not to say, I've never been guilty of this (maybe this post is a great example). Sometimes I want to argue. Sometimes I want to explore my own beliefs, given another person's position, and get it recorded somewhere. That being said, I can recognize that it's not constructive for the conversation at hand and I'm trying to do better, while still growing my own understanding.
Rather than banning private jet, we could ask that private jet uses only carbon neutral fuels, since they could afford it. However, it might cause rich people to pollute more by using their cars instead of flying, so there's a balancing act.
This describes massively raising the cost of package shipment and air travel. (You can’t cut aviation emissions in half with only private jets or even all of general aviation.)
Were that to happen, I know my responses would probably include buying a larger car (to make travel more comfortable) and possibly expanding my house (since I can’t leave it as often). It would probably play differently in Europe, where passenger rail is a real alternative, granted.
> we could ask that private jet uses only carbon neutral fuels
I’m surprised this isn’t already a requirement.
Having a private jet deliver my amazon package is one of the new prime perks this year.
Second sentence buddy. You’re not cutting aviation emissions in half without cutting broader aviation.
Sustainable Aviation Fuel is ~$1/liter vs ~$.5 for regular fuel. For a "big" Global 7500 that burns 2kL/hr the markup is $1k/hr on a plane that usually costs $15-20k/hr to rent.
Doesn't seem like a big markup for people who care about their public image.
As was pointed out, this would be for "feel good" purposes only. Private jets are a small part of total aviation emissions, which are themselves a small part of global carbon emissions.
It would be a case of something like "statistical murder" where resources or dollars are spent on making a small difference when the same resources or dollars could be spent on something else that make a much bigger difference.
The elephant in the room is electrical generation. That is where all effort needs to be focused until we reach the point of diminishing returns and the tradeoff vs. other opportunities makes something else worth pursuing.
https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector
Yes it would.
Why should I as a lowly pleb suffer when the 1% just say "let them eat cake"
If Taylor Swift's electric bill doubles, she doesn't know. If Joe Bloggs' does it's a major impact.
The real question is what actual reductions you think are easy to make on which particular industries that doesn't make housing, electricity, and heat more expensive for the global median income of $3k, while these people are private jetting to watch a football game in person that's on TV. Because when it comes to 0.5% of emissions, I know I'm going to pick taxing wasteful private jets rather than charge the global poor another $50 they don't have. Not to mention the messaging and optics, ffs look at that thread. Hypocritical private jetting is not how you get people collectively on board to fight climate change. If they have to sacrifice, you do too.
The data is pretty clear on this matter, the absolute priority is reducing the carbon footprint of electricity production, the second priority should be reducing the carbon footprint of cargo transport and agriculture, and the third priority should be reducing the carbon footprint of manufacturing. Aligned to each of these is a consistent reduction in how much fossil fuels we extract, especially natural gas which due to pipeline leakage contributes a huge amount of methane into the atmosphere, which is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.
I am /very/ specifically not doing some sort of whataboutism based fingerpointing to things that affect the poor in order to defend the rich. I don't care about rich and poor, we're all human beings, and we're all currently headed towards an extinction level event for our entire species because people are distracted by stupid things that don't matter and ignoring the data. Your heart bleeding for the global poor is smoke and mirrors in the face of it all.
We, as a species, cannot afford to bring everyone to the same standard of living that exists in the West today while combatting climate change. If we're being really blunt, the standard of living in the West must also be reduced. Perhaps if we ever completely get on renewable electricity production and find a way to turn excess energy into removing carbon from the atmosphere we can reassess what it takes to increase the global standard of living, but we're already fucked as it is just doing what we're already doing, expending more resources extracted from the earth to spew more waste into the atmosphere than we already are is an absolute non-starter.
You could tell that 1st class on a public airline was below him and that was his red line. We can take his "help" with the private jet, or we can leave it.
These are elites that want US to change our behaviour. I'm sure a lot of people would rather drive their car than use public transport, Bill. Maybe you could lead by example...
Indonesia 270m 1.5%
Pakistan 210m 0.9%
Brazil 210m 1.2%
Bangladesh 160m 0.4%
Thats the 5 most populous countries after india, prc, us.
I'm happy if restricting single use plastic like plastic straws helps even a small amount to reduce plastic pollution.
If i can put up with a soggy straw after 15 mins in a drink, the ultra rich can fly 1st class more often.
I think this attitude gets the the heart of the problem. When it actually comes to lifestyle changes it suddenly becomes someone else's problem.
Ban throwing them into the environment, then. I've never thrown my plastic straws into the ocean, that happens further down the line of trash disposal. So why should I be the one who's punished for it?
I would prefer not to consume this with my drink [2].
Not every seemingly positive action is actually positive. Second order effects must be always considered.
[1] https://phys.org/news/2023-08-paper-straws-environment-plast...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per-_and_polyfluoroalkyl_subst...
Then well, okay. A small victory for you, a huge loss for the focus on solving the problem.
Is it a coincidence that the Media focuses on trivialities that are all about “consumer choice”? No. It’s so that we lose focus on the greater picture. Things like restructuring society.
Oh, everything in this store is wrapped in plastic? Nevermind that, shopper—use our reusable bags that cost way more energy and plastic to manufacture. Don’t be a plastic-sinner.
And you’re just gonna lose that battle. The Media can churn out thousands of concern-troll articles about plastic straws for every little nudge of care in a plebian comment section somewhere on the Internet.
The only reason the Media has to care a little bit about it is because of the absurdity of taking a private jet to Davos or whatever to discuss climate change.
Focus on solving real issues in real ways.
No, your argument is the distraction. "Lets do nothing, there's these big guys over here doing worse". And for whom do these industries generate goods and services for?
The problem is that the idea is we should make personal sacrifices for the sake of the climate (I agree that we should generally speaking) and do things like ban gas stoves. Ok.
But when you tell me that and then I see people and companies writing off private jets as a business expense, all that makes me want to do is say get your hands off my stove because clearly this can't be that serious of a problem [1] if this is continuing to occur.
Nobody will be willing to make sacrifices voluntarily that wealthier people aren't and so we have a big marketing problem here. Raise the taxes on private jets and aviation fuel for them 5,000% and have those go to funding climate science (or some other general idea here) and we can talk about my stove.
[1] It's a very serious problem.
You can pick your pie chart, and they'll all be a bit different based on the categories they choose. I like this one from 2016 because, even though it's 8 years old, it seems to have all the sectors:
https://ourworldindata.org/ghg-emissions-by-sector
If you want to get to zero emissions, you have to replace or remove all of these:
Those are all small percentages. There's really no one thing you can eliminate to solve the majority of the problem.If you went by broader strokes, let's say you get rid of:
So at that point, we're basically back in the stone age and the various waste categories will be zero too. But then you'd have 8 billion people huddling around fire pits, which isn't zero emission either.If anyone is inclined to find another pie chart to contradict this one, make sure it's not focused on the emissions in just one tiny sector. We can say that everyone should have electric cars because ICEs are 99% of vehicle emissions, but fixing 99% of 11.9% of the total problem isn't going to solve the total problem.
There isn't a silver bullet for this.
No there's not. There's multiple things which need to happen. If you halve those commercial, residential, road and aviation figures that's a decent start. It's not the full answer, but it's part of the answer.
People have to see everyone doing their part though. Back in WW2 when food was rationed it didn't really make any difference if the 1% had 3 times as much, but if people saw that we weren't "all in it together" then nothing would get done.
We might have been able to get away with a goal of non-zero if we had reduced carbon emissions 40 years ago, but now our goal is 0. So that means we must eliminate or sequester from all sectors, including aviation.
If you say "we should attack the bigger numbers first", well we have started those. We have started replacing electricity generation with renewables, started replacing ICE cars with electric, and started replacing fossil heating with electric heat pumps.
Banning private jets may be an unreasonable ask, but forcing private jets to 6x their fuel costs to use net-zero fuels is not an unreasonable ask, IMO.
This is why we have football games and why it's meaningful to see it in person, if you like to.
Everything that doesn't impact ourselves is an easy target.
Private jets aren’t even close to the worse things. They are just easy targets. Your worst offenders are industry.
Which produces for?
You have to regulate industry to achieve such change. Or regulate consumers to indirectly influence industry. “Well people evidently want them to pollute or they’d do something else” is somewhere in not-even-wrong territory—it can only come from not being familiar with the problem space.
We're doing that. The thing is, cutting the sulfur aerosols emitted by bunker fuel burning ships has possibly led to a rise in ocean surface temperatures. The sulfur oxides were like a mini, constant Krakatoa. They caused a minor volcanic winter year round. Lots of anti global warming geoengineering projects involve emitting sulfur higher in the atmosphere to block the sun, and we were already kind of doing that. So it turns out we've really _really_ painted ourselves into a corner as regards global warming.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-low-sulphur-shippin...
Private jets are so the rich can avoid the peasants. There’s no benefit for 99.99% of the rest of the world.
I interact with concrete on a daily basis, not so for private jets.
Note that this question covers much more ground then just private jets.
What are those? Could it have been a Zoom meeting? I'm not the person you're replying to, but I also have a problem with those jets you're mentioning..
While I may be in favor of more mass transit options, completely banning private options seems to be a step too far.
There is also the question of what qualifies as private. It seems anyone with enough wealth could easily create a company to own the plane they use.
Their private jets don’t matter in the grand scheme of things.
The private jet attention I think is perfectly valid but is akin to blaming people for their "carbon footprint" when much of that footprint is a choice made on your behalf by not providing/burying alternatives and subsidizing polluters.
See? “Pushing” and “lifestyles”. Clearly the framing is still centered on the “consumer” (apt word) even when the whole paragraph discusses the role that the rich play.
Yes. The rich helped build a country (or countries) of car-dependence. You can’t vote-with-your-wallet for country-wide road networks. Same with suburbs. And high-priced apartments in areas where the jobs are.
So you get the so-called suburbia lifestyle which is committed by the so-called consumers.
Well I’m assuming that we are complaining about all the rich people and not just spoiled trust fund kids.
This is a plan that’s supported by a very large number of top economists, I’ve seen it called something like a “Carbon Dividend with Border Carbon Adjustment”: https://clcouncil.org/our-plan/
i mean that's like O'Hare raised to the ATL exponent, as stated.
We’re a drop in the ocean compared to these people.
Wouldn't it be just as quick and easy for most of these people if they just chartered a bigger plane together?
They think the same way we do. We play the game at the level we can afford. Their game is higher level, but it is played the same.
Pulling my plane out of the hangar is no different than pulling the Subaru out of the garage. Thinking about sharing the ride never enters into it. I don't need to trade reduced cost for increased efficiency and reduced convenience. Neither do these 525 jet owners or charter clients.
These people have never left Vegas on a Sunday and it shows. That drive is 4 hours, without traffic. With traffic it's an easy 7, I've heard of it being as high as 13. So yeah, if you've got a jet, and the money to fly it, I'd say that you can probably justify using it here, it's like half the time.
Though, even flying commercial would save almost the same amount of time, you might pick up an extra hour, much more waiting around, but, beats being stuck in the middle of BFE in traffic.
https://www.amtrak.com/charter-your-private-train
Reminds me of this episode from Archer : https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2207833/