> Of the 50 billionaires studied, around 40 percent of their investments were in high-polluting industries like oil, mining, and shipping, with few having significant renewable energy investments. That means the average billionaire's investment portfolio is responsible for 340 times the emissions of private jets and yachts - combined.
It doesn't make sense to tally someone's investments as them polluting. If they sell half their investment, the pollution emissions on earth don't go down.
>It doesn't make sense to tally someone's investments as them polluting. If they sell half their investment, the pollution emissions on earth don't go down.
No but your income depends on pollution happening and you investing in X company enables that company to raise cash to keep on polluting or in worst case start polluting.
The demand does not go down, so someone else will step in to cash in.
If all social media companies decided to shut down tomorrow because it's harmful to society, how many people on HN would be willing to launch their own to cash in? Probably almost everyone.
What a silly take. Of course it wouldnt change things in an instant but i twould long term. So if everyone divested from fossil fuel companies, tanking their stock price, and redirected that cash to renewable energy companies, you are saying no impact would happen in the long term? I beg to differ. It would force these companies to actually change their long term strategies so that investors continue to provide cash to them.
Dont worry, Oxfam doesnt need your simplistic views and support based on your own simplistic analysis.
not really. one's investments will contribute to the companies' access to money which is then used in their businesses...to further pollute. whilst you are correct when one investor pulls out it doesn't reduce carbon emissions, you do have agency where you invest. for these people [those that choose to invest in companies that have poor environmental track records], their investments absolutely are perpetuating the problem.
> It doesn't make sense to tally someone's investments as them polluting. If they sell half their investment, the pollution emissions on earth don't go down.
Of course it makes. As long as someone keeps investing on things regardless of how much they pollute, the pollution will keep happening. People look for billionaires and see how they do invest. They think it is okay and good to invest for same things too, in order to make money. And pollution never ends.
They don't personally need the money from their investments any more given they have almost unimaginable amounts of it. However, if they collectively invested that wealth into realistic renewable energy companies / projects they could significantly shift the incentives of polluting energy companies. BP et al aren't going to take renewables seriously out of the goodness of their hearts (nor should they) so we have to create the economic environment in which they are incentivised to do that.
> The ridiculous amounts of money they have are their investments.
C'mon, you know what I mean. I bet there are plenty of non-polluting investments that they hold too. They're not suddenly going to become bankrupt because of investing in renewable energy. Maybe they'd be able to afford one less yacht or private jet, but I presume that, like me, you don't really care about that either.
> Hasn't Musk done exactly what you are demanding of him with Tesla and what ever his solar company is?
To some extent, yes. Much as I despise Musk as a person he's done a huge amount for electric cars at least. I haven't heard anything about the solar company recently, and the last I heard it was languishing very far down in the list of Tesla priorities. Tesla home batteries seem to be pretty ubiquitous though.
But we're also talking about personal emissions here, and he hasn't invented an electric jet yet. The point is that we need to radically reduce emissions, and me personally insulating my house doesn't make a blind bit of difference if those at the top of the pile don't make significant changes themselves.
I would agree, especially since they are calling out Musk and Bezos by name but don't name a single other person.
I don't see Bill Gates, Al Gore or Taylor Swift being called out. IIRC the last time there a summit happened in Egypt someone put together a list of all those who flew in private jets and the reaction was to start masking the passenger manifests for "security".
A significant portion of the global shipping [1] is the transportation of fossil fuels, so a general transition to renewables would contribute to reducing that.
It really seems like scapegoating. Most of us want to live in a world with shipping and mining. They invest with our permission and encouragement. We have to take responsibility for that choice.
Based on what you come to this conclusion? Scientific consensus reached after removing all the dissenting voices? Sorry, but I cannot take this kind of scientific consensus serious: we need scientists to be able to openly object, or it becomes junk science.
For example the "safe and effective" consensus we saw recently, that turned out to be total junk-science. And we have not yet faced the terrible consequences of that junk-science: on a societal level (MSM, most govt agencies) we just act as if it did not happen.
We were told the shot were "safe and effect" and that is was based on unwavering scientific consensus.
Turns out the it was junk-science. Shots were not safe (myocarditis risk through the roof, huuuuge risk for pregnancies) and very ineffective (we were told it could stop the spread, or prevent infections -- in the end this was downgraded to "symptoms will be less severe").
I don't see any literature showing myocarditis through the roof, can you share some sources? As far as I can remember the sources I've read after 2 years of the vaccines rollout showed a small risk of temporary myocarditis in a very small cohort.
The shots were quite effective at curbing spread by lowering the time people shed the virus, and also substantially lowering mortality among infected.
If that's ineffective I think... You had the wrong expectations?
I'd really appreciate sources for your extraordinary claims.
"No definitive case of myocarditis was found. However, the two participants (both women) with vaccine-associated myocardialinjury and chest pain met the Brighton Collaboration case defini-tion Level 2, indicating probable myocarditis in those patients (0.3%[95% CI 0.1–0.9%])"
And note that your own link said that the .3% of participants were those that could possibly show signs of myocarditis, they didn't actually contract that disease. So what does your paper show that is damning evidence to you?
I guess what I am asking you is what is the most important figure in that paper, as I read it and I'm no scientific expert but it made me come away more confident in the efficacy and safety of the vaccines. What am I missing that you are finding?
The conclusion from the article you shared also says the resulting myocarditis doesn't seem to be alarming:
> mRNA-1273 vaccine-associated myocardial injury was more common than previously thought, being mild and transient
More common than previously thought doesn't equate to your claim of "myocarditis through the roof".
As much as I liked to watch Dr. John Campbell in the beginning of the pandemic I verge on trusting more meta analysis covering dozens to hundreds of studies than a single person reviewing a few studies. If a slight increase in transient myocarditis gives me a huge boost in immune response against COVID I will take the transient myocarditis 100% of the time (which I had as a side-effect of the vaccine, got no complications from that after being assessed).
The world will be much warmer than now even if we stopped all CO2 emissions this second. I think that series was rather close to what we are looking at.
I would argue that having billionaires is pretty unnecessary for economies to function well. Accumulation of more money than can be spent in a thousand lifetimes is not a social good. Tax them as much as a high rate tax payer (at least) and don't let them do dodgy tricks to avoid capital gains and inheritance taxes!
It was one of the goals, specifically in the form of a "dictatorship of the proletariat" that prevents non-working social classes from engaging in politics. That would later evolve into a "state of the whole people" once it was perceived that class struggle had been eliminated.
If you look at how Russia failed to modernize as a republic though, you could argue the current oligarchy is significantly more dangerous for the state and it's people. When the Soviet Union collapsed and Russia started migrating to a free market economy, the government deeply subsidized entrepreneurs in an attempt to stimulate their economy into competition. It would end up being one of the major contributing factors of their economic collapse, and persists today as a toxic link between business and politics that should have never been forged in the first place. Russian oligarchs put out mob hits on polticians - politicians send secret police to kill their opposition. It's about as potent an example of political corruption that exists in a so-called "democracy" today.
I feel like you can see very clear echoes of this in America's modern economic strategy, the same sort of hubris from both Democrats and Republicans. America thought it would be smart to subsidize Elon Musk for sub-$25,000 cars he had no intention of ever making. Meanwhile, Elon is meeting with foreign dignitaries and shipping American jobs abroad to save his company instead of delivering on his promises. Elon must rather envy the violence and lawlessness of Russian economics.
Like all externalities, the solution isn't social shaming, it's taxation. We need to introduce a carbon tax, and tariffs on trade with countries that don't enforce an equivalent tax. I suggest this tax income be distributed equally among all citizens, so that it functions as compensation paid from those who emit more than their fair share to those who emit less. I see no problem with billionaires emitting enormous quantities of CO2 so long as they pay for it. Wealth needs to have some privileges for capitalism to function correctly, and capitalism (with the state doing its duty to regulate market failures) is the best economic system we have.
Agreed on taxing externalities, but rather than being used for redistribution, it should be used to fund carbon cleanup.
I wonder if we could achieve the same net effect by allowing the carbon tax to be either negative or positive, paying people to produce net-negative CO2, so that it's possible to compete on who can do so most efficiently.
> I suggest this tax income be distributed equally among all citizens
Why not just cut out the middle man and let us all keep what little income we have vs yet another tax. Everyone gets taxed right? Or do you mean tax for thee none for me?
Because that wouldn't have the desired effect of incentivizing reduction in CO2 emissions. The alternative is privately owned air and class action lawsuits at unprecedented scale.
Yes, but your personal tax of $0.03 would be deducted from your $17 redistribution of Jeff Bezos's tax, so don't worry about getting yours, you'll still come out ahead.
Taxes are for some purpose. And we all know that liberalism does not work in this case. It's the same as the coca Cola company produces millions of tonnes of waste, but they're not caring about this fact.
Taxation also opens a lot of employment to support it and then support the dealing with the problem
In theory, this sounds fine, in practice it hurts the poor the most again.
Musk and Bezos can build solar panels on their huge properties and offset their other CO2 production (the way we do with "coupons" now).
But what will little below-average bobby in some cold rural area do, if the only way to heat his small rural cottage is a wood-burning stove? Pay more tax to people like musk, who now generate negative CO2?
Look at electric heating for example, a resistive heater is ~15eur over here, while a heat pump is around 1k eur with installation. If you want to be even more efficient, you build better insulation and a ventilation system with a heat exchanger. But hey, if you're poor, living in an overly expesive rental apartment, you don't have that money, but you do have 15eur for a space heater and suddenly a higher tax bill.
The poor are responsible for below average CO2 emissions, so they stand to benefit from redistributed carbon tax. Wood burning has its own problems, especially in urban areas, but its carbon emissions are net zero, and should be taxed as such. If the rich build enough solar panels to offset their emissions (which considering the figures presented in the article seems unlikely) then the tax is working as intended. Incentives against resistive heating increase demand for alternatives, which increases competition to supply those alternatives and drives down price.
A resistive heater just uses electricity, it doesn't emit CO2. So the user won't be taxed. The power company might be taxed, depending how that electricity was produced.
But you have to earn more to pay more payroll tax and you still take home more than before. At least in my country, people on minimum wage pay almost zero income tax.
Some people can barely afford heating already, and we're making it even more expensive for them, while people like musk/bezos can just avoid it, or even earn money on co2 coupons.
If you suggeted banning private jets, bot for the rich and the poor, then sure, that would affect bezos a lot more than bobby below-average over here, but not this.
Carbon tax here in Canada has turned into a lightning rod for the populist right, spreading misinformation about it and using it is as a lever to take power (they will soon) and govern on behalf of the fossil fuel sector. I think you'll find globally that the few carbon taxes in existence are going to go away, not more be enacted.
I wish I had more optimism here. For a brief window some years ago my anti-capitalist impulses were put in check and I thought maybe neo-Keynesian liberals could lead us out of this, as they promised, and that gov't policy combined with the natural market forces emerging from the renewable energy sector would gradually taper emissions off.
Unfortunately, nope.
The sad irony is that a carbon tax is the most modest, conservative-friendly, marketish-based policy. But the right just can't resist turning opposition to it into a trampoline into power. And the fossil fuel industry is going to go down alright, but it's planning on taking us all with it.
When our conservative provincial gov't here in Ontario took power back in 2018 they pulled us out the cap'n'trade agreement we had with California and Quebec. Stupid move, we had to pay a bunch of penalties and then it just turned around and we had a carbon tax put on us by the federal gov't, instead.
What are the numbers? How much energy goes into extracting rare earth materials, recycling batteries etc.? How is the electricity generated? How much is lost in transit and battery efficiency? What do the servers use that the Tesla communicates with behind the owner's back?
These are real questions. I find it hard to get a comprehensive and unbiased analysis.
It makes more sense to electrify 500 cars and switch electric production to clean energy rather than banning SpaceX Falcon Heavy. Because China electrifies cars and is developing competing rockets for space supremacy.
I think it makes more sense to solve pollution with systemic solutions rather than play a blame game. Just tax private jet usage and use that money to decarbonize or something.
No issues with space flight or falcon heavy specifically. My gripe is with oil and large interests campaigning against my "personal carbon footprint" while themselves polluting more than any of us can comprehend
How would this be any different than someone buying carbon offsets, which are mostly a scam.
The person buying them gets to feel superior, someone else gets a lot of money for effectively doing nothing, and the the environment suffers just the same.
The money raised could be spent on non-carbon technologies or mitigation strategies.
Plus as the cost of emitting carbon rises, people will search for alternatives.
I don't think it's necessarily a bad idea, but if we want to go for the transition we need to do so wholeheartedly, not punishing poorer people with tariffs that keep EV's unaffordable because it helps some lobby groups.
> ... as the cost of emitting carbon rises, people will search for alternatives ...
The only alternative for most poorer individuals is the power grid and while it is more convenient it is nowhere close to carbon based fuels in price. So it is used for small things, and for heating carbon based fuels are used.
And, perhaps ironically, the grid is becoming on a per-person/per-customer basis more expensive because the people who traditionally pay the bill, large, industrial users, have by far the easiest time and the most to gain switching to solar.
Almost(?) everybody is poorer than Bezos. Pretty much by definition he invests in people poorer than him. I don't claim that trickle down economics are real; it is my understanding that trickle down economics claims something much much stronger than what I said.
As can be seen from the other response to this post, there is a significant portion of people incapable of dividing ideology out of truth (people idiot for brevity) here so telling them the truth is often met with foolishness. I appreciate your effort though.
Offsets aren't really a scam, though they are essentially unregulated. Certainly if you tried to scale the existing industry rapidly by throwing money at it you'd create scams. But regulation isn't an impossible thing.
Another answer is that you just don't include offsets in the tax at all, at least at the start. You tax the extraction or importation of burnable carbon. So gas wells pay $X per ton of carbon they ship, oil refineries pay $Y per ton of carbon they pull off a tanker, etc... Then when someone comes by with a specific technology for capture/sequestration/offset/whatever, you make a regulatory decision that such a process is legal and pay them back $Z per ton of carbon verifiably sequestered.
Taxes, in some circumstances, can be used to inhibit certain economic activity. Ideally, the revenue from carbon taxes is used to fund climate change mitigation efforts (subsidies for clean energy, mobility, HVAC, etc). https://climeworks.com/ and other direct carbon air capture companies are an option. You are then paying what it costs to sequester a ton of CO2 underground in stable form.
I'd rather see they are forced to plant and keep alive around 3 million new trees each year, which would at least compensate about 6000 tons of carbon.
Capitalism needs fossils. It's how profits are amplified. Without govt intervention this will not change. Getting consumers to be carbon-police them selves is a diversion tactic: it makes no significant difference.
Capitalism need energy. It doesn't have to be fossil fuels. If we'd had the good sense to ramp up nuclear power several decades ago then we wouldn't be in this predicament.
Access to energy is a huge part of it. Fuel, to this day, is the easiest way to distribute energy. Industry is still heavily dependent on fossils.
We have not managed to decouple from fossils: heavy industry, shipping, airports, ... There could be a scenario where the energy source is not fossils: but so far it's not in sight.
It's a few years old, but it shows that ALL of emissions from ALL air transport is less than 2%.
From the article:
> Musk's [...] jets responsible for 5,497 tons of CO2 over the course of a year
> Bezos' two-jet fleet emitting around 2,908 tons of carbon.
World wide CO2 emissions are measured in BILLIONS of tons (35-40 BILLION). I don't care if the mob breaks out the pitchforks and guillotines for the billionaires. They honestly don't seem like very nice people. However, nobody should believe that 8500 tons is a significant chunk of 35 BILLION.
Look at that chart again. Get rid of all air travel, all road transport (trucking and personal), all residential and commercial energy use (air conditioning and heating), and all all iron and steel, and you've only reduced global emissions by about 40%. So we're basically back to the medieval lifestyle, and we're probably going to have a huge increase in burning firewood to stay warm, which reduces the progress.
Nonsense like this article isn't useful. People like to think every little bit counts, but it doesn't. People like to think if we just slaughtered the billionaires it'll all get better, but it won't.
Actually it would. 2% is a lot in the scheme of things. Every bit counts. And to thin it doesnt or that we need to slash only those things emitting more than X amount is a bit simplistic.
Thinking we should just leave billionaies alone and let them do as they wish is nonsense.
2% is not a lot. If it takes 50 years of accumulation for things to get bad, saving 2% means it'll be bad in 51 years. And remember, that's for all of the airplanes in all of the world (tens of thousands from commercial alone).
The actual savings from Bezos' and Musk's planes is something like 0.000_024 percent. So if it takes 50 years until it gets bad, it'll take about 50 years and 8 minutes after you take away their planes.
Whether something counts should be done with math, not feel good sentiment or pandering to people's envy.
If you group emissions sufficiently finely, no single measure has any effect. We need to do hundreds of little changes to reach carbon neutrality. The discussion what to prioritize is not easy, but dismissing things just because they only contribute x% is not helpful.
Please look at that chart and aggressively pick all the items you're going to add up. Prioritize the difficult choices and make the helpful decisions. Focusing on energy CONSUMPTION is a losing battle, you won't even get to 50% in theory, and in practice you'd lose political will as people realize you're taking them back to the stone age.
Now look at the chart and focus on energy PRODUCTION. If someone could make enough emission-free electricity, you can get rid of nearly all of it. Except for airplanes, because batteries are heavy - but thankfully that's only 2% and doesn't matter very much.
No matter how you slice it or whatever sentimental argument you throw at it, Bezos, Musk, and Taylor's jets don't add up to anything that matters.
It's death by a thousand cuts, with that way of thinking why would we close a single coal plant? Taken in isolation they amount to nothing either.
If your argument is "everything but airplanes", it would be interesting to know why you think they are so important?
As for energy consumption reduction leading us back to stone age: it's about cutting the excess to keep what matters, no one arguing for it will pretend for a second that the excess stops at stone age level. Thankfully it doesn't even go as far as 250 years ago, when our world was still entirely renewable.
If commuting for 50km for work is what matters, cutting the excess means replacing many SUVs by an (electric) bus or a train plus an e-bike. And maybe create jobs or housing closer. Not "not working" or "dying".
My argument is not "everything but airplanes". My petty argument is that this article is stupid, and the bigger point is that focusing on the energy consumption side is a dead end. The problem is that EVERY sector is not very significant. That's what that chart shows:
Eliminate air travel: 1.9%
Eliminate all trucking and cars: 11.9%
Eliminate residential heating/cooling: 10.9%
Eliminate commercial energy use: 6.6%
And so on...
If you focus on energy consumption, you can't solve that WITHOUT a thousand cuts, and that's totally unrealistic. And rage bait articles appealing to people's dislike and envy of billionaire airplanes for 0.000024% benefit don't help. Anyone who focuses on that is not using an engineering mindset and is distracted from the goal.
Ok, so now look at it from the energy production side. Get real serious about nuclear or wind/solar/batteries (and a few agricultural changes), and you could actually make a difference.
This is usually the point where someone says nuclear plants are always over cost and take too long to build, but the US military has hundreds of reactors running safely, and they were constructed for some government definition of "on time". If we were serious about achieving the goal in the US, we'd be pushing for a new branch of the military to manage public reactors or something, or we'd get real serious about batteries.
Btw, I fucking hate flying. The experience is miserable, and I can deal with ground/water shipping for anything I buy. It wouldn't change my life one bit if we grounded all the airplanes. But I'm not dumb enough to think that would change anything about the predictions for the climate, and flying has benefits to other people. The point was that you can't really solve air flight with batteries or nuclear power, so thankfully 2% isn't much.
> no one arguing for it will pretend for a second that the excess stops at stone age level. Thankfully it doesn't even go as far as 250 years ago, when our world was still entirely renewable.
Look at the chart. Cement, Iron, and Steel are responsible 10.2% of global emissions. Without those, it's almost the definition of stone age. I'm not sure about "renewable", but the world was not zero emissions 250 years ago. There were just fewer people.
> 2% is not a lot. If it takes 50 years of accumulation for things to get bad, saving 2% means it'll be bad in 51 years.
Only if you simplify everything beyond all measures. But the climate is a little more complicated than "we can only emit X more tons before things get bad".
As an example, there are feedback loops that accelerate climate change once hit. Over time this amplifies the effect of any reduction we achieve now.
Also, the more time we have to "find a solution" as many people bet on, the more of our current biosphere will survive. Aside from any moral obligations, this is obviously in our best interest as it increases the chances of more humans surviving.
Even if you argue against these points, there are many others - none included in the math you've done.
I don't think you understood the argument. I rounded up to 2% to give the most possible benefit of the doubt that anything involving airplane flights matters.
Do you really think that saving .000024% by getting rid of Bezos and Musk's jets is going to delay that complicated feedback loop and buy someone the time to save the world? Do you really think 2% is going to delay anything significantly?
Because I don't see how you can "it's complicated" your way into that belief.
No, I'm pretty sure I understand your argument perfectly well: by removing any nuance and simplifying the model beyond belief you show that changes have no effect. When adding that nuance back in, suddenly the effect comes back.
> Do you really think 2% is going to delay anything significantly?
As soon as you define "significantly", I'll gladly answer your question.
My back of the napkin example chose 50 years because it made the numbers round. Let's pick more relevant numbers. The Paris Climate goals are to keep the increase under 2C, and depending on what IPCC model you believe, it looks like we'll blow through that goal in about 25 years (2050). So now, assuming you get to take all airplanes out of the skies, not just Bezos and Musk's, and you save 2% on emissions because of it. How many years does 2% buy you past 2050? I would consider 10 years significant, 1 year certainly is not.
If your answer isn't measured in years, possibly with a confidence interval, we'll both know this is more of you trying to "win" an internet discussion by arguing in bad faith.
You're deliberately looking at the wrong aspect and once again reducing a complex issue to a simple number. The question isn't "how many years does this give us until we reach an arbitrary goal", it's "what effect does the additional time have?".
We're currently experiencing a mass extinction only rivaled by previous incredibly catastrophic events. Even a single year could mean whole ecosystems collapsing or not collapsing. If we find a technological solution for climate change in 2050, but critical species went extinct due to overheating in 2049, the 2% air emissions will be the difference between billions of people dying or not dying.
I don't know how to quantify these risks, and apparently neither do you. But that doesn't mean we can ignore them when we consider the best course of action. It only means: your model is insufficient and simplifies things beyond reason.
I doubt you believe 2% is going to save billions of lives because of a tipping point in 2049. That's another bad faith argument, but go ahead and ground all the aircraft. No skin off my back.
The reason for pointing out insignificant things is so that people aren't distracted from the significant things.
"It's complicated." So go ahead and keep everyone worrying about Taylor Swift's jet. Create a carbon tax for billionaires. Offset the emissions, or whatever. But you aren't looking at things that could actually make a difference.
It's not a bad faith argument to bring up a scenario deliberately constructed for showing complexities your simplifying model deliberately ignores. Obviously I don't believe that this scenario will literally happen, and I can't imagine you're interacting in good faith if you still don't understand that.
It's bad faith unless you really believe that's _plausible_, not some extremely stretched version of _possible_.
> Obviously I don't believe that this scenario will literally happen
So you don't think that's really plausible, and I don't think it was a good faith argument.
I'm going to say it again, because I don't think you got it: The reason for criticizing when people focus on insignificant things is because it's a distraction from focusing on things that could actually make a difference.
I absolutely believe that it's plausible for a comparable scenario to occur. It might not be 2049 and 2050, but 2075 and 2080? Or 2100 and 2110?
Unless you believe that humanity will 100% die off or 100% fix climate change tomorrow, the chance of a 2% reduction in CO2 output having no measurable effect on our future is close to 0%, yet your modelling puts it at close to 100%.
I'm going to say it again, because I don't think you got it: you're deliberately misrepresenting the situation and simplifying things beyond reason. The correct response to an inability to model something isn't to just leave it out. You specifically pointed out that we should make these decisions based on math, but your math is incomplete enough to be useless.
We should wrap this up. Saying 2075 or 2110 is the same ridiculous claim as 2049, but I'll pretend you believe it'll save a billion lives to be done with it.
Btw, since you're only really interested in winning debates, you probably shouldn't open the window for other people to define the terms. When you asked me for a definition of "significant", it puts you in a bad spot no matter whether you do or don't respond to it. Of course you didn't respond with a number of years, because that would support my point. I gave a really concrete scenario, and you refused to answer, and it was obvious to both of us why you didn't answer.
Best of luck in your future internet battles. Everyone needs a hobby.
Yeah, we should. You're still not able to accept that your simplistic framing is useless and still insisting that any arguments are only valid if they simplify just as much, since your position falls apart otherwise. Ending the conversation with ad-hominems definitely shows you're not just a bad-faith troll, sure.
This is the same Oxfam that published a report almost a year ago claiming that the 5 richest people in earth got richer than anyone else by comparing their assets value from March 18th 2020 (rock bottom level during Pandemic) to the top in November 30th 2023 (Stock Market ATH) and shifting those 5 people in 2020 to the newest 5 richest in 2023. On top of that, that cherry-picked growth was compared against a different period of time for the 60% poorest (from late 2019, before the Pandemic with stock markets still unaffected, to December 2022, with markets impacted by the hike in interest rates.)
They started around 12 years ago with reports about income inequality (Chapter 1, 2012 report) and why it was a problem despite poverty rates plummeting. Even though that was also wrong as shown by Milanovic’s Elephant (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elephant_Curve) or the Income Gini index after the year 2010.
Obviously the couldn’t keep the claim and they shifted towards a new claim: wealth inequality vs income inequality. So in 2016 they shifter their claim in their report.
But in 2022 wealth inequality started to shrink, including the reduction of global millionaires as published by Credit Suisse/UBS (Oxfam source) so they published a completely dishonest report, the one I mention in my first paragraph.
Oxfam has clearly anti-capitalist goals and drives them by publishing extremely sensationalistic and completely manipulated reports to shape public opinion.
That’s why I would advise anyone to read the report directly and to be extremely cautious with their claims.
I won’t comment on this report yet as I need time to do a proper reading, but never take Oxfam headlines as real data, they are always extremely biased.
Musk, Bezos, Taylor Swift, Mark Cuban, they all use more carbon as a person than any regular person in the world. Yet it's the people that are demanded to change for climate change, not the wealthy, which I find to be gross hypocrisy.
Musk has contributed to replacing 5 million gasoline-powered cars with electric ones and has facilitated the installation of 500,000 solar panels via Solar City. While there may be valid criticisms of Musk, questioning his environmental impact seems a bit misplaced to me.
Hey--if the wealthy can fly private jets to a resort for a public shaming-of-others orgy, not sure why a few others can't fly around while skipping the blaming
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 313 ms ] threadIt doesn't make sense to tally someone's investments as them polluting. If they sell half their investment, the pollution emissions on earth don't go down.
Oxfam just lost its credibility with me.
No but your income depends on pollution happening and you investing in X company enables that company to raise cash to keep on polluting or in worst case start polluting.
If all social media companies decided to shut down tomorrow because it's harmful to society, how many people on HN would be willing to launch their own to cash in? Probably almost everyone.
Dont worry, Oxfam doesnt need your simplistic views and support based on your own simplistic analysis.
Of course it makes. As long as someone keeps investing on things regardless of how much they pollute, the pollution will keep happening. People look for billionaires and see how they do invest. They think it is okay and good to invest for same things too, in order to make money. And pollution never ends.
Hasn't Musk done exactly what you are demanding of him with Tesla and what ever his solar company is?
C'mon, you know what I mean. I bet there are plenty of non-polluting investments that they hold too. They're not suddenly going to become bankrupt because of investing in renewable energy. Maybe they'd be able to afford one less yacht or private jet, but I presume that, like me, you don't really care about that either.
> Hasn't Musk done exactly what you are demanding of him with Tesla and what ever his solar company is?
To some extent, yes. Much as I despise Musk as a person he's done a huge amount for electric cars at least. I haven't heard anything about the solar company recently, and the last I heard it was languishing very far down in the list of Tesla priorities. Tesla home batteries seem to be pretty ubiquitous though.
But we're also talking about personal emissions here, and he hasn't invented an electric jet yet. The point is that we need to radically reduce emissions, and me personally insulating my house doesn't make a blind bit of difference if those at the top of the pile don't make significant changes themselves.
I don't see Bill Gates, Al Gore or Taylor Swift being called out. IIRC the last time there a summit happened in Egypt someone put together a list of all those who flew in private jets and the reaction was to start masking the passenger manifests for "security".
This is the odd one here.
Sure, shipping/transportation as it is is highly polluting. But it's not something from which we as a civilization can opt out.
We have to figure out how to reduce the impact, but having less of shipping is a non starter.
[1] 40% according to https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelbarnard/2023/12/05/how-w...
For example the "safe and effective" consensus we saw recently, that turned out to be total junk-science. And we have not yet faced the terrible consequences of that junk-science: on a societal level (MSM, most govt agencies) we just act as if it did not happen.
I don't understand this example, what are you referring to? And what was the total junk-science?
Turns out the it was junk-science. Shots were not safe (myocarditis risk through the roof, huuuuge risk for pregnancies) and very ineffective (we were told it could stop the spread, or prevent infections -- in the end this was downgraded to "symptoms will be less severe").
The shots were quite effective at curbing spread by lowering the time people shed the virus, and also substantially lowering mortality among infected.
If that's ineffective I think... You had the wrong expectations?
I'd really appreciate sources for your extraordinary claims.
it was said to "stop the spread" and "prevent infection", both it did not live up to.
there are many, here's one study from Basel:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ejhf.2978
discussed by someone that discusses these things more often here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cd_RTf_ForA
"No definitive case of myocarditis was found. However, the two participants (both women) with vaccine-associated myocardialinjury and chest pain met the Brighton Collaboration case defini-tion Level 2, indicating probable myocarditis in those patients (0.3%[95% CI 0.1–0.9%])"
So 2 of the participants had a .3% possibility?
Every result reported in the paper follows that same pattern: "[N] participants had [result] ([% of participants], [95% confidence interval])".
And note that your own link said that the .3% of participants were those that could possibly show signs of myocarditis, they didn't actually contract that disease. So what does your paper show that is damning evidence to you?
A meta analysis about the vaccines' safety record with around ~99 million subjects over different analysed studies: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X2...
The conclusion from the article you shared also says the resulting myocarditis doesn't seem to be alarming:
> mRNA-1273 vaccine-associated myocardial injury was more common than previously thought, being mild and transient
More common than previously thought doesn't equate to your claim of "myocarditis through the roof".
As much as I liked to watch Dr. John Campbell in the beginning of the pandemic I verge on trusting more meta analysis covering dozens to hundreds of studies than a single person reviewing a few studies. If a slight increase in transient myocarditis gives me a huge boost in immune response against COVID I will take the transient myocarditis 100% of the time (which I had as a side-effect of the vaccine, got no complications from that after being assessed).
I think we are heading towards a future rather similar to a SyFy called Incorporated.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporated_(TV_series)
The world will be much warmer than now even if we stopped all CO2 emissions this second. I think that series was rather close to what we are looking at.
If all the billionaires disappeared today, climate change would not be delayed by one day.
If you look at how Russia failed to modernize as a republic though, you could argue the current oligarchy is significantly more dangerous for the state and it's people. When the Soviet Union collapsed and Russia started migrating to a free market economy, the government deeply subsidized entrepreneurs in an attempt to stimulate their economy into competition. It would end up being one of the major contributing factors of their economic collapse, and persists today as a toxic link between business and politics that should have never been forged in the first place. Russian oligarchs put out mob hits on polticians - politicians send secret police to kill their opposition. It's about as potent an example of political corruption that exists in a so-called "democracy" today.
I feel like you can see very clear echoes of this in America's modern economic strategy, the same sort of hubris from both Democrats and Republicans. America thought it would be smart to subsidize Elon Musk for sub-$25,000 cars he had no intention of ever making. Meanwhile, Elon is meeting with foreign dignitaries and shipping American jobs abroad to save his company instead of delivering on his promises. Elon must rather envy the violence and lawlessness of Russian economics.
I wonder if we could achieve the same net effect by allowing the carbon tax to be either negative or positive, paying people to produce net-negative CO2, so that it's possible to compete on who can do so most efficiently.
Why not just cut out the middle man and let us all keep what little income we have vs yet another tax. Everyone gets taxed right? Or do you mean tax for thee none for me?
Yes, but your personal tax of $0.03 would be deducted from your $17 redistribution of Jeff Bezos's tax, so don't worry about getting yours, you'll still come out ahead.
If one’s intention is to benefit them, you can’t do it by just reducing their [zero] taxation.
Musk and Bezos can build solar panels on their huge properties and offset their other CO2 production (the way we do with "coupons" now).
But what will little below-average bobby in some cold rural area do, if the only way to heat his small rural cottage is a wood-burning stove? Pay more tax to people like musk, who now generate negative CO2?
Look at electric heating for example, a resistive heater is ~15eur over here, while a heat pump is around 1k eur with installation. If you want to be even more efficient, you build better insulation and a ventilation system with a heat exchanger. But hey, if you're poor, living in an overly expesive rental apartment, you don't have that money, but you do have 15eur for a space heater and suddenly a higher tax bill.
I got our roof, windows, doors, water heater and AC done via an no-interest state program of this nature.
Some people can barely afford heating already, and we're making it even more expensive for them, while people like musk/bezos can just avoid it, or even earn money on co2 coupons.
If you suggeted banning private jets, bot for the rich and the poor, then sure, that would affect bezos a lot more than bobby below-average over here, but not this.
I wish I had more optimism here. For a brief window some years ago my anti-capitalist impulses were put in check and I thought maybe neo-Keynesian liberals could lead us out of this, as they promised, and that gov't policy combined with the natural market forces emerging from the renewable energy sector would gradually taper emissions off.
Unfortunately, nope.
The sad irony is that a carbon tax is the most modest, conservative-friendly, marketish-based policy. But the right just can't resist turning opposition to it into a trampoline into power. And the fossil fuel industry is going to go down alright, but it's planning on taking us all with it.
These are real questions. I find it hard to get a comprehensive and unbiased analysis.
I think it makes more sense to solve pollution with systemic solutions rather than play a blame game. Just tax private jet usage and use that money to decarbonize or something.
Both have massive lobbies and large government contracts making them large interests. Both also pollute heavily
The person buying them gets to feel superior, someone else gets a lot of money for effectively doing nothing, and the the environment suffers just the same.
Plus as the cost of emitting carbon rises, people will search for alternatives.
I don't think it's necessarily a bad idea, but if we want to go for the transition we need to do so wholeheartedly, not punishing poorer people with tariffs that keep EV's unaffordable because it helps some lobby groups.
> ... as the cost of emitting carbon rises, people will search for alternatives ...
The only alternative for most poorer individuals is the power grid and while it is more convenient it is nowhere close to carbon based fuels in price. So it is used for small things, and for heating carbon based fuels are used.
And, perhaps ironically, the grid is becoming on a per-person/per-customer basis more expensive because the people who traditionally pay the bill, large, industrial users, have by far the easiest time and the most to gain switching to solar.
When someone else poorer gets a slice of that wealth, they'll inevitably consume a much higher fraction of it.
Another answer is that you just don't include offsets in the tax at all, at least at the start. You tax the extraction or importation of burnable carbon. So gas wells pay $X per ton of carbon they ship, oil refineries pay $Y per ton of carbon they pull off a tanker, etc... Then when someone comes by with a specific technology for capture/sequestration/offset/whatever, you make a regulatory decision that such a process is legal and pay them back $Z per ton of carbon verifiably sequestered.
Source: https://8billiontrees.com/carbon-offsets-credits/carbon-ecol...
We have not managed to decouple from fossils: heavy industry, shipping, airports, ... There could be a scenario where the energy source is not fossils: but so far it's not in sight.
https://ourworldindata.org/ghg-emissions-by-sector
It's a few years old, but it shows that ALL of emissions from ALL air transport is less than 2%.
From the article:
> Musk's [...] jets responsible for 5,497 tons of CO2 over the course of a year
> Bezos' two-jet fleet emitting around 2,908 tons of carbon.
World wide CO2 emissions are measured in BILLIONS of tons (35-40 BILLION). I don't care if the mob breaks out the pitchforks and guillotines for the billionaires. They honestly don't seem like very nice people. However, nobody should believe that 8500 tons is a significant chunk of 35 BILLION.
Look at that chart again. Get rid of all air travel, all road transport (trucking and personal), all residential and commercial energy use (air conditioning and heating), and all all iron and steel, and you've only reduced global emissions by about 40%. So we're basically back to the medieval lifestyle, and we're probably going to have a huge increase in burning firewood to stay warm, which reduces the progress.
Nonsense like this article isn't useful. People like to think every little bit counts, but it doesn't. People like to think if we just slaughtered the billionaires it'll all get better, but it won't.
Thinking we should just leave billionaies alone and let them do as they wish is nonsense.
The actual savings from Bezos' and Musk's planes is something like 0.000_024 percent. So if it takes 50 years until it gets bad, it'll take about 50 years and 8 minutes after you take away their planes.
Whether something counts should be done with math, not feel good sentiment or pandering to people's envy.
Now look at the chart and focus on energy PRODUCTION. If someone could make enough emission-free electricity, you can get rid of nearly all of it. Except for airplanes, because batteries are heavy - but thankfully that's only 2% and doesn't matter very much.
No matter how you slice it or whatever sentimental argument you throw at it, Bezos, Musk, and Taylor's jets don't add up to anything that matters.
If your argument is "everything but airplanes", it would be interesting to know why you think they are so important?
As for energy consumption reduction leading us back to stone age: it's about cutting the excess to keep what matters, no one arguing for it will pretend for a second that the excess stops at stone age level. Thankfully it doesn't even go as far as 250 years ago, when our world was still entirely renewable.
If commuting for 50km for work is what matters, cutting the excess means replacing many SUVs by an (electric) bus or a train plus an e-bike. And maybe create jobs or housing closer. Not "not working" or "dying".
Ok, so now look at it from the energy production side. Get real serious about nuclear or wind/solar/batteries (and a few agricultural changes), and you could actually make a difference.
This is usually the point where someone says nuclear plants are always over cost and take too long to build, but the US military has hundreds of reactors running safely, and they were constructed for some government definition of "on time". If we were serious about achieving the goal in the US, we'd be pushing for a new branch of the military to manage public reactors or something, or we'd get real serious about batteries.
Btw, I fucking hate flying. The experience is miserable, and I can deal with ground/water shipping for anything I buy. It wouldn't change my life one bit if we grounded all the airplanes. But I'm not dumb enough to think that would change anything about the predictions for the climate, and flying has benefits to other people. The point was that you can't really solve air flight with batteries or nuclear power, so thankfully 2% isn't much.
Look at the chart. Cement, Iron, and Steel are responsible 10.2% of global emissions. Without those, it's almost the definition of stone age. I'm not sure about "renewable", but the world was not zero emissions 250 years ago. There were just fewer people.
Only if you simplify everything beyond all measures. But the climate is a little more complicated than "we can only emit X more tons before things get bad".
As an example, there are feedback loops that accelerate climate change once hit. Over time this amplifies the effect of any reduction we achieve now.
Also, the more time we have to "find a solution" as many people bet on, the more of our current biosphere will survive. Aside from any moral obligations, this is obviously in our best interest as it increases the chances of more humans surviving.
Even if you argue against these points, there are many others - none included in the math you've done.
Do you really think that saving .000024% by getting rid of Bezos and Musk's jets is going to delay that complicated feedback loop and buy someone the time to save the world? Do you really think 2% is going to delay anything significantly?
Because I don't see how you can "it's complicated" your way into that belief.
> Do you really think 2% is going to delay anything significantly?
As soon as you define "significantly", I'll gladly answer your question.
If your answer isn't measured in years, possibly with a confidence interval, we'll both know this is more of you trying to "win" an internet discussion by arguing in bad faith.
We're currently experiencing a mass extinction only rivaled by previous incredibly catastrophic events. Even a single year could mean whole ecosystems collapsing or not collapsing. If we find a technological solution for climate change in 2050, but critical species went extinct due to overheating in 2049, the 2% air emissions will be the difference between billions of people dying or not dying.
I don't know how to quantify these risks, and apparently neither do you. But that doesn't mean we can ignore them when we consider the best course of action. It only means: your model is insufficient and simplifies things beyond reason.
The reason for pointing out insignificant things is so that people aren't distracted from the significant things.
"It's complicated." So go ahead and keep everyone worrying about Taylor Swift's jet. Create a carbon tax for billionaires. Offset the emissions, or whatever. But you aren't looking at things that could actually make a difference.
> Obviously I don't believe that this scenario will literally happen
So you don't think that's really plausible, and I don't think it was a good faith argument.
I'm going to say it again, because I don't think you got it: The reason for criticizing when people focus on insignificant things is because it's a distraction from focusing on things that could actually make a difference.
Unless you believe that humanity will 100% die off or 100% fix climate change tomorrow, the chance of a 2% reduction in CO2 output having no measurable effect on our future is close to 0%, yet your modelling puts it at close to 100%.
I'm going to say it again, because I don't think you got it: you're deliberately misrepresenting the situation and simplifying things beyond reason. The correct response to an inability to model something isn't to just leave it out. You specifically pointed out that we should make these decisions based on math, but your math is incomplete enough to be useless.
Btw, since you're only really interested in winning debates, you probably shouldn't open the window for other people to define the terms. When you asked me for a definition of "significant", it puts you in a bad spot no matter whether you do or don't respond to it. Of course you didn't respond with a number of years, because that would support my point. I gave a really concrete scenario, and you refused to answer, and it was obvious to both of us why you didn't answer.
Best of luck in your future internet battles. Everyone needs a hobby.
They started around 12 years ago with reports about income inequality (Chapter 1, 2012 report) and why it was a problem despite poverty rates plummeting. Even though that was also wrong as shown by Milanovic’s Elephant (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elephant_Curve) or the Income Gini index after the year 2010.
Obviously the couldn’t keep the claim and they shifted towards a new claim: wealth inequality vs income inequality. So in 2016 they shifter their claim in their report.
But in 2022 wealth inequality started to shrink, including the reduction of global millionaires as published by Credit Suisse/UBS (Oxfam source) so they published a completely dishonest report, the one I mention in my first paragraph.
Oxfam has clearly anti-capitalist goals and drives them by publishing extremely sensationalistic and completely manipulated reports to shape public opinion.
That’s why I would advise anyone to read the report directly and to be extremely cautious with their claims.
I won’t comment on this report yet as I need time to do a proper reading, but never take Oxfam headlines as real data, they are always extremely biased.