5 ms·

If everyone stopped traveling for fun, that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions even more. You’re not going to guilt people into changing their behavior. A

If everyone stopped traveling for fun, that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions even more. You’re not going to guilt people into changing their behavior. A carbon tax fixes this.

blunte 7y ago
> If everyone stopped traveling for fun, that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions even more. I'm not willing to agree that it would reduce emissions more than ending meat consumption. It would help, however. Like most problems, there is not just one solution. Multiple modest to moderate changes in behavior can make a big difference. - redesign cities to include more and better public transport (less car/truck traffic) - reduce general product consumption (less global shipping) - we all know there's a lot of worthless stuff that gets manufactured and shipped, such as the low-end products you find in Walmart which break or fail after a short period of time - create permaculture food forests in and around cities (reducing global shipping of produce) - eat less meat (reducing production and transportation emissions) To put it into perspective, it's a bit like getting fit and losing weight. Yes you can radically change your diet, or you can do crossfit every day, but those narrow+deep efforts are usually very unpleasant and unsustainable (in terms of a human's ability to keep with the changes). Instead, some diet changes, some consistent exercise, some lifestyle changes (walking/biking in place of some car drives) tends to result in lasting health benefits. > A carbon tax fixes this. Not really. A carbon tax encourages projects like mass forest planting of monocultures. That will result in some problem down the road.
- goatinaboat 7y ago
  redesign cities to include more and better public transport Concrete is a massive source of CO2 emissions. Rebuilding cities is really, really not going to help.
  - blunte 7y ago
    Concrete is big but much less in total than car emissions. However, I'm not advocating building new things; I'm suggesting changing the use of existing things: more public transport options, more park and ride locations, more city bike stands, etc.
- onion2k 7y ago
  > A carbon tax fixes this. Not really. You're conflating the tax with spending the tax revenue. You don't need to spend any of the revenue on carbon sequestering projects. Just implementing a carbon tax that pushed the price of things like air travel up to the reflect the real cost would do a huge amount to reduce the amount people pollute. If the price of a flight doubled then fewer people would fly.
  - blunte 7y ago
    Actually I'm thinking of the industrial approach to generating carbon credit offsets, then selling those on the market to polluting industries. Regarding air travel specifically, it's less (and decreasing) in terms of pollution relative to other forms of transportation. One of the sources: https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/policy_guidance/envir_policy/media/Primer_Jan2015.pdf https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/policy_guidance/env... Cars in sum produce more pollution than planes (at least in the US), and recent estimates say that the 15 largest ocean freighters produce as much pollution as all cars globally for a year. So my feeling is that reducing global shipping - eliminating consumption of junk - and reorganizing cities to enable more walking/biking, would have a far greater benefit than focusing on air travel.
  - mklarmann 7y ago
    To actually reach our climate targets, even better would be a mandatory carbon budget, and trading of contingents. This would mean the price perfectly adjusts to were it should be.
    - showdeadplease 7y ago
      It's interesting how you get away with posting 16 comments on a single submission. Single-minded, much?
codetrotter 7y ago
Carbon tax like you said, and also all product should be labeled with some sort of information about the carbon footprint that stems from the production and transportation of this product, so that consumers can compare products in terms of carbon footprint just like they can in terms of nutrients in food. A challenge to get right for sure, but it could have significant positive impact.
pmlnr 7y ago
> stopped traveling for fun Uhm... how about stop travelling for business in the world of instant communication?
- deepGem 7y ago
  Based on my business travels mostly related to sales, I don't see any of them shifting online. When it comes to decision making, physical presence matters a lot. This is not some routine weekly status call we are talking about. Courting customers, making them feel good and closing that deal - none of these will ever happen online, unless some magical VR tech comes about.
  - spopejoy 7y ago
    This is the thing I worry about -- my business requires a decent amount of air travel, and in general business travel is where you hear most of people bopping in and out of town in a single day, whereas vacationing is often for at least a few days. No question that physical presence is huge, but that doesn't justify it from an environmental POV at all, esp. since most sales are about making owners/investors richer, not making the world a better place. I think real creative thought about how business travel could reduce impact would be massively impactful. It would probably need regulation, because the sales team that tries to, say, do all meetings virtual will be whomped by the other team that shows up.
- jf22 7y ago
  And conferences to watch somebody give the same talk that is on youtube or training that is on Pluralsight or scotch.io.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
  Imagine if every office worker worked remotely how much less driving would be necessary.
  - briandear 7y ago
    That single thing right there is the answer: freedom isn’t harmed, but the benefits are huge. It would solve housing issues because you wouldn’t need to live near work. It would solve transportation issues because commuting would be vastly reduced. It reduces pollution for the same way. It also reduces the need for commercial real estate. It would lower costs to business, so prices go down. Encouraging widespread remote working helps everyone with minimal impact on freedom. If all office workers would stop commuting, we could eat whatever we wanted. We wouldn’t need to spend as many billions on public transportation. The way to encourage this is to provide significant tax incentives for businesses for remote workers. Instead of lowering quality of life by restricting things (such as air travel,) we could increase quality of life by eliminating unnecessary commutes. There also wouldn’t be too much political disagreement because tax incentivized remote working wouldn’t be that controversial and it wouldn’t require the average person to give up anything other than a commute nobody likes in the first place. I, for example could move out of the Bay Area to a cheaper, less crowded area and eat steak without the climate police having a coronary. I could fly my Cessna without the enviro-crusaders losing their minds. Combining remote-first policy along with nuclear energy for electricity and we could substantially reduce pollution with no net impact to freedom or quality of life. The problem with that however is that many climate activists don’t actually care about the climate as a first priority, they care about wealth redistribution and larger, more powerful government. Climate policy is first and foremost an anti-capitalist masquerade. While that might seem to be a weird assertion, from where I sit, Climate activists also seem generally to share a strong anti-capitalist, anti-market perspective. Nuclear power and profound incentives for remote work would get us much further than eating a fake-hamburger.
mruts 7y ago
I agree, but I think securitizable carbon credits make a lot more sense than a straight up tax. Also it’s not just that can’t guilt people into changing behavior, I don’t think we should. Humanity moves forward by solving our problems not through everyone magically changing how they act.
elorant 7y ago
If everyone stopped traveling for fun the worldwide tourism economy would collapse. There are whole countries that rely on tourism to make it through.
- ccffph 7y ago
  Why is the tourism economy more important than the livestock economy?
  - Nasrudith 7y ago
    Because the tourism economy makes keeping natural land viable strategically by selling its beauty to tourists while livestock economy requires land use.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
henryaj 7y ago
> If everyone stopped traveling for fun, that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions even more Animal agriculture is responsible for 14~18% of greenhouse gas emissions [0]; aviation only ~5% [1]. [0] - https://skepticalscience.com/how-much-meat-contribute-to-gw.html https://skepticalscience.com/how-much-meat-contribute-to-gw.... [1] - https://www.transportenvironment.org/news/aviation-2-3-times-more-damaging-climate-industry-claims https://www.transportenvironment.org/news/aviation-2-3-times...
- nightski 7y ago
  That is globally, in the U.S. it skews much differently.
- jnwatson 7y ago
  Traveling isn’t just aviation. Most traveling for fun in the US is via automobile.
PunchTornado 7y ago
yeah, a carbon tax so that only rich people can enjoy things. how about before demanding common people change their behaviour ban private jets and yachts?

If everyone stopped traveling for fun, that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions even more. You’re not going to guilt people into changing their behavior. A carbon tax fixes this.

blunte 7y ago

> If everyone stopped traveling for fun, that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions even more. I'm not willing to agree that it would reduce emissions more than ending meat consumption. It would help, however. Like most problems, there is not just one solution. Multiple modest to moderate changes in behavior can make a big difference. - redesign cities to include more and better public transport (less car/truck traffic) - reduce general product consumption (less global shipping) - we all know there's a lot of worthless stuff that gets manufactured and shipped, such as the low-end products you find in Walmart which break or fail after a short period of time - create permaculture food forests in and around cities (reducing global shipping of produce) - eat less meat (reducing production and transportation emissions) To put it into perspective, it's a bit like getting fit and losing weight. Yes you can radically change your diet, or you can do crossfit every day, but those narrow+deep efforts are usually very unpleasant and unsustainable (in terms of a human's ability to keep with the changes). Instead, some diet changes, some consistent exercise, some lifestyle changes (walking/biking in place of some car drives) tends to result in lasting health benefits. > A carbon tax fixes this. Not really. A carbon tax encourages projects like mass forest planting of monocultures. That will result in some problem down the road.

goatinaboat 7y ago
redesign cities to include more and better public transport Concrete is a massive source of CO2 emissions. Rebuilding cities is really, really not going to help.
- blunte 7y ago
  Concrete is big but much less in total than car emissions. However, I'm not advocating building new things; I'm suggesting changing the use of existing things: more public transport options, more park and ride locations, more city bike stands, etc.
onion2k 7y ago
> A carbon tax fixes this. Not really. You're conflating the tax with spending the tax revenue. You don't need to spend any of the revenue on carbon sequestering projects. Just implementing a carbon tax that pushed the price of things like air travel up to the reflect the real cost would do a huge amount to reduce the amount people pollute. If the price of a flight doubled then fewer people would fly.
- blunte 7y ago
  Actually I'm thinking of the industrial approach to generating carbon credit offsets, then selling those on the market to polluting industries. Regarding air travel specifically, it's less (and decreasing) in terms of pollution relative to other forms of transportation. One of the sources: https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/policy_guidance/envir_policy/media/Primer_Jan2015.pdf https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/policy_guidance/env... Cars in sum produce more pollution than planes (at least in the US), and recent estimates say that the 15 largest ocean freighters produce as much pollution as all cars globally for a year. So my feeling is that reducing global shipping - eliminating consumption of junk - and reorganizing cities to enable more walking/biking, would have a far greater benefit than focusing on air travel.
- mklarmann 7y ago
  To actually reach our climate targets, even better would be a mandatory carbon budget, and trading of contingents. This would mean the price perfectly adjusts to were it should be.
  - showdeadplease 7y ago
    It's interesting how you get away with posting 16 comments on a single submission. Single-minded, much?

codetrotter 7y ago

Carbon tax like you said, and also all product should be labeled with some sort of information about the carbon footprint that stems from the production and transportation of this product, so that consumers can compare products in terms of carbon footprint just like they can in terms of nutrients in food. A challenge to get right for sure, but it could have significant positive impact.

pmlnr 7y ago

> stopped traveling for fun Uhm... how about stop travelling for business in the world of instant communication?

deepGem 7y ago
Based on my business travels mostly related to sales, I don't see any of them shifting online. When it comes to decision making, physical presence matters a lot. This is not some routine weekly status call we are talking about. Courting customers, making them feel good and closing that deal - none of these will ever happen online, unless some magical VR tech comes about.
- spopejoy 7y ago
  This is the thing I worry about -- my business requires a decent amount of air travel, and in general business travel is where you hear most of people bopping in and out of town in a single day, whereas vacationing is often for at least a few days. No question that physical presence is huge, but that doesn't justify it from an environmental POV at all, esp. since most sales are about making owners/investors richer, not making the world a better place. I think real creative thought about how business travel could reduce impact would be massively impactful. It would probably need regulation, because the sales team that tries to, say, do all meetings virtual will be whomped by the other team that shows up.
jf22 7y ago
And conferences to watch somebody give the same talk that is on youtube or training that is on Pluralsight or scotch.io.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
Imagine if every office worker worked remotely how much less driving would be necessary.
- briandear 7y ago
  That single thing right there is the answer: freedom isn’t harmed, but the benefits are huge. It would solve housing issues because you wouldn’t need to live near work. It would solve transportation issues because commuting would be vastly reduced. It reduces pollution for the same way. It also reduces the need for commercial real estate. It would lower costs to business, so prices go down. Encouraging widespread remote working helps everyone with minimal impact on freedom. If all office workers would stop commuting, we could eat whatever we wanted. We wouldn’t need to spend as many billions on public transportation. The way to encourage this is to provide significant tax incentives for businesses for remote workers. Instead of lowering quality of life by restricting things (such as air travel,) we could increase quality of life by eliminating unnecessary commutes. There also wouldn’t be too much political disagreement because tax incentivized remote working wouldn’t be that controversial and it wouldn’t require the average person to give up anything other than a commute nobody likes in the first place. I, for example could move out of the Bay Area to a cheaper, less crowded area and eat steak without the climate police having a coronary. I could fly my Cessna without the enviro-crusaders losing their minds. Combining remote-first policy along with nuclear energy for electricity and we could substantially reduce pollution with no net impact to freedom or quality of life. The problem with that however is that many climate activists don’t actually care about the climate as a first priority, they care about wealth redistribution and larger, more powerful government. Climate policy is first and foremost an anti-capitalist masquerade. While that might seem to be a weird assertion, from where I sit, Climate activists also seem generally to share a strong anti-capitalist, anti-market perspective. Nuclear power and profound incentives for remote work would get us much further than eating a fake-hamburger.

mruts 7y ago

I agree, but I think securitizable carbon credits make a lot more sense than a straight up tax. Also it’s not just that can’t guilt people into changing behavior, I don’t think we should. Humanity moves forward by solving our problems not through everyone magically changing how they act.

elorant 7y ago

If everyone stopped traveling for fun the worldwide tourism economy would collapse. There are whole countries that rely on tourism to make it through.

ccffph 7y ago
Why is the tourism economy more important than the livestock economy?
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  Because the tourism economy makes keeping natural land viable strategically by selling its beauty to tourists while livestock economy requires land use.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

henryaj 7y ago

> If everyone stopped traveling for fun, that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions even more Animal agriculture is responsible for 14~18% of greenhouse gas emissions [0]; aviation only ~5% [1]. [0] - https://skepticalscience.com/how-much-meat-contribute-to-gw.html https://skepticalscience.com/how-much-meat-contribute-to-gw.... [1] - https://www.transportenvironment.org/news/aviation-2-3-times-more-damaging-climate-industry-claims https://www.transportenvironment.org/news/aviation-2-3-times...

nightski 7y ago
That is globally, in the U.S. it skews much differently.
jnwatson 7y ago
Traveling isn’t just aviation. Most traveling for fun in the US is via automobile.

PunchTornado 7y ago

yeah, a carbon tax so that only rich people can enjoy things. how about before demanding common people change their behaviour ban private jets and yachts?