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> 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 tha
by 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 agoredesign 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 agoConcrete 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 agoActually 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 agoTo 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 agoIt's interesting how you get away with posting 16 comments on a single submission. Single-minded, much?