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> “Our climate just can’t tolerate widespread frequent flying,” said Dan Rutherford, who directs the council’s aviation program. It would if we could control o

by rlpb 7y ago

> “Our climate just can’t tolerate widespread frequent flying,” said Dan Rutherford, who directs the council’s aviation program. It would if we could control our breeding. How guilty should you feel about having large numbers of children?

jokoon 7y ago
whataboutism at its finest. "let me fly, and tell poor people they can't have children, and sterilize them if necessary" I also doubt that children of poor countries generate that much emissions. Reducing birthrates is a bigger effort than reducing air traffic.
beatgammit 7y ago
It doesn't matter how many people exist if each is a net zero in terms of emissions. What would be better, having more children that each have a net negative impact on the planet, or having fewer? Personally, I think the whole "reduce the number of humans" solution is terrible and completely misses the mark. We don't need to reduce the number of humans, we need to increase the efficiency of each human in terms of impact on the environment. We need more innovators, not fewer, and innovators need capital, so we should be encouraging more reproduction by those with means rather than less. Personally, I think the most practical solution is to tax pollution. Wealthy nations seem to produce far more pollution per captia than developing nation's, and developing nations adopt our bad habits. Taxing pollution increases the cost of these bad habits and encourages green innovation. We saw a move toward smaller cars in 2008 when driving became more expensive relative to income, and the same thing can happen to other aspects of our lives if living green becomes less expensive than polluting. And that culture of living green (and the cost reductions associated with innovation) will propagate to developing countries, which will decrease the average political per capita. I don't think reducing the total population significantly is workable, and attempts are only going to remove the people who have the largest chance of solving the problem generally.

by rlpb 7y ago

jokoon 7y ago

whataboutism at its finest. "let me fly, and tell poor people they can't have children, and sterilize them if necessary" I also doubt that children of poor countries generate that much emissions. Reducing birthrates is a bigger effort than reducing air traffic.

beatgammit 7y ago

It doesn't matter how many people exist if each is a net zero in terms of emissions. What would be better, having more children that each have a net negative impact on the planet, or having fewer? Personally, I think the whole "reduce the number of humans" solution is terrible and completely misses the mark. We don't need to reduce the number of humans, we need to increase the efficiency of each human in terms of impact on the environment. We need more innovators, not fewer, and innovators need capital, so we should be encouraging more reproduction by those with means rather than less. Personally, I think the most practical solution is to tax pollution. Wealthy nations seem to produce far more pollution per captia than developing nation's, and developing nations adopt our bad habits. Taxing pollution increases the cost of these bad habits and encourages green innovation. We saw a move toward smaller cars in 2008 when driving became more expensive relative to income, and the same thing can happen to other aspects of our lives if living green becomes less expensive than polluting. And that culture of living green (and the cost reductions associated with innovation) will propagate to developing countries, which will decrease the average political per capita. I don't think reducing the total population significantly is workable, and attempts are only going to remove the people who have the largest chance of solving the problem generally.