3 ms·

Man, you know we're doomed to face the climate apocalypse when a simple thread about emissions is this divisive.

• easytiger 6y ago
  As a percentage of emissions of CO2 what does the airline industry contribute?
  • yread 6y ago
    Including radiative forcing and other effects something on the order of 4%. Not life changing but current carbon budget imbalance is only about 4.5% of anthropogenic CO2, so if we cut it out completely we could slow CO2 growth significantly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_aviation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_aviati... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_cycle#/media/File:Anthropogenic_carbon_flows_1850-2018.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_cycle#/media/File:Anthr...
    • easytiger 6y ago
      plenty of things can become vastly lower in CO2 contribution, flying is not yet one of them. It is merely a bogyman for a tribal train of thought
• AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
  It is quite interesting from a completely outside perspective how our species seems to insist on placing short-term individual prosperity above long-term collective survival.
  • smabie 6y ago
    That's not particularly interesting, that's how evolution works.
    • AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
      Presumably we evolved brains with the capacity for long term planning because it was an aid to our survival. What's interesting is that we don't use it in this case.
      • smabie 6y ago
        We certainly didn't evolve brains for long term planning. We evolved brains for short term planning and it works pretty well for that
        • AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
          That's a dubious statement considering that human beings engage in long term planning all the time. Indeed, it is doubtful civilization would exist if we couldn't.
    • tolbish 6y ago
      Our species also prospered from long-term planning and sacrifice.
• hackeraccount 6y ago
  But shouldn't it be? There's a problem and you have a limited amount of money to spend fixing it. Every dollar you spend by not flying is a dollar you can't spend on something else. I understand the appeal of "We have to do something and this is something so let's do it" but that never works in practice. what if flying people around in produces 10 Trillion dollars a year in value. That money can be used to build a 1,000 solar farms that will will reduce the amount of CO2 twice as much as just stopping all those flights? Or what if the politics of stopping people from flying are mind mindbogglingly toxic. They'll vote for and support people who will happily build coal plant upon coal plant just so that they can keep flying. But for that they'd happily pay the taxes and/or pay the capital to build a million wind turbines. Look, I realize this is just a dumb thread. It won't change a mind one jot but maybe someone here will make an argument that - pro or con - will make the end result come about or not come about a bit faster.