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I think the most reasonable approach is definitely the one mentioned by this activist: “The most privileged people should be the ones who start sacrificing firs

I think the most reasonable approach is definitely the one mentioned by this activist: “The most privileged people should be the ones who start sacrificing first,” Huber told Motherboard. “It’s unfair to ask the poorest people to give up polluting activities first if the richest don’t have to give up anything.” Now if you're starting from there and with the response "well they won't" then your plan is an answer to the question "how can we make them?" but I don't think it's a particularly effective one compared to some others that it's easy to imagine.

hulitu 4y ago
> “The most privileged people should be the ones who start sacrificing first,” He's right but, unfortunately, this is one of the best jokes i ever heard. The most privileged people are also the most greedy.
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  Yes I don't think we want to wait for them to decide to care.
Ekaros 4y ago
And I think it is pretty reasonable to start limiting things from things that even those people don't really need. Private planes, super yachts, super and hyper cars. Mansions. The stuff 99% of world population successfully live without. After this we can ask regular people to maybe trade for more efficient cars, houses and so on. Maybe consider impacts of holidays.
gruez 4y ago
> I think the most reasonable approach is definitely the one mentioned by this activist: “The most privileged people should be the ones who start sacrificing first,” Huber told Motherboard. “It’s unfair to ask the poorest people to give up polluting activities first if the richest don’t have to give up anything.” No, the most reasonable solution is for everyone to be responsible for their own pollution. If you generate 15 tons of co2, you need to either eliminate those emissions or find some way of offsetting them. Who cares if you're a global jet setter generating hundreds of tons of co2, if you're properly sequestering them? "Banning private jets" is how we go from something reasonable (ie. "you shouldn't be able to damage a shared resource") to moralizing (ie. "you should be prevented from doing something, even though it's not harming others").
- rurp 4y ago
  I agree with the principle here, but worry that carbon offsets will always be a lossy abstraction. My prior is that any metric that is hard to measure, while having strong financial incentives to game, will be heavily gamed. Offsets are hard to track and measure accurately and we've already seen a lot of dishonest behavior in this area. This is not to say that banning private jets is the answer, but I think the actual solution (if we get to one) will have to be a messy hodgepodge of approaches.
- TremendousJudge 4y ago
  >Who cares if you're a global jet setter generating hundreds of tons of co2, if you're properly sequestering them "Sequestering" carbon is, right now, complete science fiction. Nobody can actually do it. The most that can be done is paying to maybe prevent other people from emitting -- but the emissions always go up. So if one day proper carbon capture technologies exist, this argument can be made. Right now, it can't.
  - gruez 4y ago
    >Nobody can actually do it They can. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/23/these-companies-are-sucking-carbon-from-the-atmosphere.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/23/these-companies-are-sucking-...
    - TremendousJudge 4y ago
      I should have made it clearer -- by "actually" I mean "in a net negative way". Otherwise it's useless. It's not clear at all from the article, or from any other of these carbon capture schemes I read about (just yesterday there was one in the front page of HN -- and in fact, _that_ article[0] said that this method literally burned gas for heat), how they achieve this. Because the country this is installed in uses fossil fuels for its electricity. Not to mention all the logistics equipment (trucks) necessary to have this plant in operation. And burning fossil fuels to pull carbon out of the atmosphere is never going to make sense due to thermodynamics -- even at 100% efficiency, you'll only break even. Which makes me very suspicious that the biggest investors are always oil companies, as though they can burn all the fuel they extract from the ground and also capture all the carbon it emits. Which is not possible, but maybe they hope that with enough sleight of hand nobody will notice. [0] https://spectrum.ieee.org/carbon-capture-2657738131 https://spectrum.ieee.org/carbon-capture-2657738131
LinuxBender 4y ago
I am going to stand by the "well they won't" because all the people I know with private jets most certainly won't. Even if the government used eminent domain and forced buy-backs at $10-$50 million per aircraft they would just buy something that skirts the line to meet business needs. More likely they would just buy out all the seats on a 737 so they can change the flight plan, leading to even more waste and longer lines at airports but that won't meet the needs of business folks that are landing at small class C airports and thereby leading to lawsuits. Folks land near me all the time in their private jets. The nearest commercial airline is a couple hours away. Time is money and is also critical for back-to-back business meetings. There are likely a small number of celebrities that use these aircraft to avoid sitting with us plebs and for status but the vast majority of them are use for business purposes that can not be replaced by commercial airlines in a manor that business folks would consider acceptable. Most of these people have legal teams that would battle any action taken by the government and in the end we would just waste vast amounts of taxpayer funds. That may sound defeatist but we have all witnessed the legal fallout of smaller changes.
- ahtihn 4y ago
  What kind of business reasons are there for travel that can't be replaced by videoconferencing?
  - LinuxBender 4y ago
    That is a good question. One use case would be signing documents in person when that and a public notary is required. Some legal documents can be pseudo signed over various document sharing platforms but some business deals do not support this, especially when talking about acquisitions, mergers and sales of multi-million/billion dollar companies. Another disputable use case would be the human interaction factor when making large business deals. Historically people in person will be favored over people online. There are debates about this use case but money talks and people will go where the money is. Another use case are deals that require negotiating and/or discussing things too sensitive to discuss online and that is a topic in and of itself.
  - sokoloff 4y ago
HPsquared 4y ago
We don't really have noblesse oblige these days. (If we ever did)
- gruez 4y ago
  It got replaced with progressive taxation, which is much better defined than whatever "noblesse oblige" stood for. > 1. Whoever claims to be noble must conduct himself nobly. > 2. (Figuratively) One must act in a fashion that conforms to one's position and privileges with which one has been born, bestowed and/or has earned. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noblesse_oblige https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noblesse_oblige

hulitu 4y ago

> “The most privileged people should be the ones who start sacrificing first,” He's right but, unfortunately, this is one of the best jokes i ever heard. The most privileged people are also the most greedy.

giraffe_lady 4y ago
Yes I don't think we want to wait for them to decide to care.

Ekaros 4y ago

And I think it is pretty reasonable to start limiting things from things that even those people don't really need. Private planes, super yachts, super and hyper cars. Mansions. The stuff 99% of world population successfully live without. After this we can ask regular people to maybe trade for more efficient cars, houses and so on. Maybe consider impacts of holidays.

gruez 4y ago

> I think the most reasonable approach is definitely the one mentioned by this activist: “The most privileged people should be the ones who start sacrificing first,” Huber told Motherboard. “It’s unfair to ask the poorest people to give up polluting activities first if the richest don’t have to give up anything.” No, the most reasonable solution is for everyone to be responsible for their own pollution. If you generate 15 tons of co2, you need to either eliminate those emissions or find some way of offsetting them. Who cares if you're a global jet setter generating hundreds of tons of co2, if you're properly sequestering them? "Banning private jets" is how we go from something reasonable (ie. "you shouldn't be able to damage a shared resource") to moralizing (ie. "you should be prevented from doing something, even though it's not harming others").

rurp 4y ago
I agree with the principle here, but worry that carbon offsets will always be a lossy abstraction. My prior is that any metric that is hard to measure, while having strong financial incentives to game, will be heavily gamed. Offsets are hard to track and measure accurately and we've already seen a lot of dishonest behavior in this area. This is not to say that banning private jets is the answer, but I think the actual solution (if we get to one) will have to be a messy hodgepodge of approaches.
TremendousJudge 4y ago
>Who cares if you're a global jet setter generating hundreds of tons of co2, if you're properly sequestering them "Sequestering" carbon is, right now, complete science fiction. Nobody can actually do it. The most that can be done is paying to maybe prevent other people from emitting -- but the emissions always go up. So if one day proper carbon capture technologies exist, this argument can be made. Right now, it can't.
- gruez 4y ago
  >Nobody can actually do it They can. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/23/these-companies-are-sucking-carbon-from-the-atmosphere.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/23/these-companies-are-sucking-...
  - TremendousJudge 4y ago
    I should have made it clearer -- by "actually" I mean "in a net negative way". Otherwise it's useless. It's not clear at all from the article, or from any other of these carbon capture schemes I read about (just yesterday there was one in the front page of HN -- and in fact, _that_ article[0] said that this method literally burned gas for heat), how they achieve this. Because the country this is installed in uses fossil fuels for its electricity. Not to mention all the logistics equipment (trucks) necessary to have this plant in operation. And burning fossil fuels to pull carbon out of the atmosphere is never going to make sense due to thermodynamics -- even at 100% efficiency, you'll only break even. Which makes me very suspicious that the biggest investors are always oil companies, as though they can burn all the fuel they extract from the ground and also capture all the carbon it emits. Which is not possible, but maybe they hope that with enough sleight of hand nobody will notice. [0] https://spectrum.ieee.org/carbon-capture-2657738131 https://spectrum.ieee.org/carbon-capture-2657738131

LinuxBender 4y ago

I am going to stand by the "well they won't" because all the people I know with private jets most certainly won't. Even if the government used eminent domain and forced buy-backs at $10-$50 million per aircraft they would just buy something that skirts the line to meet business needs. More likely they would just buy out all the seats on a 737 so they can change the flight plan, leading to even more waste and longer lines at airports but that won't meet the needs of business folks that are landing at small class C airports and thereby leading to lawsuits. Folks land near me all the time in their private jets. The nearest commercial airline is a couple hours away. Time is money and is also critical for back-to-back business meetings. There are likely a small number of celebrities that use these aircraft to avoid sitting with us plebs and for status but the vast majority of them are use for business purposes that can not be replaced by commercial airlines in a manor that business folks would consider acceptable. Most of these people have legal teams that would battle any action taken by the government and in the end we would just waste vast amounts of taxpayer funds. That may sound defeatist but we have all witnessed the legal fallout of smaller changes.

ahtihn 4y ago
What kind of business reasons are there for travel that can't be replaced by videoconferencing?
- LinuxBender 4y ago
  That is a good question. One use case would be signing documents in person when that and a public notary is required. Some legal documents can be pseudo signed over various document sharing platforms but some business deals do not support this, especially when talking about acquisitions, mergers and sales of multi-million/billion dollar companies. Another disputable use case would be the human interaction factor when making large business deals. Historically people in person will be favored over people online. There are debates about this use case but money talks and people will go where the money is. Another use case are deals that require negotiating and/or discussing things too sensitive to discuss online and that is a topic in and of itself.
- sokoloff 4y ago

HPsquared 4y ago

We don't really have noblesse oblige these days. (If we ever did)

gruez 4y ago
It got replaced with progressive taxation, which is much better defined than whatever "noblesse oblige" stood for. > 1. Whoever claims to be noble must conduct himself nobly. > 2. (Figuratively) One must act in a fashion that conforms to one's position and privileges with which one has been born, bestowed and/or has earned. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noblesse_oblige https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noblesse_oblige