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Climate activists block private jet take-offs at Schiphol Airport
- melling 4y agoIf all the private jets disappeared today, the impact on climate change would be negligible. Wouldn’t it be better to start somewhere in the top half of the problem? It we could actually delay the problem by a decade or so, technology would improve to help address climate change. Maybe fusion gets resolved in that decade, cheap hydrogen becomes possible, batteries improve, …
- voakbasda 4y agoHowever I would bet the people flying on those jets have a disproportionate ability to exert influence over bigger contributors. From the perspective of trying to change the “right” minds, this activism might actually be well targeted.
- melling 4y agoWhen you’re wrong what happens? Out of touch optimism is leading to an irreversible problem. I suggest reading the news. “Centrist Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) criticized President Joe Biden for recent comments he made about shutting down coal plants across the country, decrying the idea as being “divorced from reality.” https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/campaigns/manchin-unloads-on-biden-and-calls-him-divorced-from-reality-just-days-before-midterms https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/campaigns/manchin-un...
- gruez 4y ago> From the perspective of trying to change the “right” minds, this activism might actually be well targeted. I'm going to go on a limb and say that the typical private jet flyer's (celerity/executive) reaction to their flights getting delayed/canceled because of climate protesters isn't going to call their political contacts to get climate legislation expedited. If you had to fill up your car and climate protesters blocked all the local petrol stations, is that going to change your mind?
- pydry 4y agoFrom what I heard regarding a similar incident this type of thing does rattle them. Especially when their own children take the side of the protestors. It can be isolating. It might very well inhibit them from picking up that phone and lobbying to water down climate legislation.
- _oyks 4y agoYeah I think you might be missing the point - the aim with these protests is to toe the line between getting news attention without getting it for the wrong reasons. The actual protest and the cause do not have to be perfectly matched
- melling 4y agoNah, they’re climate change “alarmists”. People ignore them. It doesn’t change anyone’s mind. https://youtu.be/3E0a_60PMR8 https://youtu.be/3E0a_60PMR8 https://www.foxnews.com/media/physicist-tells-tucker-carlson-climate-change-is-fiction-of-the-media.amp https://www.foxnews.com/media/physicist-tells-tucker-carlson... Companies do make more promises they can’t keep. https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/02/07/study-worlds-biggest-firms-seen-exaggerating-their-climate-actions.html https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/02/07/study-worlds-biggest-fir...
- voldacar 4y agoThe point of the protests is for the protesters to signal moral righteousness
- antiterra 4y agoI’m going to let you in on a secret: people can have deeply held beliefs. Yes, some people are dishonest about their opinions for political or social advantage. However, a knee jerk reaction that people vocally expressing an opinion you disagree with are simply posturing or virtue signaling is a form of denial.
- melling 4y agoWhich opinion do you think we disagree with? The point we really would like you to understand is that doing meaningless pointless things that accomplish nothing is wasting everyone’s time. If anything, people are making the problem worse. Peter Thiel won’t be giving up flying private anytime soon. https://youtu.be/Tl_QeSk1_4k https://youtu.be/Tl_QeSk1_4k
- veeti 4y ago
- pjc50 4y agoDifficult to ask people who take 1 flight a year to cut down if the people taking 100 flights per year won't.
- melling 4y ago100,000 flights every day of the year, add up to 2% of global emissions. Why would you bother asking anyone to skip a flight? How about people take a math class along with climate change
- gtvwill 4y agoWell given flights is 1/50th of the equation maybe your the one that needs the math class. 50 hurdles to fix the problem is bugger all. Start w the easy shit like flights and eat the rich as we work our way back up the ladder. 1/50th is quite a large percent. Lol let's angle this another way... Would you be ok with ending the life of 2% of earth's population? I mean it's only roughly 156 million out of 7.6 billion. Drop in the ocean right? Micro percentage!
- melling 4y agoRemoving all 100,000 flights a day, every single day of the year sounds like quite a chore. People should drive thousands of miles instead? Hasn’t this all been explained before? Wouldn’t it be easier to replace 8500 coal plants and save a lot more emissions? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal-fired_power_station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal-fired_power_station No one would even know their electricity came from another source. “Coal-fired power stations emit over 10 Gt of carbon dioxide each year,[4] about one fifth of world greenhouse gas emissions, so are the single largest cause of climate change” So, using that ridiculous example of 156 million people, multiply it by 10. That’s CHECKMATE!!!
- 1337biz 4y agoI am 100% against these activists. But I am also 100% for targeting private jet users. Private jet users are exactly the people who push climate change policies but feel zero impact of their agenda. We have seen this over and over again from the private jet parks at climate change conferences and so on. Them having to use commercial planes would be the first time they feel some inconvenience by the policies they shape and push forward. Let's see how fast the anti private jet topic dies off.
- filoleg 4y ago> But I am also 100% for targeting private jet users. Private jet users are exactly the people who push climate change policies but feel zero impact of their agenda. I cannot strongly disagree with your point. But by that logic, targeting Rolls-Royce/Bentley/Aston Martin drivers (or, more specifically, owners, given they are likely to have chaffeurs), as well as house owners in Calabasas (SoCal) and Los Altos Hills (Bay Area) would work just as well.
- Kaibeezy 4y agoWhere precisely would you hold a demonstration to protest the widely distributed Bentleys of Calabasas? Jets tend to congregate conveniently at a small number of public locations. Their per capita emissions are egregious; their missions are frivolous. Perfect target.
- filoleg 4y ago> Where precisely would you hold a demonstration to protest the widely distributed Bentleys of Calabasas? Fair point about Bentleys, but not about Calabasas. You would protest Calabasas mansion owners in Calabasas, South California. Same with Los Altos Hills mansion owners in Los Altos Hills neighborhood in Bay Area. Those two aren't brands, they are areas/neighborhoods.
- bjourne 4y agoBut if all the comments from people whining about the supposed uselessness of climate change activism disappeared we might actually get somewhere!
- mabynogy 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_Rebellion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_Rebellion
- robomartin 4y agoThese stunts are pointless, irrelevant and, in the end, counterproductive. You could ground the entire aviation industry --all of it-- and it would do exactly zero towards atmospheric CO2 reduction. Zero. The problem with activists is that they are low information zealots who, for the most part, are ignorant useful idiots. Sorry to be so harsh, but I believe this to be the case for most any domain where, for the most part, young "activists" are the result of finding people who never ask tough questions, can't evaluate matters objectively, are driven by emotion and are supremely susceptible to indoctrination. Want to get a sense of just how dumb it is to go after private jets or the entire air transportation industry? Here: https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/each-countrys-share-co2-emissions https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/each-countrys-share-co2-emi... Scroll down to the pie chart titled "Top Annual CO2 Emitting Countries, 2019". here's a simple reality that requires nothing more than being able to add and subtract: If the United States --all of it-- were to evaporate from this planet tomorrow --all of it, gone, no more CO2 emissions-- you would only cut down CO2 inputs to the atmosphere by 14%. Stopping private jets or the entire airline industry is a rounding error compared to all of the US evaporating tomorrow. OK, let's get rid of the US and China. That will only reduce CO2 inputs by 43%. Stopping private jets? As an idea, this is between ridiculous and demented. And, BTW, these numbers aren't even correct. You cannot bring down CO2 inputs to zero. You just can't. Why? Well, the simplest explanation is that you have forest and other fires that would still be there and constantly contribute CO2 to the atmosphere. In California alone, one year of fires is equivalent to nearly 20 years of emissions savings. If we all evaporate from this planet --all of humanity-- it will probably take somewhere in the order of 100K yeas for atmospheric CO2 to drop by 100 ppm (we have accurate data on this, it isn't a guess).
- Schroedingersat 4y ago> Well, the simplest explanation is that you have forest and other fires that would still be there and constantly contribute CO2 to the atmosphere. In California alone, one year of fires is equivalent to nearly 20 years of emissions savings. Where did the CO2 in the forest come from?
- arctangos 4y agoClimate protests, action, and legislation on Hacker News seem to act as a special attractor for particular types of repetitive comments, describing the legislation passed/action taken as impossible or creating no change[1], or the people behing them as or the people behind them behind them actions as ingenuine, misguided, or as performance artists[2]. _I've added two links but a search can provide many more._ I would like to respond to some of these frequent critiques explain a bit about why such actions and legislation continue happening. 1) "Only X% Percent of Emissions… No _real_ effect" A frequent talking point of such critiques has to do with the extremely small percentage CO2-equivalent reduction that might result from the given action. (An example of this is present in a sibling comment which implies that fighting climate change is futile, since even the United States and China combined only account for 43% of glocal emissions. I haven't verified the numbers.) Given the vast mass of CO2 that human actions put into the climate, it is unreasonable to expect single piece of legislation or action can to solve this problem. Only the very largest pieces of legislation or actions can even be expected to make a noticable dent. To claim that actions or legislation are innefective because they are relatively minor compared to the size of the problem can be reduced to asserting that large problems cannot be solved, since solving them involves mutliple steps. This is false. 2) "Misguided hypocritical performance artist clowns" These types of critiques are applied mostly to activists but occasionally to legislators as well. Actions that make the news seem especially created _to_ make the news, so it seems reasonable to consider them performances of some sort or another. It is also worth considering _why_ these are such performances. My impression is that activists are actively seeking to create media attention for an issue that has typically not received the media coverage it is due. (For example, according to the IPCC, the most populated areas of the country where I currently live will be underwater in the next century, but the near certainty of this never makes the news except for rare occasions when it floods or when activists block the airport.) If this is the case, blocking private jets is a convenient rhetorical springboard for garnering media attention rather than the main idea behind action. The point was to "earn" media coverage of the climate crisis, not to block planes. Given that this action was briefly on the frontpage of hacker news and my local news, it seems to have worked. Well-intentioned and direct criticism of the headline, whether that is blocking private jets or people gluing themselves to paintings, feeds algorithms, helps the activists' end goals, and misses the point. (Scott Alexander touched on this in 2014. [3]) ---- Many dismissive comments on HN come from individuals whom seem to have opinions at odds with the scientific consensus. Others would prefer to see activism or legislation that makes a larger impact, is more effective, and is less disruptive. If you are in the later category, please consider asking yourself what actions you have personally taken make a meaningful difference for the climate crisis. Please also ask yourself whether your actions can scale to other people, and what it would take to scale them (media coverage, network effects, etc.) _I personally consider voting, lobbying, and dietary changes to be effective but don't believe that they scale very well._ Activism and legislation are both complicated fields existing within larger climatic and political systems. If you have not recently attempted to take such actions, found them effective, and attempted to scale them enough to generate some network effects (via media coverage or otherwise), I would personally doubt your ability to provide more useful analysis than the people doing work in this field. --- The people behind such actions and legislation are trying to create positive change. Sometimes they fail. Other times, they succeed. It's clear to me that many commentators do not understand how or why this is the case. In my opinion, "Why?" questions may be helpful. "What!" type reactions are less so. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25134077 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25134077 [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33359991 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33359991 [3]: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage...