8 ms·

Because eating less meat, stop taking the plane, reducing our consumption level, replacing cars with bikes and trains and other stuff like that seems radical to

Because eating less meat, stop taking the plane, reducing our consumption level, replacing cars with bikes and trains and other stuff like that seems radical to you ?

jmondi 3y ago
The OP you replied to implied that we need to completely tank the economy to do anything. It just “stop taking the plane” and “eating less meat”.
- edhelas 3y ago
  Reducing massively our meat consumption might have some effects on some part of our economy indeed, same if we choose two divide by 2, 3, 4 the number of cars we're producing.
RandomLensman 3y ago
No more air travel is very radical!
- replygirl 3y ago
  this is a big one. there is a surgery i'll need within 10 years that i can't access in north america. i could definitely give up flight for play, probably for work, not for health
  - dopidopHN 3y ago
    What if it was replaced by boat travel?
  - jfengel 3y ago
    You could take a boat. It takes longer but you said it's not an emergency.
    - Gareth321 3y ago
      Ships are worse than planes. https://theicct.org/marine-cruising-flying-may22/ https://theicct.org/marine-cruising-flying-may22/
      - replygirl 3y ago
        in this theoretical world without commodity air travel, we'd have ocean liners fit for purpose. right now the only one i know of is effectively a cruise ship payload stuffed into an ocean liner hull. based on the numbers for cargo favoring sea over air, it seems reasonable that liners _could_ be more efficient than flight
    - replygirl 3y ago
      yeah i'd love if ocean liners were a thing again. afaik there's only one, and it's a ritzy and touristy affair
    - concordDance 3y ago
      The huge amount of time saved with plane vs boat makes the former the superior option. There's no way a ton of CO2 is worth the comparative QALY loss you get from five days in a boat compared to the other things you could be doing with that time (if you're on a properly efficient liner rather than a super inefficient modern luxury cruise liner). Even the extreme upper end of CO2 externalities don't go above $1000/ton with most reasonable estimates below $100/ton.
- dopidopHN 3y ago
  I took my first plane at 28 or so. Before it was just too expensive. I survived, and traveled to many, many countries without it. ( car, buses ) Now, I live between two continents. Take plane at least once a year or every other one. I would still be in favor of plane restriction. It will happen anyway: but by prices purely and the most affluent of us will be the less impacted.
  - RandomLensman 3y ago
    There is no need for it to happen. This weird idea that getting poorer will ensure the long-term survival of humans is in error.
    - dopidopHN 3y ago
      Don’t you think oil will keep getting more expensive? That what I had in mind. It seems more and more costly to extract it.
      - RandomLensman 3y ago
        Oil will eventually be very cheap because demand will be a lot less than it is now.
        dopidopHN 3y ago
        I never heard that projection before. Because demands will plumet? Then It might just be not cost effective at all to go dig deeper or use more complex process to get it. How does that works with current recent trends? Globally we consumed more oil in 2023 than 2022 for instance. If demand plumet somehow … can we still support a extraction industry ? Recently ( pre 2019 ) shale gaz was worth it because of high prices… then it switched again to lower price and extracting it made little sense ( till next time )
        RandomLensman 3y ago
        Once oil is used only marginally for fuel and heating, the demand will be a lot less (minus 80% or thereabouts) and going after difficult to extract sources might indeed not be economical but also not needed to satisfy demand (unless this happens very very late). During the transition there could be cost spikes at demand levels that are awkward to fill without expensive resources, though.
cscurmudgeon 3y ago
> replacing cars with bikes and trains 1. What if you are disabled and have no train connectivity? 2. What about workers who need to travel by car to build trains? What about support workers who help those workers? And so on? See what happens if we stop virtue signaling and think for a few more seconds? Please stop with this zero-order thinking and spend a few seconds thinking of first-order and second-order effects when what you suggest can impact billions of lives. E.g, Mao and his moronic campaign against birds https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0306422018800259 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0306422018800259
- netsharc 3y ago
  Your rebuttal scenarios are weak, of course in this fantasy scenario some cars will still be allowed. But yes I do agree about butterfly effects, like in this scenario: https://www.bbc.com/future/bespoke/made-on-earth/how-the-covid-19-pandemic-hit-the-cut-flower-chain.html https://www.bbc.com/future/bespoke/made-on-earth/how-the-cov... or https://archive.is/0inYa https://archive.is/0inYa Pandemic happened -> Europe went to lockdown -> Restaurants, hotels closed, weddings cancelled -> a drop of flower sales -> Kenyan flower growers suddenly find themselves out of work and out of income (plane-loads of flowers get flown everyday from Africa, M. East and S. America to Europe) Yeah it was probably okay sailing for rich countries that can conjure up debt and give their citizens some relief, but how about for the poorer countries? India had a lockdown and day-wagers had to walk thousands of kilometers home, and the PM's response seemed to be "Not my problem!"
  - cscurmudgeon 3y ago
    > Your rebuttal scenarios are weak, of course in this fantasy scenario some cars will still be allowed. Then > But yes I do agree about butterfly effects, like in this scenario: https://www.bbc.com/future/bespoke/made-on-earth/how-the-cov https://www.bbc.com/future/bespoke/made-on-earth/how-the-cov... or https://archive.is/0inYa https://archive.is/0inYa > Is the cure really worse than the disease? The health impacts of lockdowns during COVID-19 https://gh.bmj.com/content/6/8/e006653 https://gh.bmj.com/content/6/8/e006653 Rich countries suffered too. https://edpolicyinca.org/newsroom/california-test-scores-show-devastating-impact-pandemic-student-learning https://edpolicyinca.org/newsroom/california-test-scores-sho...
bboygravity 3y ago
So we can save the world by all becoming Dutch (biking) or Singaporean (public transport) vegans who never travel further than a few 100 km? Boom, all problems suddenly solved? You might want to run the numbers on that one some more.

Because eating less meat, stop taking the plane, reducing our consumption level, replacing cars with bikes and trains and other stuff like that seems radical to you ?

jmondi 3y ago

The OP you replied to implied that we need to completely tank the economy to do anything. It just “stop taking the plane” and “eating less meat”.

edhelas 3y ago
Reducing massively our meat consumption might have some effects on some part of our economy indeed, same if we choose two divide by 2, 3, 4 the number of cars we're producing.

RandomLensman 3y ago

No more air travel is very radical!

replygirl 3y ago
this is a big one. there is a surgery i'll need within 10 years that i can't access in north america. i could definitely give up flight for play, probably for work, not for health
- dopidopHN 3y ago
  What if it was replaced by boat travel?
- jfengel 3y ago
  You could take a boat. It takes longer but you said it's not an emergency.
  - Gareth321 3y ago
    Ships are worse than planes. https://theicct.org/marine-cruising-flying-may22/ https://theicct.org/marine-cruising-flying-may22/
    - replygirl 3y ago
      in this theoretical world without commodity air travel, we'd have ocean liners fit for purpose. right now the only one i know of is effectively a cruise ship payload stuffed into an ocean liner hull. based on the numbers for cargo favoring sea over air, it seems reasonable that liners _could_ be more efficient than flight
  - replygirl 3y ago
    yeah i'd love if ocean liners were a thing again. afaik there's only one, and it's a ritzy and touristy affair
  - concordDance 3y ago
    The huge amount of time saved with plane vs boat makes the former the superior option. There's no way a ton of CO2 is worth the comparative QALY loss you get from five days in a boat compared to the other things you could be doing with that time (if you're on a properly efficient liner rather than a super inefficient modern luxury cruise liner). Even the extreme upper end of CO2 externalities don't go above $1000/ton with most reasonable estimates below $100/ton.
dopidopHN 3y ago
I took my first plane at 28 or so. Before it was just too expensive. I survived, and traveled to many, many countries without it. ( car, buses ) Now, I live between two continents. Take plane at least once a year or every other one. I would still be in favor of plane restriction. It will happen anyway: but by prices purely and the most affluent of us will be the less impacted.
- RandomLensman 3y ago
  There is no need for it to happen. This weird idea that getting poorer will ensure the long-term survival of humans is in error.
  - dopidopHN 3y ago
    Don’t you think oil will keep getting more expensive? That what I had in mind. It seems more and more costly to extract it.
    - RandomLensman 3y ago
      Oil will eventually be very cheap because demand will be a lot less than it is now.
      - dopidopHN 3y ago
        I never heard that projection before. Because demands will plumet? Then It might just be not cost effective at all to go dig deeper or use more complex process to get it. How does that works with current recent trends? Globally we consumed more oil in 2023 than 2022 for instance. If demand plumet somehow … can we still support a extraction industry ? Recently ( pre 2019 ) shale gaz was worth it because of high prices… then it switched again to lower price and extracting it made little sense ( till next time )
        RandomLensman 3y ago
        Once oil is used only marginally for fuel and heating, the demand will be a lot less (minus 80% or thereabouts) and going after difficult to extract sources might indeed not be economical but also not needed to satisfy demand (unless this happens very very late). During the transition there could be cost spikes at demand levels that are awkward to fill without expensive resources, though.

cscurmudgeon 3y ago

> replacing cars with bikes and trains 1. What if you are disabled and have no train connectivity? 2. What about workers who need to travel by car to build trains? What about support workers who help those workers? And so on? See what happens if we stop virtue signaling and think for a few more seconds? Please stop with this zero-order thinking and spend a few seconds thinking of first-order and second-order effects when what you suggest can impact billions of lives. E.g, Mao and his moronic campaign against birds https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0306422018800259 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0306422018800259

netsharc 3y ago
Your rebuttal scenarios are weak, of course in this fantasy scenario some cars will still be allowed. But yes I do agree about butterfly effects, like in this scenario: https://www.bbc.com/future/bespoke/made-on-earth/how-the-covid-19-pandemic-hit-the-cut-flower-chain.html https://www.bbc.com/future/bespoke/made-on-earth/how-the-cov... or https://archive.is/0inYa https://archive.is/0inYa Pandemic happened -> Europe went to lockdown -> Restaurants, hotels closed, weddings cancelled -> a drop of flower sales -> Kenyan flower growers suddenly find themselves out of work and out of income (plane-loads of flowers get flown everyday from Africa, M. East and S. America to Europe) Yeah it was probably okay sailing for rich countries that can conjure up debt and give their citizens some relief, but how about for the poorer countries? India had a lockdown and day-wagers had to walk thousands of kilometers home, and the PM's response seemed to be "Not my problem!"
- cscurmudgeon 3y ago
  > Your rebuttal scenarios are weak, of course in this fantasy scenario some cars will still be allowed. Then > But yes I do agree about butterfly effects, like in this scenario: https://www.bbc.com/future/bespoke/made-on-earth/how-the-cov https://www.bbc.com/future/bespoke/made-on-earth/how-the-cov... or https://archive.is/0inYa https://archive.is/0inYa > Is the cure really worse than the disease? The health impacts of lockdowns during COVID-19 https://gh.bmj.com/content/6/8/e006653 https://gh.bmj.com/content/6/8/e006653 Rich countries suffered too. https://edpolicyinca.org/newsroom/california-test-scores-show-devastating-impact-pandemic-student-learning https://edpolicyinca.org/newsroom/california-test-scores-sho...

bboygravity 3y ago

So we can save the world by all becoming Dutch (biking) or Singaporean (public transport) vegans who never travel further than a few 100 km? Boom, all problems suddenly solved? You might want to run the numbers on that one some more.