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Anyone else think banning private jets would be generally a much better thing for climate? I find it pretty shocking the rich are allowed to pollute the way the

Anyone else think banning private jets would be generally a much better thing for climate? I find it pretty shocking the rich are allowed to pollute the way they do.

tristor 3y ago
All aviation, altogether, private jets inclusive, is less than 3% of world emissions. Getting people fired up about rich people using private jets is just a distraction from the truth in the same way that paper straws are. The reality is that a small handful of industries generate the majority of pollution, and they have no meaningful regulatory pressure to stop, and that even that mostly pales in comparison to the emissions generated by electricity production, which we need to decarbonize as quickly as possible.
- bigbacaloa 3y ago
  [dead]
- FredPret 3y ago
  I'd like to see a source for that pie chart. According to this [1], 28% of US emissions are from transport, and for the aircraft it's 7% of the 28% for commercial and 2% of 28% private. That does seem like mostly a non-issue. [1] https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions#transportation https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...
- jjk7 3y ago
  3% is a pretty big reduction for such a simple thing...
  - baggy_trough 3y ago
    You think getting rid of aviation is a simple thing?
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - Supermancho 3y ago
      >> 3% is a pretty big reduction for such a simple thing... > You think getting rid of aviation is a simple thing? That's not what was suggested, initially. Just the private jets. Then there have been some numbers thrown around, so it's not clear where the 3% comes from (1/2 of 7%?). Kneejerk opposition by taking the least charitable interpretation, is not constructive. One point is that something measurable, is action in the right direction, rather than whataboutism...even if it's only marginally effective, it's a mindset change for the following generations. Policies that are easy to understand (like banning personal jets) are more likely to be enacted than complicated carbon capture laws. That's another point being made.
      - baggy_trough 3y ago
        I'm responding to the exact statement made, so I don't know what you're talking about regarding a least charitable interpretation.
        enterprise_cog 3y ago
        They were talking about private planes and you generalized it to all aviation. You were not responding to the exact statement.
        baggy_trough 3y ago
        The very first sentence in the parent comment is "All aviation, altogether, private jets inclusive, is less than 3% of world emissions." So your comment is completely off base.
        enterprise_cog 3y ago
        Okay, and the person who replied was clearly talking about private planes. Hence the “so simple” part. Unless you interpret it uncharitably, like the person who replied to you said.
- kiba 3y ago
  I rather that aviation contributes 1.5% instead of 3%. Of course, industries that pollute more should work harder to reduce their pollution. Rather than banning private jet, we could ask that private jet uses only carbon neutral fuels, since they could afford it. However, it might cause rich people to pollute more by using their cars instead of flying, so there's a balancing act.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > rather that aviation contributes 1.5% instead of 3% This describes massively raising the cost of package shipment and air travel. (You can’t cut aviation emissions in half with only private jets or even all of general aviation.) Were that to happen, I know my responses would probably include buying a larger car (to make travel more comfortable) and possibly expanding my house (since I can’t leave it as often). It would probably play differently in Europe, where passenger rail is a real alternative, granted. > we could ask that private jet uses only carbon neutral fuels I’m surprised this isn’t already a requirement.
    - John23832 3y ago
      > This describes massively raising the cost of package shipment and air travel. Having a private jet deliver my amazon package is one of the new prime perks this year.
      - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > Having a private jet deliver my amazon package is one of the new prime perks this year Second sentence buddy. You’re not cutting aviation emissions in half without cutting broader aviation.
  - alephxyz 3y ago
    > However, it might cause rich people to pollute more by using their cars instead of flying, so there's a balancing act. Sustainable Aviation Fuel is ~$1/liter vs ~$.5 for regular fuel. For a "big" Global 7500 that burns 2kL/hr the markup is $1k/hr on a plane that usually costs $15-20k/hr to rent. Doesn't seem like a big markup for people who care about their public image.
- reducesuffering 3y ago
  This is the NIMBY of polluting. Everyone can point to other emissions and say "mines only 3%, worry about those other 50% guys over there." when I bet one of the top "small handful of industries" you're going to point to is something like concrete that is literally making affordable buildings for the peasants to live in while homelessness is already far too high. The real question is what actual reductions you think are easy to make on which particular industries that doesn't make housing, electricity, and heat more expensive for the global median income of $3k, while these people are private jetting to watch a football game in person that's on TV. Because when it comes to 0.5% of emissions, I know I'm going to pick taxing wasteful private jets rather than charge the global poor another $50 they don't have. Not to mention the messaging and optics, ffs look at that thread. Hypocritical private jetting is not how you get people collectively on board to fight climate change. If they have to sacrifice, you do too.
  - tristor 3y ago
    I know it's super in vogue to hate the rich or whatever, but if we want to effectively fight climate change we have to do so strategically, supported by data. The data is pretty clear on this matter, the absolute priority is reducing the carbon footprint of electricity production, the second priority should be reducing the carbon footprint of cargo transport and agriculture, and the third priority should be reducing the carbon footprint of manufacturing. Aligned to each of these is a consistent reduction in how much fossil fuels we extract, especially natural gas which due to pipeline leakage contributes a huge amount of methane into the atmosphere, which is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. I am /very/ specifically not doing some sort of whataboutism based fingerpointing to things that affect the poor in order to defend the rich. I don't care about rich and poor, we're all human beings, and we're all currently headed towards an extinction level event for our entire species because people are distracted by stupid things that don't matter and ignoring the data. Your heart bleeding for the global poor is smoke and mirrors in the face of it all. We, as a species, cannot afford to bring everyone to the same standard of living that exists in the West today while combatting climate change. If we're being really blunt, the standard of living in the West must also be reduced. Perhaps if we ever completely get on renewable electricity production and find a way to turn excess energy into removing carbon from the atmosphere we can reassess what it takes to increase the global standard of living, but we're already fucked as it is just doing what we're already doing, expending more resources extracted from the earth to spew more waste into the atmosphere than we already are is an absolute non-starter.
- maxglute 3y ago
  Nigeria, with 210m people, share of global emissions is 0.23%. Indonesia 270m 1.5% Pakistan 210m 0.9% Brazil 210m 1.2% Bangladesh 160m 0.4% Thats the 5 most populous countries after india, prc, us.
  - wang_li 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - maxglute 3y ago
      Presumably any coordinated global action on climate change including from countries who produce semi and auto. If globe wants to limit emissions, they're not going to be taking 3% from billions who emit less than that. Gov that cares will lower your standard if living if they care enough. See France trying to ban domestic flights. I mean obviously no one is going to kill global aviation, but private jets, why not.
- phatfish 3y ago
  Why dismiss it as a distraction? Every positive action is a step in the right direction to help keep the planet in a liveable condition. I'm happy if restricting single use plastic like plastic straws helps even a small amount to reduce plastic pollution. If i can put up with a soggy straw after 15 mins in a drink, the ultra rich can fly 1st class more often.
  - DangerousPie 3y ago
    You wouldn't have to put up with a soggy straw if we tackled the real problems instead.
    - phatfish 3y ago
      Why can't we do both? Personally I don't want plastic trash polluting the environment. I think this attitude gets the the heart of the problem. When it actually comes to lifestyle changes it suddenly becomes someone else's problem.
      - dpassens 3y ago
        > Personally I don't want plastic trash polluting the environment. Ban throwing them into the environment, then. I've never thrown my plastic straws into the ocean, that happens further down the line of trash disposal. So why should I be the one who's punished for it?
    - timeon 3y ago
      I don't as I do not us straws at all. Point of banning plastic ones was not to create paper ones.
  - fuzzbazz 3y ago
    > PFAS were found in the majority of the straws tested and were most common in those made from paper and bamboo, found the study, published in Food Additives & Contaminants. [1] I would prefer not to consume this with my drink [2]. Not every seemingly positive action is actually positive. Second order effects must be always considered. [1] https://phys.org/news/2023-08-paper-straws-environment-plastic-versions.html https://phys.org/news/2023-08-paper-straws-environment-plast... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per-_and_polyfluoroalkyl_substances#Health_and_environmental_effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per-_and_polyfluoroalkyl_subst...
- philjohn 3y ago
  But marginal gains are important - we're not going to be able to do 10, 20, 30% reductions at once, it's going to be built up piecemeal.
- matsemann 3y ago
  > The reality is that a small handful of industries generate the majority of pollution No, your argument is the distraction. "Lets do nothing, there's these big guys over here doing worse". And for whom do these industries generate goods and services for?
  - tristor 3y ago
    Please point to where I said "Lets do nothing" /anywhere/ on this issue? I think we need to do numerous things, immediately, and drastically. Distracting ourselves with complaining about the rich is not one of those things, because it /is/ a distraction.
- julosflb 3y ago
  The problem with this line of thinking in my opinion is that we have 30x3% problems... sure individually they would not make a difference but we need to act on all front.
- ericmay 3y ago
  Kind of. The problem is that the idea is we should make personal sacrifices for the sake of the climate (I agree that we should generally speaking) and do things like ban gas stoves. Ok. But when you tell me that and then I see people and companies writing off private jets as a business expense, all that makes me want to do is say get your hands off my stove because clearly this can't be that serious of a problem [1] if this is continuing to occur. Nobody will be willing to make sacrifices voluntarily that wealthier people aren't and so we have a big marketing problem here. Raise the taxes on private jets and aviation fuel for them 5,000% and have those go to funding climate science (or some other general idea here) and we can talk about my stove. [1] It's a very serious problem.
- xscott 3y ago
  > The reality is that a small handful of industries generate the majority of pollution You can pick your pie chart, and they'll all be a bit different based on the categories they choose. I like this one from 2016 because, even though it's 8 years old, it seems to have all the sectors: https://ourworldindata.org/ghg-emissions-by-sector https://ourworldindata.org/ghg-emissions-by-sector If you want to get to zero emissions, you have to replace or remove all of these: Iron and Steel: 7.2% Road Transport: 11.9% Aviation Transport: 1.7% Commercial Buildings: 6.6% Residential Buildings: 10.9% Cement: 3.0% Those are all small percentages. There's really no one thing you can eliminate to solve the majority of the problem. If you went by broader strokes, let's say you get rid of: ALL of Industry: 29.4% ALL of Transportation: 16.2% ALL energy for buildings: 17.5% ALL agriculture: 18.4% So at that point, we're basically back in the stone age and the various waste categories will be zero too. But then you'd have 8 billion people huddling around fire pits, which isn't zero emission either. If anyone is inclined to find another pie chart to contradict this one, make sure it's not focused on the emissions in just one tiny sector. We can say that everyone should have electric cars because ICEs are 99% of vehicle emissions, but fixing 99% of 11.9% of the total problem isn't going to solve the total problem. There isn't a silver bullet for this.
  - ta1243 3y ago
    > There isn't a silver bullet for this. No there's not. There's multiple things which need to happen. If you halve those commercial, residential, road and aviation figures that's a decent start. It's not the full answer, but it's part of the answer. People have to see everyone doing their part though. Back in WW2 when food was rationed it didn't really make any difference if the 1% had 3 times as much, but if people saw that we weren't "all in it together" then nothing would get done.
    - xscott 3y ago
      I don't agree with that. It makes people feel good to say "every little bit helps" as they pretend they're doing their part, but I don't hear anyone saying that halving emissions is sufficient to stop any problems. And halving that list is less than 15% of the total. Little bits don't help - they're pointless gestures.
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  3% of 35 billion tonnes is a large number. We might have been able to get away with a goal of non-zero if we had reduced carbon emissions 40 years ago, but now our goal is 0. So that means we must eliminate or sequester from all sectors, including aviation. If you say "we should attack the bigger numbers first", well we have started those. We have started replacing electricity generation with renewables, started replacing ICE cars with electric, and started replacing fossil heating with electric heat pumps. Banning private jets may be an unreasonable ask, but forcing private jets to 6x their fuel costs to use net-zero fuels is not an unreasonable ask, IMO.
JohnFen 3y ago
Particularly when they use them for things as optional and ultimately meaningless as seeing a football game in person.
- FredPret 3y ago
  Existence itself is optional and ultimately meaningless. This is why we have football games and why it's meaningful to see it in person, if you like to.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    Of course it has meaning to the people doing it. But this is one (of many) example of people who are so self-absorbed that they don't even think twice about doing harm to everyone else in order to engage in a recreational activity that could be done with far less impact. It's that disregard for people that I condemn.
    - abenga 3y ago
      Just as long as you keep the same energy when their standard of living goes up and they emit as much as you.
- hombre_fatal 3y ago
  You could do this for anything though. Eating meat for the frivolous reason of enjoying the taste even though it's far less efficient than eating plants. Everything that doesn't impact ourselves is an easy target.
bklyn11201 3y ago
Sure, yes. What's a more realistic way to implement this in the USA while still allowing small-plane hobbyists to fly easily? Could the FAA mandate landing fees based on emissions / passengers?
- cinntaile 3y ago
  Why would you exclude them? They're probably the worst offenders per mile when you take the weight into account.
kayodelycaon 3y ago
You’d be better off getting cargo ships to stop using sludge for fuel and getting countries to stop burning coal. Private jets aren’t even close to the worse things. They are just easy targets. Your worst offenders are industry.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- groestl 3y ago
  > Your worst offenders are industry Which produces for?
  - baggy_trough 3y ago
    People.
    - groestl 3y ago
      Not for all of them in the same manner though. The richest 1% have a carbon footprint equal to the "poorest" 66%, for example.
      - tristor 3y ago
        Only when looking at things globally, and that's mostly because the vast majority of the world population is exceptionally poor with a matching low standard of living. If you look at things in developed countries, the difference in carbon footprint between rich and poor is not nearly so stark. We are /all/ to blame, and we are /all/ going to suffer for it, so we need to pull our heads out of our asses and stop turning this into some ridiculous "us" vs "them" situation that it isn't. There is no us, there is no them, we're all on the same spinning rock in space, breathing the same air.
        groestl 3y ago
        "Only when looking at things globally" is a very interesting thing to say. I'm with you, generally, only that I consider myself part of the "them", and us v them definitely makes sense, given the absurd distribution of resource consumption.
gingerbread-man 3y ago
Why not a pigouvian tax on jet fuel (and other fossil fuels?)
- ericd 3y ago
  Might be helpful to define it for people - a pigouvian tax is a tax on something to balance out the negative externality it inflicts on society. A carbon tax like you’re suggesting seems like our best hope of averting disaster. I’m not sure what would get it done, though, it would be very much against the short term interests of the rich, since they’d bear the brunt, as the largest emitters, and would massively disrupt the status quo in terms of what products are most cost effective. Making it revenue-neutral by dividending out all takings would help with its political popularity, and make it so it would positively impact the poor (since they use less carbon per capita than the average). But still seems hard to get it passed. It’s a bit wonkish, which is a big problem compared to something that feels better, like “ban all private planes!”.
hackeraccount 3y ago
But that's not really what you want is it? You want to ban private jets being used for reasons that you think are idiotic. You presumably don't have an issue with private jets being used for sensible productivity enhancing reasons. The real question is, who would you like to determine which is which? Note that this question covers much more ground then just private jets.
- matsemann 3y ago
  > You presumably don't have an issue with private jets being used for sensible productivity enhancing reasons What are those? Could it have been a Zoom meeting? I'm not the person you're replying to, but I also have a problem with those jets you're mentioning..
al_borland 3y ago
Where does that end? It seems like the same logic could be used to ban private automobile ownership, forcing everyone to use mass transit. While I may be in favor of more mass transit options, completely banning private options seems to be a step too far. There is also the question of what qualifies as private. It seems anyone with enough wealth could easily create a company to own the plane they use.
avgcorrection 3y ago
Rich people cause climate change by architecting society (just look around). Their private jets don’t matter in the grand scheme of things.
- baggy_trough 3y ago
  What does that mean?
  - saintfire 3y ago
    I would assume by making decisions that push people towards technologies or lifestyles that have massive negative externalities but high profits (e.g. Car culture, unrepairable technology) or lobby for businesses/laws that are net negative for society (e.g. Oil & Gas, Pollution regulations for farming, energy and manufacturing). The private jet attention I think is perfectly valid but is akin to blaming people for their "carbon footprint" when much of that footprint is a choice made on your behalf by not providing/burying alternatives and subsidizing polluters.
    - avgcorrection 3y ago
      > I would assume by making decisions that push people towards technologies or lifestyles that have massive negative externalities but high profits (e.g. Car culture, unrepairable technology) or lobby for businesses/laws that are net negative for society (e.g. Oil & Gas, Pollution regulations for farming, energy and manufacturing). See? “Pushing” and “lifestyles”. Clearly the framing is still centered on the “consumer” (apt word) even when the whole paragraph discusses the role that the rich play. Yes. The rich helped build a country (or countries) of car-dependence. You can’t vote-with-your-wallet for country-wide road networks. Same with suburbs. And high-priced apartments in areas where the jobs are. So you get the so-called suburbia lifestyle which is committed by the so-called consumers.
      - baggy_trough 3y ago
        This lifestyle is very much desired by the middle class so I don't think you can blame the rich for it.
kyleblarson 3y ago
How else are they supposed to get to Davos to lecture the peons?
xoa 3y ago
[flagged]
ericd 3y ago
No, we should just tax the shit out of carbon emissions and then redistribute all proceeds evenly per-capita. Much better than spending limited attention and political energy/capital on piecemeal bans. We need to halt 100% of new carbon entering the carbon cycle, not just the stuff that seems egregious enough to get people riled up about, and we need to align the economic incentives to have a hope of getting there in the timeframe that we need to. This is a plan that’s supported by a very large number of top economists, I’ve seen it called something like a “Carbon Dividend with Border Carbon Adjustment”: https://clcouncil.org/our-plan/ https://clcouncil.org/our-plan/
buttercraft 3y ago
How would this work? A major political figure or celebrity just hangs out at gate A33 waiting for their flight while a mob gathers? Or are only certain people allowed to own private jets? Or are only certain destinations allowed if for "worthy" reasons?
wolpoli 3y ago
I live in Canada, and it's strange that we are able to ban little things like single use plastic bags, cutleries, and straws, but not ban big ticket items like private jets.

Anyone else think banning private jets would be generally a much better thing for climate? I find it pretty shocking the rich are allowed to pollute the way they do.

tristor 3y ago

All aviation, altogether, private jets inclusive, is less than 3% of world emissions. Getting people fired up about rich people using private jets is just a distraction from the truth in the same way that paper straws are. The reality is that a small handful of industries generate the majority of pollution, and they have no meaningful regulatory pressure to stop, and that even that mostly pales in comparison to the emissions generated by electricity production, which we need to decarbonize as quickly as possible.

bigbacaloa 3y ago
[dead]
FredPret 3y ago
I'd like to see a source for that pie chart. According to this [1], 28% of US emissions are from transport, and for the aircraft it's 7% of the 28% for commercial and 2% of 28% private. That does seem like mostly a non-issue. [1] https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions#transportation https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...
jjk7 3y ago
3% is a pretty big reduction for such a simple thing...
- baggy_trough 3y ago
  You think getting rid of aviation is a simple thing?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - Supermancho 3y ago
    >> 3% is a pretty big reduction for such a simple thing... > You think getting rid of aviation is a simple thing? That's not what was suggested, initially. Just the private jets. Then there have been some numbers thrown around, so it's not clear where the 3% comes from (1/2 of 7%?). Kneejerk opposition by taking the least charitable interpretation, is not constructive. One point is that something measurable, is action in the right direction, rather than whataboutism...even if it's only marginally effective, it's a mindset change for the following generations. Policies that are easy to understand (like banning personal jets) are more likely to be enacted than complicated carbon capture laws. That's another point being made.
    - baggy_trough 3y ago
      I'm responding to the exact statement made, so I don't know what you're talking about regarding a least charitable interpretation.
      - enterprise_cog 3y ago
        They were talking about private planes and you generalized it to all aviation. You were not responding to the exact statement.
        baggy_trough 3y ago
        The very first sentence in the parent comment is "All aviation, altogether, private jets inclusive, is less than 3% of world emissions." So your comment is completely off base.
        enterprise_cog 3y ago
        Okay, and the person who replied was clearly talking about private planes. Hence the “so simple” part. Unless you interpret it uncharitably, like the person who replied to you said.
kiba 3y ago
I rather that aviation contributes 1.5% instead of 3%. Of course, industries that pollute more should work harder to reduce their pollution. Rather than banning private jet, we could ask that private jet uses only carbon neutral fuels, since they could afford it. However, it might cause rich people to pollute more by using their cars instead of flying, so there's a balancing act.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > rather that aviation contributes 1.5% instead of 3% This describes massively raising the cost of package shipment and air travel. (You can’t cut aviation emissions in half with only private jets or even all of general aviation.) Were that to happen, I know my responses would probably include buying a larger car (to make travel more comfortable) and possibly expanding my house (since I can’t leave it as often). It would probably play differently in Europe, where passenger rail is a real alternative, granted. > we could ask that private jet uses only carbon neutral fuels I’m surprised this isn’t already a requirement.
  - John23832 3y ago
    > This describes massively raising the cost of package shipment and air travel. Having a private jet deliver my amazon package is one of the new prime perks this year.
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > Having a private jet deliver my amazon package is one of the new prime perks this year Second sentence buddy. You’re not cutting aviation emissions in half without cutting broader aviation.
- alephxyz 3y ago
  > However, it might cause rich people to pollute more by using their cars instead of flying, so there's a balancing act. Sustainable Aviation Fuel is ~$1/liter vs ~$.5 for regular fuel. For a "big" Global 7500 that burns 2kL/hr the markup is $1k/hr on a plane that usually costs $15-20k/hr to rent. Doesn't seem like a big markup for people who care about their public image.
reducesuffering 3y ago
This is the NIMBY of polluting. Everyone can point to other emissions and say "mines only 3%, worry about those other 50% guys over there." when I bet one of the top "small handful of industries" you're going to point to is something like concrete that is literally making affordable buildings for the peasants to live in while homelessness is already far too high. The real question is what actual reductions you think are easy to make on which particular industries that doesn't make housing, electricity, and heat more expensive for the global median income of $3k, while these people are private jetting to watch a football game in person that's on TV. Because when it comes to 0.5% of emissions, I know I'm going to pick taxing wasteful private jets rather than charge the global poor another $50 they don't have. Not to mention the messaging and optics, ffs look at that thread. Hypocritical private jetting is not how you get people collectively on board to fight climate change. If they have to sacrifice, you do too.
- tristor 3y ago
  I know it's super in vogue to hate the rich or whatever, but if we want to effectively fight climate change we have to do so strategically, supported by data. The data is pretty clear on this matter, the absolute priority is reducing the carbon footprint of electricity production, the second priority should be reducing the carbon footprint of cargo transport and agriculture, and the third priority should be reducing the carbon footprint of manufacturing. Aligned to each of these is a consistent reduction in how much fossil fuels we extract, especially natural gas which due to pipeline leakage contributes a huge amount of methane into the atmosphere, which is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. I am /very/ specifically not doing some sort of whataboutism based fingerpointing to things that affect the poor in order to defend the rich. I don't care about rich and poor, we're all human beings, and we're all currently headed towards an extinction level event for our entire species because people are distracted by stupid things that don't matter and ignoring the data. Your heart bleeding for the global poor is smoke and mirrors in the face of it all. We, as a species, cannot afford to bring everyone to the same standard of living that exists in the West today while combatting climate change. If we're being really blunt, the standard of living in the West must also be reduced. Perhaps if we ever completely get on renewable electricity production and find a way to turn excess energy into removing carbon from the atmosphere we can reassess what it takes to increase the global standard of living, but we're already fucked as it is just doing what we're already doing, expending more resources extracted from the earth to spew more waste into the atmosphere than we already are is an absolute non-starter.
maxglute 3y ago
Nigeria, with 210m people, share of global emissions is 0.23%. Indonesia 270m 1.5% Pakistan 210m 0.9% Brazil 210m 1.2% Bangladesh 160m 0.4% Thats the 5 most populous countries after india, prc, us.
- wang_li 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - maxglute 3y ago
    Presumably any coordinated global action on climate change including from countries who produce semi and auto. If globe wants to limit emissions, they're not going to be taking 3% from billions who emit less than that. Gov that cares will lower your standard if living if they care enough. See France trying to ban domestic flights. I mean obviously no one is going to kill global aviation, but private jets, why not.
phatfish 3y ago
Why dismiss it as a distraction? Every positive action is a step in the right direction to help keep the planet in a liveable condition. I'm happy if restricting single use plastic like plastic straws helps even a small amount to reduce plastic pollution. If i can put up with a soggy straw after 15 mins in a drink, the ultra rich can fly 1st class more often.
- DangerousPie 3y ago
  You wouldn't have to put up with a soggy straw if we tackled the real problems instead.
  - phatfish 3y ago
    Why can't we do both? Personally I don't want plastic trash polluting the environment. I think this attitude gets the the heart of the problem. When it actually comes to lifestyle changes it suddenly becomes someone else's problem.
    - dpassens 3y ago
      > Personally I don't want plastic trash polluting the environment. Ban throwing them into the environment, then. I've never thrown my plastic straws into the ocean, that happens further down the line of trash disposal. So why should I be the one who's punished for it?
  - timeon 3y ago
    I don't as I do not us straws at all. Point of banning plastic ones was not to create paper ones.
- fuzzbazz 3y ago
  > PFAS were found in the majority of the straws tested and were most common in those made from paper and bamboo, found the study, published in Food Additives & Contaminants. [1] I would prefer not to consume this with my drink [2]. Not every seemingly positive action is actually positive. Second order effects must be always considered. [1] https://phys.org/news/2023-08-paper-straws-environment-plastic-versions.html https://phys.org/news/2023-08-paper-straws-environment-plast... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per-_and_polyfluoroalkyl_substances#Health_and_environmental_effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per-_and_polyfluoroalkyl_subst...
philjohn 3y ago
But marginal gains are important - we're not going to be able to do 10, 20, 30% reductions at once, it's going to be built up piecemeal.
matsemann 3y ago
> The reality is that a small handful of industries generate the majority of pollution No, your argument is the distraction. "Lets do nothing, there's these big guys over here doing worse". And for whom do these industries generate goods and services for?
- tristor 3y ago
  Please point to where I said "Lets do nothing" /anywhere/ on this issue? I think we need to do numerous things, immediately, and drastically. Distracting ourselves with complaining about the rich is not one of those things, because it /is/ a distraction.
julosflb 3y ago
The problem with this line of thinking in my opinion is that we have 30x3% problems... sure individually they would not make a difference but we need to act on all front.
ericmay 3y ago
Kind of. The problem is that the idea is we should make personal sacrifices for the sake of the climate (I agree that we should generally speaking) and do things like ban gas stoves. Ok. But when you tell me that and then I see people and companies writing off private jets as a business expense, all that makes me want to do is say get your hands off my stove because clearly this can't be that serious of a problem [1] if this is continuing to occur. Nobody will be willing to make sacrifices voluntarily that wealthier people aren't and so we have a big marketing problem here. Raise the taxes on private jets and aviation fuel for them 5,000% and have those go to funding climate science (or some other general idea here) and we can talk about my stove. [1] It's a very serious problem.
xscott 3y ago
> The reality is that a small handful of industries generate the majority of pollution You can pick your pie chart, and they'll all be a bit different based on the categories they choose. I like this one from 2016 because, even though it's 8 years old, it seems to have all the sectors: https://ourworldindata.org/ghg-emissions-by-sector https://ourworldindata.org/ghg-emissions-by-sector If you want to get to zero emissions, you have to replace or remove all of these: Iron and Steel: 7.2% Road Transport: 11.9% Aviation Transport: 1.7% Commercial Buildings: 6.6% Residential Buildings: 10.9% Cement: 3.0% Those are all small percentages. There's really no one thing you can eliminate to solve the majority of the problem. If you went by broader strokes, let's say you get rid of: ALL of Industry: 29.4% ALL of Transportation: 16.2% ALL energy for buildings: 17.5% ALL agriculture: 18.4% So at that point, we're basically back in the stone age and the various waste categories will be zero too. But then you'd have 8 billion people huddling around fire pits, which isn't zero emission either. If anyone is inclined to find another pie chart to contradict this one, make sure it's not focused on the emissions in just one tiny sector. We can say that everyone should have electric cars because ICEs are 99% of vehicle emissions, but fixing 99% of 11.9% of the total problem isn't going to solve the total problem. There isn't a silver bullet for this.
- ta1243 3y ago
  > There isn't a silver bullet for this. No there's not. There's multiple things which need to happen. If you halve those commercial, residential, road and aviation figures that's a decent start. It's not the full answer, but it's part of the answer. People have to see everyone doing their part though. Back in WW2 when food was rationed it didn't really make any difference if the 1% had 3 times as much, but if people saw that we weren't "all in it together" then nothing would get done.
  - xscott 3y ago
    I don't agree with that. It makes people feel good to say "every little bit helps" as they pretend they're doing their part, but I don't hear anyone saying that halving emissions is sufficient to stop any problems. And halving that list is less than 15% of the total. Little bits don't help - they're pointless gestures.
bryanlarsen 3y ago
3% of 35 billion tonnes is a large number. We might have been able to get away with a goal of non-zero if we had reduced carbon emissions 40 years ago, but now our goal is 0. So that means we must eliminate or sequester from all sectors, including aviation. If you say "we should attack the bigger numbers first", well we have started those. We have started replacing electricity generation with renewables, started replacing ICE cars with electric, and started replacing fossil heating with electric heat pumps. Banning private jets may be an unreasonable ask, but forcing private jets to 6x their fuel costs to use net-zero fuels is not an unreasonable ask, IMO.

JohnFen 3y ago

Particularly when they use them for things as optional and ultimately meaningless as seeing a football game in person.

FredPret 3y ago
Existence itself is optional and ultimately meaningless. This is why we have football games and why it's meaningful to see it in person, if you like to.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  Of course it has meaning to the people doing it. But this is one (of many) example of people who are so self-absorbed that they don't even think twice about doing harm to everyone else in order to engage in a recreational activity that could be done with far less impact. It's that disregard for people that I condemn.
  - abenga 3y ago
    Just as long as you keep the same energy when their standard of living goes up and they emit as much as you.
hombre_fatal 3y ago
You could do this for anything though. Eating meat for the frivolous reason of enjoying the taste even though it's far less efficient than eating plants. Everything that doesn't impact ourselves is an easy target.

bklyn11201 3y ago

Sure, yes. What's a more realistic way to implement this in the USA while still allowing small-plane hobbyists to fly easily? Could the FAA mandate landing fees based on emissions / passengers?

cinntaile 3y ago
Why would you exclude them? They're probably the worst offenders per mile when you take the weight into account.

kayodelycaon 3y ago

You’d be better off getting cargo ships to stop using sludge for fuel and getting countries to stop burning coal. Private jets aren’t even close to the worse things. They are just easy targets. Your worst offenders are industry.

deleted 3y ago
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groestl 3y ago
> Your worst offenders are industry Which produces for?
- baggy_trough 3y ago
  People.
  - groestl 3y ago
    Not for all of them in the same manner though. The richest 1% have a carbon footprint equal to the "poorest" 66%, for example.
    - tristor 3y ago
      Only when looking at things globally, and that's mostly because the vast majority of the world population is exceptionally poor with a matching low standard of living. If you look at things in developed countries, the difference in carbon footprint between rich and poor is not nearly so stark. We are /all/ to blame, and we are /all/ going to suffer for it, so we need to pull our heads out of our asses and stop turning this into some ridiculous "us" vs "them" situation that it isn't. There is no us, there is no them, we're all on the same spinning rock in space, breathing the same air.
      - groestl 3y ago
        "Only when looking at things globally" is a very interesting thing to say. I'm with you, generally, only that I consider myself part of the "them", and us v them definitely makes sense, given the absurd distribution of resource consumption.

gingerbread-man 3y ago

Why not a pigouvian tax on jet fuel (and other fossil fuels?)

ericd 3y ago
Might be helpful to define it for people - a pigouvian tax is a tax on something to balance out the negative externality it inflicts on society. A carbon tax like you’re suggesting seems like our best hope of averting disaster. I’m not sure what would get it done, though, it would be very much against the short term interests of the rich, since they’d bear the brunt, as the largest emitters, and would massively disrupt the status quo in terms of what products are most cost effective. Making it revenue-neutral by dividending out all takings would help with its political popularity, and make it so it would positively impact the poor (since they use less carbon per capita than the average). But still seems hard to get it passed. It’s a bit wonkish, which is a big problem compared to something that feels better, like “ban all private planes!”.

hackeraccount 3y ago

But that's not really what you want is it? You want to ban private jets being used for reasons that you think are idiotic. You presumably don't have an issue with private jets being used for sensible productivity enhancing reasons. The real question is, who would you like to determine which is which? Note that this question covers much more ground then just private jets.

matsemann 3y ago
> You presumably don't have an issue with private jets being used for sensible productivity enhancing reasons What are those? Could it have been a Zoom meeting? I'm not the person you're replying to, but I also have a problem with those jets you're mentioning..

al_borland 3y ago

Where does that end? It seems like the same logic could be used to ban private automobile ownership, forcing everyone to use mass transit. While I may be in favor of more mass transit options, completely banning private options seems to be a step too far. There is also the question of what qualifies as private. It seems anyone with enough wealth could easily create a company to own the plane they use.

avgcorrection 3y ago

Rich people cause climate change by architecting society (just look around). Their private jets don’t matter in the grand scheme of things.

baggy_trough 3y ago
What does that mean?
- saintfire 3y ago
  I would assume by making decisions that push people towards technologies or lifestyles that have massive negative externalities but high profits (e.g. Car culture, unrepairable technology) or lobby for businesses/laws that are net negative for society (e.g. Oil & Gas, Pollution regulations for farming, energy and manufacturing). The private jet attention I think is perfectly valid but is akin to blaming people for their "carbon footprint" when much of that footprint is a choice made on your behalf by not providing/burying alternatives and subsidizing polluters.
  - avgcorrection 3y ago
    > I would assume by making decisions that push people towards technologies or lifestyles that have massive negative externalities but high profits (e.g. Car culture, unrepairable technology) or lobby for businesses/laws that are net negative for society (e.g. Oil & Gas, Pollution regulations for farming, energy and manufacturing). See? “Pushing” and “lifestyles”. Clearly the framing is still centered on the “consumer” (apt word) even when the whole paragraph discusses the role that the rich play. Yes. The rich helped build a country (or countries) of car-dependence. You can’t vote-with-your-wallet for country-wide road networks. Same with suburbs. And high-priced apartments in areas where the jobs are. So you get the so-called suburbia lifestyle which is committed by the so-called consumers.
    - baggy_trough 3y ago
      This lifestyle is very much desired by the middle class so I don't think you can blame the rich for it.

kyleblarson 3y ago

How else are they supposed to get to Davos to lecture the peons?

xoa 3y ago

[flagged]

ericd 3y ago

No, we should just tax the shit out of carbon emissions and then redistribute all proceeds evenly per-capita. Much better than spending limited attention and political energy/capital on piecemeal bans. We need to halt 100% of new carbon entering the carbon cycle, not just the stuff that seems egregious enough to get people riled up about, and we need to align the economic incentives to have a hope of getting there in the timeframe that we need to. This is a plan that’s supported by a very large number of top economists, I’ve seen it called something like a “Carbon Dividend with Border Carbon Adjustment”: https://clcouncil.org/our-plan/ https://clcouncil.org/our-plan/

buttercraft 3y ago

How would this work? A major political figure or celebrity just hangs out at gate A33 waiting for their flight while a mob gathers? Or are only certain people allowed to own private jets? Or are only certain destinations allowed if for "worthy" reasons?

wolpoli 3y ago

I live in Canada, and it's strange that we are able to ban little things like single use plastic bags, cutleries, and straws, but not ban big ticket items like private jets.