Good intention but in my opinion this is a non-starter. I believe a more reasonable approach that could get traction would be to invest in research groups that are trying to improve fuels and jet engine efficiency. This would actually make a dent in emissions and fuel waste and most notably, the bottom line for airline costs. Money talks. If you can show that there is potential to save {x} percentage in fuel costs for an airline, they will get behind it and might even help fund it.
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.
> 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").
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.
>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.
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.
>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.
Is this specific enough for you? It seems to avoid all the pitfalls you mentioned.
> No, the most reasonable solution is for everyone to be responsible for their own pollution.
I think you are incorrect. 2 issues with this make it less reasonable than other alternatives.
1. Traditionally, costs are externalized to lower economic tiers (corporate socialism), in capitalistic countries. The wealthy charter isn't responsible for the Carbon, because they aren't producing it. It's not their plane. The cost might be shared across the staff (possibly + passengers) or the organization funding it, etc. There are a multitude of easily accessible avoidance tactics.
2. Politically, this is a non-starter for the masses during economic downturns and a 50/50 during economic upswings. The tyranny of the masses would rather a percentage of higher economic tier members take on costs than themselves.
These forces are a large part of why the movement for carbon neutrality has only been promoted (mostly voluntarily!) by big corporate PR announcements. Granted, mostly these are accounting tricks rather than true carbon sequestering, which is needed.
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.
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.
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.
My group writes software that runs manufacturing facilities. Pandemic showed us how ridiculously effective we could be at most of our work and how ridiculously inefficient, ineffective, and all around worse not being able to go to the factories where our software runs.
one example: driving a potentially huge sale (say, $10M/yr services contract with n years guaranteed) with a huge global company and getting an extremely rare time slot with their CEO to close the deal. in that situation, a $50k flight in a challenger to a muni airport that's 10 mins away makes a lot of sense
another example: there was a piece done on a doctor that bought a light jet for his practice. don't remember the specifics but i remember thinking that his use case made a lot of sense
What about to encourage (or enforce) replacement of older private jets? Older jets should be not good for fuel efficiency, but it's cheap so TCO could be cheap.
Absolutely. Incentive programs to upgrade the engines for tax breaks and trade-in discounts would surely get their attention as it would extend the life of the aircraft and reduce maintenance costs. Newer engines may also be quieter and could mean less complaints about noise in some small airports.
This article reads with so much ego I have to wonder if Vice is planning on starting a "climate satire" column. The biggest irony is at some level the axis of control here is the government, a government which uses more fossil fuels flying weapons around than all of the ludicrously rich expel flying their expensive aeronautical toys combined.
It's Vice, so unfortunately I'm just not that surprised this article sounds like it was written by an irate english major who just discovered /r/socialism - who would proceed to yell at engineering majors on campus interning at Boeing because they're "complicit with ruining the future".
Improving education is how we avoid this kind of dissonance among people who actually want to improve the world or effect actual climate progress.
120% on board with this. why can all these woke celebrities and politicians tell me I cant buy the car i want but they pollute the equivalent to 2000 people a year each.
The book Ministry for the Future has a melange of ideas in the plot, one of which is a world wide terrorist movement against environmental destruction that uses drones to crash every private plane with extremely rich people on one day to discourage their usage, it's sort of a variation on the Unabomber and 9/11. It seems like it would require wide ranging conspiracy that it would be infeasible, things would have to be really bad environment wise but at the same time there would be enough capital and people in the movement to support a large scale coordinated attack, there are so many ideas thrown in there that this part is not really explored that much in the book after building up the rationale behind the movement.
Go open the hood of any car made in the last 10 years. The engine bay is crammed full of doodads needed to satisfy the regulators. I want to buy a new vehicle without all that stuff, but can't because regulations prevent it from being made.
look at all the new cars. if they arent fully hybrid/electric, then they are these small displacement 4 cylinder engines. The v8 has essentially died out, or is on its last leg. V6 are super rare and only for the top trim cars. (look at 3 series bmw for example.. all the way from base 3 series to m3 and what has changed over the years)
In europe its alot worse than the uS.
Each new car generation that comes out in the US is now losing horsepower as the manufactureres have to hit environmental regulations.
One upside of banning private jets is that it would make the security theatre at the airport non-optional (from a legal perspective), and could more easily result in its abolition via the courts
I doubt it. I remember the uproar about those body scanners that look through your clothes. That seemed to be the closest we came towards actually re-evaluating the TSA and what kinds of measures they make passengers take at the airport. Nothing came of it, and now it is normalized.
I don't believe forcing CEOs and celebrities to go through the same process as us proles will result in any meaningful change.
Banning private jets is a bit silly and seems difficult tbh. Tax jet fuel enough first (pick any high cost European country for a good reference on what CO2 taxes should be per gallon or liter). Today it’s a tragedy that air travels enjoy very low fuel taxes while better forms of transportation has higher taxes.
>Today it’s a tragedy that air travels enjoy very low fuel taxes while better forms of transportation has higher taxes.
that's more of an artifact of what "fuel taxes" represent. For roads at least they're not typically taxed as some sort of sin/environment tax, they're taxed as a way to finance road maintenance. Obviously that does not apply to airplanes. I'm not sure about other "better forms of transportation" (trains? boats?) have fuel taxes.
That might be the case, but that doesn't mean the tax is primarily used to finance road construction. The availability of fuels with reduced taxes[1] (eg. for agricultural or domestic purposes) makes it obvious that it's not about carbon emissions.
Agriculture is heavily regulated and subsidized in many ways. It is perfectly reasonable to give farms access to lower cost fuel to allow for lower cost of food. The only thing this proves is that low emission is not the only priority of a government.
For an example of my claim look at [0] which started as protest from rural France for an environmental fuel tax.
> It is perfectly reasonable to give farms access to lower cost fuel to allow for lower cost of food
If what you want is cheaper food, why don't you subsidize food production directly? Or give money to people to buy food, which has the advantage of being something you can target directly to poorer people.
Subsidizing fuel used in the production of food leads farmers to use more polluting options than they would otherwise, since fuel is artificially cheap.
I don't know why these policies were made, lowering costs at the source is easier than than price control at the margin.
Foods follow a long chain with many hands; farm -> processor -> factories -> distributors -> retail; you want low retail prices and farm to be economically sustainable, moreover sometimes the link in the chain are the same entity sometime they are distinct companies.
You could keep track of prices along the chain (we already do with VAT) and reimburse expenses along the chain to allow farms to sell at higher price without it affecting the final buyer.
Or you could just lower the operating cost of farms by taking the major expenses* and subsidizing them.
The first also is highly vulnerable to exploitation since many farms sell to huge corporations that can outplay them in the regulation game.
* Which I guess are wages, taxes, fuel, and material (food/fertilizer).
My fuel tax is called a “CO2 tax” (and VAT) which together is around half the cost, or about $1/L or $3.8/gal. This isn’t earmarked for anything in particular but I think the naming “CO2 tax” smells a bit like a sin/environment tax.
And it’s strange I pay more of this “CO2 tax” when filling up my car to drive 10h, perhaps $50 in CO2 tax alone, than all 100 of us in the cabin of a 737 pay together when taking one hour flight the same distance.
My my car tax ($1.5k/yr regardless of distance driven) sounds more like a road maintenance fee collection but also not earmarked for any purpose. I suspect this latter tax will need to skyrocket for EVs once fuel doesn’t bring in enough road maintenance money.
A bus is an example of a “better” method of transportation that uses taxed fuel and has to compete with planes flying on tax free fuel.
> And it’s strange I pay more of this “CO2 tax” when filling up my car to drive 10h, perhaps $50 in CO2 tax alone, than all 100 of us in the cabin of a 737 pay together when taking one hour flight the same distance.
It's interesting that you make that comparison. Inverness to London fits that definition and from the last time I checked this,it's about 0.12 Tonnes of CO2 per seat to fly that distance, and roughly the same (actually slightly more) to drive the distance. For long distances like that, particularly if you're travelling in a small group, you're often better off flying over driving.
This is true, but that's usually why people talk about "CO2e", emissions equivalent to emitting a ton of CO2 at ground level. When people talk about the climate effective air travel, that's usually the units they're using.
Would a small group not make ground-based travel (depending on size, car/minibus/Bus/train) better than flying? Adding additional passengers to a car does increase the CO2 emissions not as much as putting a new car on the road for every single traveller, right?
Not much difference between an "environment tax" and "financing maintenance." We need to finance the maintenance of our atmosphere. Probably eventually literally, in a "planting forests in order to hit CO2 targets" sense.
Reason why they are not taxed heavily is that at least internationally the purchase of fuel would just move to countries with lower taxation. So unless the scheme was global and in every country it would not be perfectly efficient.
A handful of rich countries could agree to a minimum fuel tax for domestic flights and flights between those countries. Then they could agree to charge more of planes arriving their airports from non-signatories of this agreement to also get an international effect.
That could only sort of work for some very short international flights. On longer flights, even with higher fuel taxes it wouldn't be practical to load up extra fuel in cheaper countries and then ferry it around. That would increase fuel burn due to extra weight, and run up against limits in fuel tank capacity and maximum landing weight.
I think that's the right track. Tax them very high.
The odd thing is the very people who are trying to get the world to minimize hydrocarbon use are some of the people who most often use private jets --the Davos set and Hollywood crowd, among others. Can't they for the planet, travel economy on regular airlines?
If a carbon tax actually taxes fuel usage, and fuel usage is largely a function of weight, what does it matter which class someone flies in?
What matters is how much weight you carry. The pure expression of this incentive would be to charge by passenger weight and service class, and also by baggage weight.
That’s both politically impossible and would threaten the price-opacity model of the airlines, but the three- or four-tiered travel class system is already well-enough aligned with fuel price incentives and any actual carbon tax won’t change it.
Virtue-signaling in Economy when you could easily pay for First isn’t any kind of moral or environmental win.
The real question though is does the amount of good that they could do at an appearance like that outweigh the cost of getting there in a suboptimal damaging way?
You're an optimistic person. In reality people are returning to flying and it's returning to previous levels and surely will surpass them too. All administrations, save for a really ideological one, will not retard flying other than some added taxes --but all the large countries and economic areas support their airline industries: see China, they do strict lockdowns. Will we see them curb airtravel significantly?
> While commercial flights are set to be subject to a new tax system that discourages the use fossil fuels, private jets -- which are five to 14 times more polluting per passenger -- and cargo flights will be exempt from the requirement, according to a draft of the proposals seen by Bloomberg.
Those are typically implemented as of a particular date of manufacture. My 60s Mustangs do not have (nor are they required to have) modern emissions control equipment as it was not required originally.
What will motivate people to develop their careers and businesses beyond the middle class level? Flying a private jet is about the only thing of any benefit that someone making $1M per year cannot do while someone making $10M per year can.
What are other meaningful ways to spend that money? All i can think of are rare wines but that also needs some taste which by far not everyone can develop. At $1M, you can already live anywhere, or nowhere in particular, you can already afford elite school for your kids and luxury cars. There's little left to strive for consumption-wise.
At $10M? A very large house/mansion and lots of personal servants? That's hardly environmentally better than a jet, and is very much out of fashion today, people don't like to be tied to one place like that. A Manhattan penthouse? I don't even know. Art collection? A way to be tricked out of your money by 'advisors'.
I dunno, more effectively support causes you already donate to? Help less well-off people participate more fully in your hobbies? Fund cool projects in your hobby?
For a decade or so my preferred method of flight for several million line kilometers about the planet was at 70 m/s 120 odd feet above the ground in a STOL high wing prop airframe.
Climate wise that cost was amortised from metals consumption by the developed world.
If I'm going to consume vast quantities of resources then I do like to see benefits flow to as many others as possible.
Now that I'm in a rural area I see large quantities of fuel consumed by tractors to put grain into the mouths of millions.
Instead of banning them, tax airplane emissions enough to remove an equivalent amount of carbon from the air. At scale this is in the range of $150/T.
For example, if you fly commercial BOS-LAX for $500 this means your flight costs something like $200 in carbon removal, while if you're in a large private jet emitting 150x you'd need to pay more like $30k.
Just because the environmental offsets could be done, that doesn't mean it's a good way for society to spend our limited resources. You could just ban private jets, still tax the people who could afford to use them, and tax fuel for all modes of transit.
Another example of the frequently touted idea that to show conviction in a problem, you must either support the non-compromising right to do it (ex: 2nd amendment absolutists), or the non-compromising banning of it (the guy in this article).
To be quite frank, this is a very childish way of viewing the world. I get that media companies like Vice portray things in this way because it's an easy way to get views, and therefore makes for a headline that's an easy way to get upvotes.
Actually, I think businessmen, generally wealthy private citizens and also famous celebrities wanting to avoid the spotlight more commonly fly on private jets than politicians, at least in the USA.
It's tough flying back and forth to your home state almost every week and maybe not seeing your family very much, and often they tell the airlines in advance to reserve seats on more than one flight to ensure they make it home. This talks about how it's not as luxurious as it might sound:
When there is a general expectation that these people spend a lot of time in both DC and their home where the people they represent are living, I'm not sure how you get around their need to be able to pay for all that traveling. It's part of our expectations in how they do their job. If you want to pick on someone, probably best to focus on the list at the beginning of my comment, but honestly, many of them have compelling reasons, e.g. no one is hassling you or me everywhere we go because half of the people in the country recognize us. :)
Don't ban. Tax it and make the money go into carbon capture and green energy. Each time they flight, make them remove in Co2 the equivalent of a 100 times their consumption and produce a 100 time the energy consumed. Then make it very trendy to have your own jet, like the highest level of social status.
what happens is the "jet fuel tax" goes into general government revenue. Politicians seeking re-election use said money to create new programs instead and effectively "buy votes" with your own money.
Can you provide an example of this ever working? I can give you several of it being an absolute failure and having no impact.
In Canada we have "sin" taxes (Alcohol, cigarettes, gasoline).
- Smoking has declined, but more because of the negative marketing (ugly pictures on a pack of smokes). It is also less "socially acceptable" and so young people dont pick up the habit.
> - Smoking has declined, but more because of the negative marketing (ugly pictures on a pack of smokes). It is also less "socially acceptable" and so young people dont pick up the habit.
Taxes have the additional upside of leading to fewer stupid consequences.
A lot of the EU bans means if you're designing some kind of e.g. medical life-saving device of which there will be a few dozen units produced total, you can't do a whole bunch of things designed to make consumer devices better. The laws are on the surface reasonable, but they fail in corner cases.
Corner cases sometimes go to be important. Housing in the US is a big one. Building codes don't allow experimentation.
Charge me a grand for using lead, the wrong connector, or whatever, but please don't ban me.
Here's one thing that i don't get about the climate change movement. It would seem that the biggest contributors to climate change and pollution are developing nations that use carbon based energy (ie coal plants in China, Russia, India, etc).
With that said it seems that the only real solution would be to convince these countries to adopt greener energy (which is unlikely to happen for a variety of reasons) which leads me to ask: is anything else really making a difference?
We can talk about adopting plant based diets, talk about banning private jets and mandating electric cars, there's lot of things that we can do, but the question is any of that even going to matter when the vast majority of global warming is contributed to by other nations that we have no control over.
Furthermore I think we have to weigh our sacrifices against the impact. If were going to ban something like private jets, there better be a real impact. What I see now though is, if we ban private jets for example, we will bear the cost of that ban without any of the associated green benefits because again, the developing nations with their coal plants are pumping out exponentially more greenhouse gasses than any private jet would.
My conclusion is rather cynical but I don't see why we should be making sacrifices, when none of those sacrifices lead to quantifiable results. And what I particularly don't like now is that we seem to be making policy not on what will make a quantifiable difference in climate, but rather what will make us feel like we're making an impact. It's really a more broad issue than that, we as a society seem to have ceased trying to actually solve problems, rather we "solve" them by doing something that makes us feel good, regardless of whether than thing actually has any real impact.
I agree with you, but it's also one of those things where if everyone did their part, the impact would be quantifiable. I think these things have compounding effects. The changes have to start somewhere.
The lack of prioritized problem solving amongst the climate activist set sure does seem to imply some inconvenient questions about their motivations. Either that or their numeracy and competence.
My personal conclusion is that any "solution" which significantly limits either a) economic growth, b) national security, and/or c) personal freedoms and choice is doomed to fail. Rather, the only practicable solutions will be technological (as throughout history has always been the case).
> My personal conclusion is that any "solution" which significantly limits either a) economic growth, b) national security, and/or c) personal freedoms and choice is doomed to fail. Rather, the only practicable solutions will be technological (as throughout history has always been the case).
Banning leaded fuels or stuff harmful to the Ozone layer weren't technical solutions, and they worked, even if they restricted personal freedoms and choice, and limited economic growth through spending money on things that didn't result on growth.
There was existing, alternative tech that was a perfect substitute: unleaded fuels. There was no economic loss and no loss of choice (unleaded is a perfect substitute for the vast majority of drivers). Clearly the same is true of ozone depleting chemicals. There are viable substitutes that were created by technology. In other words, these were absolutely technological solutions.
I think these examples do point to something important: the funding and incentivizing of R&D and tech.
> It would seem that the biggest contributors to climate change and pollution are developing nations that use carbon based energy (ie coal plants in China, Russia, India, etc).
Well, those countries also have huge masses of people, and they are already well below the per capita emissions in the EU, and far below the USA per capita emissions.
So, one thing we may want to help with is finding ways to make it possible to have a good quality of life without such a huge impact on the environment - and then, perhaps, export these technologies to China or India etc.
> Well, those countries also have huge masses of people, and they are already well below the per capita emissions in the EU
This has actually been untrue for almost a decade. China has had higher per-capita emissions than the EU since 2013, and is still climbing, while the EU's is declining.
The US is still 2x china, but has been declining for 50 years, and is currently declining drastically.
India is still well below any (wealthy) EU country.
Also, China is manufacturing much of what the EU and USA are buying, so a lot of those emissions are outsourced to China. It will be interesting to see how these numbers evolve as the EU and USA are starting to think about bringing manufacturing back home...
Note also that China is still just below Germany - probably because of manufacturing.
I think it's a bit premature and depressing to give up now. If the developed world pioneers effective and affordable green technologies, the developing world has every incentive to adopt them. India and China have much more to lose from climate change than the US and Europe. Some of their heavily populated regions may become literally unlivable as the temperature rises.
I don't think China dictator(s) care much about some part of the country becoming properly unlivable (if we talk about temperature that's centuries anyway). If all relies on this part, it will fail. These regimes view population as disposable tools.
That being said, even west has a lot to lose. Right now where I live its 38 with high humidity, which is a number I don't recall, ever, in past 12 years. You go to alpine glaciers and they are melting right in front of your eyes this summer, big holes in it, drop in thickness 10-30m compared to year ago, rivers flowing on it and many ascents of the mountains are outright forbidden. Old folks die like flies in these situations.
So let's push it even further, looking for solutions.
1/Ban coal, petrol and gas power plants in the western countries as soon as possible, pushing for fission and renewable+storage, whichever is faster and can give us the most GWh per $ (spoiler: it's fission). Fusion is too far off and renewable+storage are not ready, too expensive and demand too much land and materials to work at scale, over seasons.
2/Start to put import tax on products from carbon-emitting countries, in proportion to the carbon they emit per GDP $.
That's it, solution found! Yeah!
Of course it's not going to fly because politics and status quo and existing interests.
We have a set limit for how much carbon can be released to hit the agreed on targets. Anything a person emits over this should be reduced.
Someone eating meat 3 meals a day and flying in a private jet, is using thousands of times over this level. The average person in a developing nation is using a fraction of this. Why should they stop emitting their fraction, when the jet setter uses their thousands over budget.
Stopping private jets is a tiny tiny tiny sacrifice for people. I for one have never used one, neither has anyone I know. We can safely ban them and only a few people will feel any impact, and it will be a pretty minor one, much less than thousands and thousands of people not having lighting or refrigeration.
> biggest contributors to climate change and pollution are developing nations that use carbon based energy (ie coal plants in China, Russia, India, etc).
Apparently, the 5 countries that produce the most CO2 are, in order:
Less than 0.01% of people in the world will ever be on a private jet. There are 0 negative effects to banning them. Your conclusion is not clever and cynical, it is purely selfish. You are unwilling to make the slightest sacrifice to make the world a better place, fine. Stop pretending like theres any careful analysis behind it (your analysis is complete garbage btw), all you are is a selfish child unable to let go of his toys.
>It would seem that the biggest contributors to climate change and pollution are developing nations that use carbon based energy (ie coal plants in China, Russia, India, etc).
This is a misunderstanding of the basic numbers. Developed nations generally have much higher C02 emissions per capita, and often have higher CO2 emission per country.
Also China and India are investing a crazy amount into replacing coal. Its just a slow process since they have to balance it with economic growth. Governments there are pretty cognizant that they'll be pretty badly affected by climate change. But the OP isn't really interested in facts, he's more interested in having his selfishness seen as rational.
Sources are numerous but heres the first few I found :
Unfortunately, the OP's mindset is that of many Westerners.
Currently, the average Indian citizen emits half the greenhouse gas of the global per capita average. To argue that they deserve less than their share is blatent discrimination.
Meanwhile, China has invested more than double what the US invested into renewable energy sources over the past decade, and more than all of Europe combined. And this is all while the average Chinese citizen emits 10 metric tons less of greenhouse gasses than the average American.
But all you hear in the west is how the bad coal plants in India and China are causing global warming when China already has 1 million more GWh
of renewable energy than the US.
The fact is western lifestyles are not sustainable, especially American lifestyles.
But even if US citizens dropped per capita consumption to that of avg Chinese citizen, it wouldn't make a difference if the absolute volume of emissions into the atmosphere from China still dwarfed the impact of that change in the US. The point is that, while restricting lifestyles and carbon emissions in the West is fair, it's ultimately pointless w.r.t climate change.
Politically it's going to be a tough sell in the US to convince average Americans that they should sacrifice their standard of living so that China can get ahead. Meanwhile they have nuclear weapons pointed at us.
> I think we have to weigh our sacrifices against the impact....we will bear the cost of that ban...*
I feel like part of the point of the "Ban Private Jets" movement is that the "sacrifices" and "cost" side of the equation are pretty dang low (particularly for the vast majority of folks that cannot fly private). Even for those that can fly private, the point is that other valid alternatives exist.
Banning private jets makes even more sense to me since it seems reasonably simple to regulate and enforce (given the already strict regulations around aircraft). The super-rich can always find a loophole, but this seems like an area where regulating the supply stands a good chance of driving the demand towards more climate-friendly options...
There aren’t directly substitute near equivalents for private aviation. It’s common to be able to make 6 site visits in 2 days and 1 overnight. Or fly parts from a tier 1/2 supplier to avoid a factory line shutdown.
Sure, you could make 6 site visits across a week and a half using commercial airlines, or accept a four-shift shutdown because of a parts supply issue while the parts are trucked in.
To me, those aren’t really “valid alternatives” in the most meaningful sense of that phrase.
You don't need a luxury jet to transfer parts around, a cheap learjet with a military style barebones interior leased to a corporation won't break the spirit of this law. It's the elite getting shuttled around the planet to a Paris shopping trips before their closing the evening at a luxury restaurant in Toyko for absolutely no productive reason that's the issue.
'We' can absolutely influence global warming caused by developing nations' emissions. Look at the trajectory of industrial pollution per capita in the developed world - it started low, but as industrialization catalyzed by fossil fuels took off, it crept up exponentially. When this was happening, the developing world was not even on the development trajectory, as most of it was reeling from colonialism or other ills.
Shift to now, the developed world has offset quite a significant bit of the per-capita emissions by purchasing carbon credits from the developing world in the name of helping them grow, or simply shifting expensive manufacturing to these countries where it gets counted as their emissions and their problem.
So, what do we do? First, simplify the accounting so that there is a very clear and direct overview. Today, you have billionaires flying around in jets, but still not showing up as large scale emitters since they can afford enough credits to look at it as a minor inconveniencing tax.
Secondly, we need to make green energy affordable (just the way the fossils were dirt cheap for the developed world) for these countries by using economies of scale - deploy green energy generation in the developed world which would make it cheaper. Where does better accounting come in? When your manufacturing based emissions count as yours and not the developing world's you will have an incentive to pay more to also offset the emissions, instead of just shifting physical manufacturing.
I do agree that small scale individual sacrifices are mostly useless, as there's just little efficiency in doing smaller things than making huge changes on a more scalable level. You could give up flying for an entire year, but if you only fly 10 times a year, that's still less than a billionaire not flying private just once.
We need more accountability. We have the technology, the solutions, but we lack in accountability.
This is a common talking point specially in America. On the other side in India, the people tend to believe that USA has done some of the worst damage to the planet to actually become 'developed' and USA is still one of the worst polluters and carbon emitters. People in India/China also tend to believe that USA/UK tend to outsource a lot of industrial manufacturing to India and China and this adds to the carbon emissions of these countries. There is also another aspect which is these two countries are the some of the most densely populated areas and the per capita emissions for countries like America are far egregious. There is also data that shows American oil and gas companies (combined) have historically added more CO2 than other country.
So yeah, there are arguments to be made from all sides. I am not in anyway trying to say that India/China should not do their part but American argument for not doing their part is mostly a political talking point.
but if the primary contribution to pollution is outsourcing, then doing their part means either less outsourcing or helping the countries that are being outsourced to.
even if the USA is responsible for indias pollution, at the end of the day it is still india that needs to reduce their pollution.
Do they? If their per capita pollution is fraction of USA. Wouldn't that mean that to be equal and fair they have quite a lot of room to increase their pollution. And USA should be responsible of actually going far negative at any cost to it's population.
of course. i am only addressing the argument that pollution through outsourcing should be the problem of the country doing the outsourcing, and not the country doing the outsourced work. sure, the outsourcing country is to blame, but the effort to reduce the pollution still needs to be done in the country where the outsourced work is done.
The whole issue in this is people think China and Indian actors are maliciously polluting when they are usually relying on foreign investment from companies that ARE acting maliciously and evading the US to skirt climate regulations and other accountability issues. US/UK/“the west” companies often were the prime movers in building cheap coal power plants to provide electricity to whatever business they outsourced. Just because someone doesn’t look like you doesn’t mean they are evil, or different in mindset or situation.
ok, fair point, though that is the first time i hear that argument (that's on me of course). i don't believe that any country is maliciously polluting. and it is still the country where the pollution happens that is in the best position to force those polluters to reduce their emmisions.
however, you just made me realize that there is something that outsourcing countries possibly can do too. namely, i believe they can influence or even stop investments from their country that cause pollution elsewhere.
In between policy with quantifiable impact and sacrifices that make us individually feel good is… politics (at least in USA).
Arguably, the more people who are comfortable making sacrifices, the more politically safe it is to pass impactful policy (on any issue but especially those that impact the future collective more than the current individuals).
I do feel your cynicism though. For me, it’s the thought that any promising solution must survive culture wars or align with the “free” market, neither of which have any consistency or urgency in 2022.
The point is that, investments into the climate technology achieves two goals:
- makes the West less dependent on energy imports which mostly come from hostile or potentially hostile countries, that use the money received mainly to subvert and undermine the West itself
- develop the technology to the point it will become cheaper than fossils (which is already achieved in some areas and is probably less than 10 years away from becoming the case in all of them), after which even the poorest countries will adopt them, just because it will be saving money
Finger pointing is not productive for resolving climate change. The US and Europe have done their fair share of getting CO2 levels where they are today. And the fact that the likes of China, India, etc are now also polluting at a disturbing scale is indeed bad news. But the bottom line is that we all need to burn a lot less fuel.
It's not about who's most or least guilty of this but about how we can collectively stop burning fossil fuel ASAP. It's not about fairness, sacrifices, or feeling good about things but just about discouraging known bad things (like burning fossil fuel) collectively and stimulating things that actually achieve something and move the needle.
I think when it comes to general aviation, a strong financial incentive to do that in a more fuel efficient way would have some impact. Just look at what incentive programs are doing for electrical vehicles. Electrical planes are not far behind and there are a few companies in this space with working products that could probably benefit from a little help. It's not that different.
I actually am one of those people that would take flying lessons if it was a little cheaper. Seems like a really fun thing to do. Do I need to fly. Nope, this would be purely for my own entertainment. It's definitely bad for the environment, and there is absolutely no need for gallons of fuel to be burned every hour I'd be flying. Fuel prices and the cost of flying are definitely helping me stay on the ground. I'd love to have a cheaper, electrical, option. I don't see that that would be less fun and it would be less harmful.
Try soaring/gliding. My husband has been in love with it as long as I've known him, and since his club, like most German clubs, uses a winch (big old Oldsmobile engine) to launch the planes, each launch uses less than a liter of fuel.
A skilled and lucky glider pilot can make that flight last for hours - my husband's personal best is something on the order of 8 hours and 800km.
This sport requires a lot of help on the ground, so it's very social and physically active.
> It would seem that the biggest contributors to climate change and pollution are developing nations that use carbon based energy (ie coal plants in China, Russia, India, etc).
Personally, I think the other countries are right to be skeptical when we (USA) tell them they need to reduce emissions. We could easily reduce our own emissions, using current technology that already exists, but we just don't want to - we want to live our current lifestyle and have others do the hard work and sacrifice. Not to mention we look like giant hypocrits after advancing our economy without regard to the environment for 200 years and suddenly are demanding everybody else take the extra care that we didn't.
Kylie Jenner from the article doesn't want to drive, the same way most people don't want to bike to work or take a bus. Most Americans could, they just don't want to.
I've basically given up hope of climate change being avoided. It's classic game theory. We're better off cooperating, but in practice we're all personally better off if we don't.
I think you summarized it pretty well: people are getting mad at things, which really make no difference. Why is this happening? My theory is that those of us who don't have private jets secretly envy those who does. "Secretly" because I don't typically see people saying "lets ban private jets because I don't get to have one". But then climate change conveniently enters the picture, and now we can go hate on those who are more successful in life AND go virtue signalling at the same time. Win-win.
> It would seem that the biggest contributors to climate change and pollution are developing nations that use carbon based energy (ie coal plants in China, Russia, India, etc).
China is not even close to a top polluter per capita, while Canada and US are top there. That means China sustains a larger population with a comparatively smaller impact. Not looking at this metric per capita shows the implicit bias of valuing some citizens needs more than others, and refusal to accept this as a “my” problem but rather “their” problem, which is a source of east-west / north-south tension.
Second, in the particular example of China, the pollution is caused by offshoring manufacturing of goods that will be consumed by the top polluters per capita themselves. If we factored in the footprint of this consumption, instead of accounting it all on China’s budget, it would make the numbers even worse for developed nations.
We’re are going head first into a environmental crisis, and a severe reduction in consumption, which should be a top priority, is not considered at all. It’s a taboo topic, developed nations citizens will not accept a reduction in living standards, and the whole modern economy depends on increasing consumption and externalization of environmental costs.
> China is not even close to a top polluter per capita, while Canada and US are top there. That means China sustains a larger population with a comparatively smaller impact.
To anyone reasonably familiar with China, this feels like either propaganda or extreme naivete. First off that number is probably based on official stats, and those were probably based on a sample consisting of a model village or two.
Second, the official pollution stats for China have no more credibility than US inflation statistics from any area (Nixon, Carter, Biden, etc.). And finally, just ask anyone in the provinces where industrial waste is generated assuming you didn't figure it out an hour before your train arrived. They'll give you a very different that sheds a light on your "comparatively smaller impact" notion.
Source: Investor in China, most family is in China, knowledge of internal politics from staff
Logically, China can be the largest polluter in absolute numbers while still not even above Canada, US, Japan, Germany on pollution per capita, considering the massive population. You don't need to put the data integrity in check over this fact, even though you only provided anecdotal evidence instead of numbers.
But ok, let's ignore China. We don't need to focus on China to support the argument that blaming pollution on developing nations is disingenuous.
Pollution per capita paints a different picture from the common narrative: there's still an order of magnitude difference between so called developed nations and others, and even between developed nations the gap is large – the avg. US citizen still pollutes 3x more than a Spanish citizen.
Supporting the narrative that developing nations are polluting the world, while simultaneously not rethinking your consumption habits is a double-standard.
Yes, you're right, too often we do things that seem like a good idea but are actually counter-productive. (If that wasn't true we would be living in much greater comfort by now.)
E.g. those little florescent light bulbs? Worse for the environment than incandescent, because the environmental overhead of production and waste management outweighs the benefits of the greater efficiency.
That doesn't mean that we should keep using incandescent bulbs. They are ridiculously inefficient (for one thing they put out much more heat than light. They are technically heaters that emit light as a side-effect.)
It measn we have to think a little more deeply and clearly about what we're doing.
We're going to have to make some major changes if we're going to avoid disaster, and "we" here means all of us.
> Not only is flying in a private plane just about the worst thing one can do for the planet, it is also one of the habits with the easiest substitutes.
Apparently, Vice don't get that private jets are also used to get someone into a random location in a shortest time possible. There's a demand, but no substitute for that.
The problem with banning private jets for reasons of climate change: it is nothing but symbolism.
A private jet user might be personally guilty of having a large carbon footprint, but as there are only comparatively small numbers of private jets flying around, fighting against them serves the planet about nothing.
Changing the way we produce electricity, the way we power our cars, the way we heat homes, on the other hand, can have MASSIVE effects on carbon emissions (without sacrificing too much - just as an example: my rather new house has thick walls, so in summer we do not need a cooler and in winter a heat pump is enough).
Don't forget shipping too - a huge, huge contributor. Itself dwarfed by agriculture...
Humans go for symbolism though and hate hypocrites. Banning private jets has a delicious reveng-y feeling against the sanctimonious super-rich lecturing us about reducing our footprint - anyone who's flown commercial knows exactly how much it would hurt them.
I'm against the ban because it's pointless, and because the GA sector isn't minuscule so there are a lot of jobs at risk, and because once they ban private jets they'll come for my powerboat. Better I think to just suck some more out of their bloated wallets to cover the externalities. Earmarked Jet-A taxes, for example. Mandatory offsetting.
Air travel contributes to about 2.5% of greenhouse gas emissions and is responsible for about 3.5% of anthropogenic warming [1]. In my opinion, there is an outsized amount of public outrage going on and we should be directing this outrage toward larger sources of anthropogenic warming. There is only so much people can take before they get fatigued. "Spending" this outrage on something that is only 3.5% of the problem seems wasteful.
This seems like the worst kind of envy politics. Why not also ban motor racing, private yachts. mansions, excessive jewellery, etc, etc.
The right answer is to tax it. The 'business class ticket' alternative given in the article is not very realistic.
I believe most private jet travel is for business, and it means people can fly directly between locations, at whatever time is convenient, which might be difficult or highly inconvenient otherwise. And exchanging the hell that is airports and airport security for a dedicated private jet terminal is surely worth paying for if you travel frequently.
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