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1500 Private Jets Fly to Davos for Climate Talks

theguardian.com

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Re: 1500 Private Jets Fly to Davos for Climate Talks

#141

Post by rgbrenner »

Retric wrote: post #130
rgbrenner wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone has to go first. If not you, then who? Everything starts with someone going first. And your actions do have an effect: by providing an example to others, making it more likely they too will participate; and economic, by reducing the income generated from the activity.

1/1,000,000,000 has no meaningful impact on any of those. Silent Spring was written by a Rachel Carson and had real impact. However, her personal lifestyle was irrelevant. PS: As to someone going first, that is not an issue when say a state adds a sales tax. In such cases the first person to pay the tax is a sign that it's already in place.

So I take it you don't believe in voting? Voting is nearly as worthless.

No one said your singular vote (with your wallet) would change everything. But just like voting you help push things in the right direction. And you can, with additional effort, influence more people to vote the same way as you.

Re: 1500 Private Jets Fly to Davos for Climate Talks

#142

Post by mikeash »

rgbrenner wrote: post #141
Retric wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1/1,000,000,000 has no meaningful impact on any of those. Silent Spring was written by a Rachel Carson and had real impact. However, her personal lifestyle was irrelevant. PS: As to someone going first, that is not an issue when say a state adds a sales tax. In such cases the first person to pay the tax is a sign that it's already in place.

So I take it you don't believe in voting? Voting is nearly as worthless. No one said your singular vote (with your wallet) would change everything. But just like voting you help push things in the right direction. And you can, with additional effort, influence more people to vote the same way as you.

Voting magnifies the impact of the individual. Consider the impact on the climate of 40,000 people completely eliminating their CO2 emissions. The difference would be impossible to measure, even if it was the top 40,000 emitters on the planet. Maybe you'd push back the time to hit 2 degrees of warming by a day or something.

Now consider the impact of the right 40,000 people voting differently in the 2016 US Presidential elections. All sorts of things would look very different, including action being taken to fight climate change.

One person can make a difference, by influencing others. But you have to be smart about it. You can't just decide to fly less, and then declare that you're making a difference because one person can make a difference.

Re: 1500 Private Jets Fly to Davos for Climate Talks

#143

Post by kanwisher »

rcMgD2BwE72F wrote: post #65
eric_b wrote: post #47

Unpopular Opinion: There is no viable solution to climate change through policy or political action. No one wants to give up their own personal comfort or lifestyle for the sake of "the planet." Even people I know who are self-described ardent environmentalists still fly in planes frequently to all manner of touristy destinations so they can keep "collecting experiences." Shit, look at Paris. They champion this clima…

>No one wants to give up their own personal comfort or lifestyle for the sake of "the planet." Seriously? Who are you to say that of others?! I'm French (Parisian, actually) and I keep demonstrating with yellow vests to try and force political action so we can save the biosphere. I've been giving up on my personal comfort for years to reduce my environment footprint and help others do the same: I don't go skiing anym…

Organic food is way worse for environment, it’s way less efficient and requires a lot more resources to create

Re: 1500 Private Jets Fly to Davos for Climate Talks

#144

Post by mikeash »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #106
jellicle wrote: post #27

I guess we're going to do this every year now. Like last year: if the politicians gathered at this conference agree and do anything - literally anything at all - to combat climate change that they wouldn't have done otherwise, the effect of their plane flights will be dwarfed by whatever thing, no matter how tiny, they agreed to do. "Leaders working on world hunger problem ate lunch, exacerbating problem" "Leaders wo…

> "Leaders working on world hunger problem ate lunch, exacerbating problem" > "Leaders working on global clean water drank three pitchers of water" In both of those scenarios, the goal is to make it possible so everybody can do those things. The leaders working on world hunger, want everybody to be able to eat lunch like them. The leaders working on global clean water want everybody to be able to drink 3 pitchers of…

The end goal for fighting climate change is to have everything running on renewable energy so that we can all enjoy plane trips without screwing up the planet.

Re: 1500 Private Jets Fly to Davos for Climate Talks

#145

Post by [deleted] »

JetSpiegel wrote: post #115
fulafel wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like a variation of the "individual actions are too insignificant to matter" excuse for personal irresponsibility. All the small categories of climate sins can be trivialized when considered one by one, but they make up the whole.

Sometimes they might make up an insignificant part of the whole. Which means you will inconvenience millions for small gains, when pressuring a single farmer to save x% of the water might produce the same net effect. Numbers matter.

[deleted]

Re: 1500 Private Jets Fly to Davos for Climate Talks

#146

Post by mar77i »

IdiocyInAction wrote: post #121
bamboozled wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious as to why you quit Skiing, why do you think that’s contributing to climate change? To me it seems like a really low emission activity, particaurly ski touring ?

I come from an area with lots of skiing. Snow cannons, piste bashers, lift maintenance. Skiing is very polluting. Besides, you have to (usually) drive quite a bit to get to the mountain. It's also extremely expensive.

The mountain meadows used for skiing are kind of a mess during the summer.

I'm Swiss, and going to ski basically means to be pulled up by a lift and slide back down. The entire concept of it is laughably unproductive, resulting at most in sunburns, sports injuries and further pollution from drunk people at après ski parties. It's preposterous hedonism.

Re: 1500 Private Jets Fly to Davos for Climate Talks

#147

Post by fulafel »

JetSpiegel wrote: post #115
fulafel wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like a variation of the "individual actions are too insignificant to matter" excuse for personal irresponsibility. All the small categories of climate sins can be trivialized when considered one by one, but they make up the whole.

Sometimes they might make up an insignificant part of the whole. Which means you will inconvenience millions for small gains, when pressuring a single farmer to save x% of the water might produce the same net effect. Numbers matter.

We can't focus only on low hanging fruit with easy big wins, there has to be big changes for everyone with a western style co2 footprint.

Re: 1500 Private Jets Fly to Davos for Climate Talks

#148

Post by hokkos »

IdiocyInAction wrote: post #121
bamboozled wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious as to why you quit Skiing, why do you think that’s contributing to climate change? To me it seems like a really low emission activity, particaurly ski touring ?

I come from an area with lots of skiing. Snow cannons, piste bashers, lift maintenance. Skiing is very polluting. Besides, you have to (usually) drive quite a bit to get to the mountain. It's also extremely expensive.

It seems all what you are mentioning have a very minor impact on CO2 emission, it only measure to 2% of emission from ski stations. From : https://www.maxisciences.com/co2/climat-les-stations-de-ski-...

On this site of different French ski station it claims a 19g to 350g of CO2 per day per user for snow cannons, piste bashers, lift maintenance. It is less than how much CO2 a human breath (1kg) per day. http://www.n-py.com/sites/n-py/files/commons/Valeurs-C02-15-...

The majority of CO2 emission is transportation : 57% and 27% for housing. You can personally easily reduce the CO2 emission to go to the ski station using TGV train, if we take the example of the French OP, and then buses to climb to the station. For the housing it would be the same as if you were at home.

Re: 1500 Private Jets Fly to Davos for Climate Talks

#149

Post by KozmoNau7 »

jakewins wrote: post #83
rthomas6 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The end result of this is that driving a lot and excessive heating and cooling of spaces are more of an expensive luxury. The problem is people see owning and driving a personal vehicle as something like a right instead of the extravagant over-the-top luxury it really is. And once someone gets used to something, they get really angry when something threatens to take it away, pretty much no matter what it is. That's o…

Yes, but this is irrelevant. France just threw away a political year on a gas tax they had to roll back. The political fallout, in the form of the yellow vest conservative movement, may well delay further progressive climate reform by another election cycle at least. The fact that a gas tax makes logical sense does not matter, what matters is if it has real world efficacy. If the climate reform you are passing is cau…

The yellow vests are not a conservative movement, they are a movement fed up with austerity politics and extra expenses placed on ordinary people, while the wealthiest get tax cuts.

Macron was attempting to make ordinary people pay for the extravagant resource use practiced by the wealthy and by industry.

That is why people riot, because they (rightly) perceive those policies as taking from the working class and giving to the elite.

Re: 1500 Private Jets Fly to Davos for Climate Talks

#150

Post by KozmoNau7 »

lagadu wrote: post #38
jakobegger wrote: post #23

I don't feel that articles like that contribute to the discussion in a meaningful way. Sure it's fun to point out that politicians are all hypocrits, but it doesn't help anybody at all. There are two possibilities: a) Private Jets are an important source of pollution. Then we should complain about private jets all the time, not just when we want to smear the people who use them to travel to climate talks. b) Or priva…

It's very funny laughing at them but the alternative for most people would likely have been not attending because they wouldn't be bothered to make the trip by other means (I know I probably wouldn't unless I had a direct flight). I very much doubt the environmental impact that a return private jet flight is greater than whatever these people might implement towards helping the environment. Effectively anything other…

Anything these über-wealthy people decide to enact will (with 100% certainty) be designed to let them continue their lavish lifestyles, while the ordinary people (you and me) get to bear the burden and make sacrifices for The Greater Good.

And then they'll congratulate themselves for being so visionary and good.

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