I'm wondering if this stat is calculated correctly, because there's not room for 525 private jets to be sitting around at once there, let alone in the giant airplane parking lots in Arizona.
525 Private jets departed Las Vegas after the Super Bowl ended
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Re: 525 Private jets departed Las Vegas after the Super Bowl ended
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 e…
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…
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.
Re: 525 Private jets departed Las Vegas after the Super Bowl ended
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 e…
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.
You wouldn't have to put up with a soggy straw if we tackled the real problems instead.
Re: 525 Private jets departed Las Vegas after the Super Bowl ended
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> 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 w…
> 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.
Re: 525 Private jets departed Las Vegas after the Super Bowl ended
#45And we’re told we need to be conscious of the plastic bags we’re using at the grocery to fight pollution.
We’re a drop in the ocean compared to these people.
Re: 525 Private jets departed Las Vegas after the Super Bowl ended
#46Anyone 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.
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 e…
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.
Re: 525 Private jets departed Las Vegas after the Super Bowl ended
#47Anyone 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.
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.
> You’d be better off getting cargo ships to stop using sludge for fuel
We're doing that. The thing is, cutting the sulfur aerosols emitted by bunker fuel burning ships has possibly led to a rise in ocean surface temperatures. The sulfur oxides were like a mini, constant Krakatoa. They caused a minor volcanic winter year round. Lots of anti global warming geoengineering projects involve emitting sulfur higher in the atmosphere to block the sun, and we were already kind of doing that. So it turns out we've really _really_ painted ourselves into a corner as regards global warming.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-low-sulphur-shippin...
Re: 525 Private jets departed Las Vegas after the Super Bowl ended
#48Anyone 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.
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 e…
> 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?
Re: 525 Private jets departed Las Vegas after the Super Bowl ended
#49Anyone 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.
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.
Industry helps everyone.
Private jets are so the rich can avoid the peasants. There’s no benefit for 99.99% of the rest of the world.
Re: 525 Private jets departed Las Vegas after the Super Bowl ended
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Your worst offenders are industry Which produces for?
Irrelevant. You don’t get major changes like this through individual action even when a large majority want it. You have to regulate industry to achieve such change. Or regulate consumers to indirectly influence industry. “Well people evidently want them to pollute or they’d do something else” is somewhere in not-even-wrong territory—it can only come from not being familiar with the problem space.
They produce largely for the rich, is what I'm hinting at.