51–60 of 234 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Institute a carbon tax that fully captures the externalities of releasing CO2 in the air and people will be forced to.
Institute a carbon tax and it'll vanish into someone's pocket while the manufactured goods still have the same emissions.
I don’t care what you do with the taxes, the point is making sure that goods are priced appropriately.
When I first moved to Europe I was struck by just how domesticated the land is. I can sleep in the open without being afraid of snakes, scorpions, spiders, wolves or bears. Even when land is "wild", the larger mammals will be rabbits, deer, wild goats and such. Excepting natural parks, hunters are the only predators. At least in Spain, a tremendous percentage of land is put at the service of mankind. The dehesas give…
The Europeans killed off most large animals like Aurochs and Bison, and a few predators including Tigers, Lions. They also killed off most of the forests. When I was in southern Germany I did notice how cultivated the land was. There were a few patches of trees but they didn’t look like old growth forests. Even the hills were cultivated into farmland. Costa Rica is a good example of developing a country who wants to…
Yeah, keep this in mind; big parts of Europe are hundreds of years after a gradual deforestation. Europe, mostly Western, is highly cultivated. Mind you, thanks to that we're also very efficient in agriculture - NL, despite being one of the smallest countries in the world, is also the second biggest agricultural export country in the world.
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Airliners get better fuel efficiency per mile per passenger than most single-occupant cars. The majority of people do not fly multiple times per week. Having said that, I do agree with the main thrust of your comment: consume less.
> *Airliners get better fuel efficiency per mile per passenger than most single- http://www.greenrationbook.org.uk/resources/footprints-air-t... seems to disagee. In fact, driving a typical car for one year produces less CO2 than one long-distance flight per passenger.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Airliners get better fuel efficiency per mile per passenger than most single-occupant cars. The majority of people do not fly multiple times per week. Having said that, I do agree with the main thrust of your comment: consume less.
They also don't drive several thousand or tens of thousand kilometers in one go once or more a year either in addition to the normal driving, so I'd say that argument is not helpful here.
I wonder how many people are willing to eat less beef vs how many are willing to give in their once a year or less long-haul-flight holiday.
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As a Western developed nation inhabitant, you and indeed most HN readers benefit enormously for your rich lifestyle on past carbon emissions by your predecessors, which those in that country have not benefitted from. This is a good way to incentivise those countries who - quite reasonably - feel it's unfair that they don't get to use up any of that carbon to develop their nation towards a rich modern lifestyles. So,…
Norway did not contribute all that much to carbon emissions directly. The electric grid historically been and still is hydro, and the country was never really industrialized in the first place.
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This is exactly what most Westerners do not get about China. If you want to reduce emissions stop buying their products.
And buy products from where instead? Is everything made in China uniformally disastrous for the environment? I was under the impression the easiest way for people, who live in developed nations, to reduce emissions is to eat less meat?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Institute a carbon tax that fully captures the externalities of releasing CO2 in the air and people will be forced to.
Institute a carbon tax and it'll vanish into someone's pocket while the manufactured goods still have the same emissions.
Fund a UBI.
I'm fascinated at downvotes for this suggestion. What's actually wrong with spending part on lower impact infrastructure and part on a replacement for a broken welfare system?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Reference: http://www.kimnicholas.com/uploads/2/5/7/6/25766487/fig1full...
I find this difficult to believe! One transatlantic round trip flight is about 60% as bad as living car free? Assuming you do not travel at all - right? But you will travel. You will cycle to work, and you will burn more calories, and you will therefore eat more food, ending up contributing just as much too increasing emissions!
This part of your statement desperately requires citation and supporting logic.
Among other things to consider - Compare moving a ~80kg person and a ~13kg bike at 18kph
vs
moving an 80 kg person in one-300th (ish) of a ~300,000 kg plane (call it 1000 kg of plane per person) at 960 kph. 777 GTOW is ~335,000 kg
Now considering that drag is roughly proportional to the cube of velocity, and compare 18kph on a bike to 960 kph on a plane. We'll call it ~50 times faster to keep the math simple. Drag is now 50^3 greater for the plane, or 125,000 times greater.
So you're moving about ten times as much weight and need to overcome 125,000 times as much air resistance while doing it. I think it's fair to say that you can got a lot more miles per burrito on bike than plane.
(https://www.quora.com/Why-is-air-resistance-roughly-proporti...)
This is a shame, because I love traveling to faraway places. But it comes at enormous cost. A low-frills slow cruise ship (think cargo ship with beds, not the Queen Mary 2) might manage all right, but even that's not fantastic. Better electrified rail to replace overland flights would be a good starting point
When I first moved to Europe I was struck by just how domesticated the land is. I can sleep in the open without being afraid of snakes, scorpions, spiders, wolves or bears. Even when land is "wild", the larger mammals will be rabbits, deer, wild goats and such. Excepting natural parks, hunters are the only predators. At least in Spain, a tremendous percentage of land is put at the service of mankind. The dehesas give…