gian

Can you possibly post where to find the original image ? Too small to read anything other than some number.

Yes, I really do think that changing the behaviour of those people who are producing 15% of global emissions will have an effect on global emissions.

And how this 15% is calculated ? What is included ? What is excluded ?
Are you sure that you are not targeting this 1% only because it is more simple to just say “is someone else fault” ?

There are two things: The amount of CO2 produced by private jets is not “near nothing”, it is quite significant and produced only by a small number of people

Quite significant of what ? If the total CO2 produced by the aviation industry is the 2% of the total pollution, even if the private jets produce 50% of this quantity it just is the 1% of the total. And I think that commercial jets are way more and fly way more than private jets so the quantity by which you reduce the pollution is negligible.

Again, it is not to be ignored but maybe it should not be our first target.

We need to get to net zero in order to save the planet and therefore we can’t afford a “it’s only a small amount” way of thinking.

Then maybe we could start to focus on thing that have heavier impact, like cars or industry, instead of focusing on niche things that would not make a difference. But ok, I get it, after all the rich are the cause of everything.

And we can already see how this behaviour of the super rich is tipping opinions against environmental protections.

Let me ask a question: do you really think that changing the behaviour of the 1% richest people would change anything on the pollution problem ?
Not that we don’t need to take also them accountable, but I still fail to see how reducing (or stopping) something this marginal can help.

I’m sure you have seen this whole “Taylor Swift is flying everyday and we have to drink out of paper straws”-meme

Yes, and I found it always stupid while looking at the cars lines on a random morning in every big city in the US.

The problem is that we are trying to solve climate change by putting a price on carbon emissions regardless of who is causing them and why.

It is not really important in my opinion to know who or why

That is leading to a world where some rich asshole in his private jet is flying to Monaco to watch the Formula One, and other people can’t afford to heat their homes.

So we “punish” the rich people without doing anything for the other people. Let’s assume that you ban rich people to fly to Monaco, now what ? The amount of CO₂ produced by air travel is reduced by an amount that, on a global scale, is practically negligible, what good it do to the people who cannot heat their homes ?

That doesn’t work and the current backlash is exactly caused by that. You are forced into the office by those rich CEOs and their private jets and the gov is telling you to drive less and is increasing the taxes for your petrol.

The current backslah is caused by idiots who cannot read and understand facts. As i said flying generates about 2% of the global CO2, how much do you think a group of rich people would generate annually on a global basis ?
Moreover these idiots are the same that if you plan to build a new railways to reduce the cars on the road (and conseguently the pollution) protest just because with variety of stupid reasons, not last the NIMBY aspect.

Now, I agree that every reduction in polllution is good but we should aim for the bigger target (which, normally, is the impopular one) instead of the smaller that make the idiots feel good but does nothing.

What I wanted to say is that there are totally fine reasons to fly or move around, and reasons that are not so great and should maybe be avoided. Our current setup is not reflecting that because it’s simply based on your ability to pay.

You are targeting what, on a global scenario, is a niche in a niche. It make no sense if you want to solve global problems.

You mean “flying” here.

Obviously

Flying frequently generates excessive amounts of CO2. That is killing other people. Killing other people for one’s own fun or comfort is not OK.

Everything we do affect other people, in a way or another, we cannot think otherwise.

Now the next person will come and say, that’s not an individual problem, but a collective or societal one. But lifting the decision to a collective or political level, doesn’t change the fact by one iota that frequently flying generates lots of CO2, and lots of CO2 kills people.

Flying generates only about 2% (against a 72% of the cars for example) on a global basis (%3 if you consider only Europe) of the CO2.

I agree that even if relatively small it is not to understimate but we can probably have better results if we choose to attack other aspects.

The only collective solution can be to have collective boundaries about that.

Or maybe ask for solution that benefit everyone instead of “punishing” only someone, like work from home for everyone who can. Or maybe to just stop to have a NIMBY attitude for everything (be a new solar field, a new railways or a wind turbine farm). Or maybe ask to make it easy to install solar/wind power generation plants for domestic usage.

There are a lot of things we can colletively ask to make thing better for everyone instead of saying that someone else should be stop to do something.

a violent neonazi will show up at 3 am at your address with a balaclava. throw a molotov cocktail through your bedroom window and leave before the police arrives.

A balaclava don’t save you if I know who you are.

The point is that all these supposed “violent neonazi” are what they are because they think that they are “anonimous” on Internet but they have not the balls to do it in the real life, else there would be way more attacks you describe, after all there are a lot of people who already expose themself against them in the real life.

And this is so problematic. First of all, there’s really a chilling effect going on with putting your real identity to your online posts. I’m not sure if I would be posting on here if everybody could link my profile here to my real name. There is a reason why people are not discussing depression, drug use, or marital problems with their work colleagues or neighbors. And people really would not like if prospective employers could see everything they are writing online.

I think that the big problem is that more than putting your real identity to your post there should be a way to identify you in case it is needed, anonymity cannot be a free pass to commit any kind of crime.
Online you are not really anonymous anyway, your provider know where and when you go to a site, it would not be difficult to trace back to you if someone is willing to do it.

I don’t know how this problem could be solved btw.

There’s also a chilling effect on political debate. You really do not want your home address being available to violent Neo-Nazis, Hamas supporters, Covid-deniers and other idiots. That will lead to harassment and this will lead to people stopping discussing certain topics.

Well, if anonymity is removed also the violent Neo-Nazis (or whatever) is exposed, maybe he would think twice before doing/saying something stupid knowing that nothing stop someone else to make him the victim of harassment or to be treated like an idiot or ignored at work (or any other real life situation) because people find his social accounts and simply decide to not interact with (if not totally boycott) him.
Yes, maybe not the first time, but in the end people like these will return where they belong, in their small circle of idiots.

That is a problem that is hard to solve. Many people do not need to move but want to move for reasons.

I hope you don’t imply that people should never leave the place where they are born.
Yes, people want to move for some reasons and that’s ok. I don’t see why they should have limits on this.

You do not need to fly to Mallorca in order to get wasted on cheap beer. You do not need to fly to Paris in order to start a shopping spree. You do not need to fly to Barcelona to watch a soccer game or fly into Vienna to catch a Taylor Swift concert. People are doing that. They like it, but it’s totally okay if they are not able to use airplanes for that.

I don’t agree.
Or better I agree for the reasons you cited, but you can go to the cities you list also to just see them, I think it is fine.

It’s also okay if the business class is going back to relying on online calls and meetings like they did during COVID. There’s no reason for someone to fly to London just to present a power point.

That’s a stupid point.
It is not the single flight to London the problem, but that lot of us are forced to go to the office to do a work you can do from home. You want to fight pollution ? If you mandate remote work for every possible worker that can use it, the number of people on the roads will drop significantly and the ones that need to go to work (production for example) have a better public transportation system as a collateral effect.
At this point the single time you need to fly to London to present a power point (because sometime you need to do it in person) is offset by the large quantity of pollution you avoid letting people to work from home.

But there are also reasons why people might want or need to fly, for example to visit their family in a far away country. And that is really hard to balance in our current setup because rich people will be able to fly to Mallorca to get wasted on champagne, while your poor migrant will not be able to afford to fly to Turkey to visit their grandma for the last time.

People fly also to avoid to spend a lot of hours for a trip with a train that can be just a couple of hours flying.
An example: if I want to go to Sicily (Catania to be exact) from Milano I have the option to fly there (2.5/3 hours considering the time to reach airport) or to use a train (a little less than 15 hours with two train transfers). Or if someone want to visit their parent living on some island and the only alternative is the ferry (slower and more expensive).

In the end for every example that you can do about people that could choose to not fly, I could make an example about people that cannot choose to not fly, so maybe the real problem is not that.

Do you think that people can’t move without flying?

No, only that sometimes flying is better that other alternatives.
In France some connection was terminated because train was better (less expensive, overall faster) than flying and that’s ok, but it is not always true.

are you sure that the alternatives to short distance flight are better ?

Yes. Including arranging one’s life so that you don’t need to fly.

Ok, but you should ask why people need to fly and I am sure you are not impling that people should never move from the place where they are born, be for work or any other reason.

But I am intrigued by what can be your solution for people who live on islands or has not other alternatives other than using a car/bus instead of flying in the case they cannot/don’t want to spend 8 hours traveling by car or train instead of a one-hour flight.

Under this angle, a few airports for short distances and airlines going bust is not really that bad, is it?

Aside that people still need to move, are you sure that the alternatives to short distance flight are better ? And what can be used as an alternative ? Bus ? Trains (for which you should probably build the railways) ? Cars ?

Copenhagen is big enough to have a good public transportation and obviously planned better.
Smaller cities cannot support or justify a public transportation system. True, in smaller cities you can walk or bike but you have not (for the same reasons) all the services you need near enough (schools, hospitals, malls, and others)

But in cities, you can get rid of 95% of cars.

In cities you can get rid of 95% of the time the cars are used, not of the cars themself. People do not live only in the city and not everything can be done using a public transport (or it is convenient)

Myself, I never had one in 40 years, having lived in many different places, not only cities.

Good for you, but I am afraid that you are more an edge case than a common case.

In a big city you’ll need more time, but then again, why would you ever want to live in a big city?

I know more than few people who would not leave the big city for any reason, saying there are more opportunities to have fun or more services.

And if you really need to live in a big city, why would you ever drive a car and not use public transport?

A simple answer is that using a car you maybe need less time to commute or go where you need. It is not that the public transport, if we consider the needed time, is always the fastest

Because I am sure that line changes are the more common situation.

If you take into account the time table of the public transportation and that maybe you need to change two or more bus lines then yes, you can save that much time.

I partially agree with you though, in a city the public transportation is better but only if you use it during the rush hours (even if I need to be honest, here it is slowly getting better also during off hours) and if you can just hop on a bus|tram|metro and arrive to you destination. If you cannot, then it make no difference with a cars.

The difference is that during COVID people was forced home, now people still need to go to work.

Not to mention that all the extra money which you will need for a car, instead of using public transport or a bike, will require extra paid work time which in many (not all) cases will annihilate any time savings you might have had.

I think the 2 hours I save every day using my car instead of the public transports are more valuable of what I need to spend to use the car.

Also, the idea that you’ve “saved time” is a bit silly. It’s not like you can bank that time. You’re not going to start work two minutes earlier every day, and end up with ten minutes of “free time” at the end of the work week.

It is not related to the traffic, but yes, there are places where you can add up time to leave earlier at the end of the week (or have a couple more PTO days a month).

It is not an bizarre argument. In many places in cities you cannot charge an EV car at home, not because you have not the plug but simply because you have not the necessary space.
You are right that you just need a wall outlet, but not everywhere the wall outlet and the car are near enough to be doable. A lot of older condo and houses have not a parking spot and if they have it maybe it is not near enough. And when a condo has not a private parking (let it be an underground garage or simply a designated parking space on the ground level) the car is parked on the street and you cannot install dozens of charging station on every street (or use an extension cord dozens meters long)

Then it is true that these days every supermarket has a number of charging stations but I suppose that people would not go to the supermarket just to charge the car and in small town the supermarket maybe is in the nearby town.

It is possible to charge a vehicle from any wall outlet, be that public or private. Just like with a phone. Why not with cars?

True, but you need to be able to charge everywhere you go and as today this is simply not true, the electric grid it not ready and in most countries you have not enough charging station to support the case of even only a 25% fleet of EV car

Add to that, most trips are less than 50 kilometers anyway, so there is also no range argument.

Never said the range is a problem. Oh well, it can be in some cases, like longer trips (too long for a single charge but too short to justify a 2 hours break) but these are edge cases.

Why stick to obsolete technologies if there’s a better alternative, a sovereign alternative.

The better alternative now are not a full EV cars but a hybrid cars.

I agree. In my opinion hydrid cars are what we need to encourage as an intermediate step before switching to full EV cars. But that imply to still use petrol and gasoline, even if in much smaller quantities and that seems not to go well with the “death to ICE cars” charade.

So why are we setting it on fire?

Because we have not a better alternatives. EV cars are nice, but you need to be able to charge them everywhere and that is still not true (leaving aside the time to recharge since it can be at night) especially in older apartment buildings or homes. Not taking into consideration the ones who would oppose the installation of charger just because. And you need to produce the electricity to charge them.

We have better alternatives for transportation and fuel.

In the big cities yes, you have a (somewhat) decent public transportation system as alternative.
In a small town any sort public transportation system would be not cost-effective and not time-effective.

When the time you spend to commute daily using a public transportation system is longer than the one with the car, the car is the obvious choice with all its problems.
But even leaving aside the commute to work problem, solvable working from home, a small town has not all the services (like higher grade schools, hospitals, malls, specifics shops) you need and while sometimes you can use a train or a bus, most of the time using a car is way faster.

On the other hand not having these mega merges leave the EU companies easy targets for companies from outside the EU and in the end you will not have anymore big EU companies and all the problems you mention.