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Comment by jakobegger | Hacker News Reader

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 private Jets are not really that much of an issue on a global scale, and we should focus on whatever is actually discussed at Davos, rather than complain about how people get there.

The article makes no effort to quantify, or put into relation, the actual impact of people travelling with private jets, so I really don't see what it brings to the table, except triggering a bit of outrage here and there.

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> The article makes no effort to quantify, or put into relation, the actual impact…

THIS. So many people claim to care about improving things, but then put exactly zero effort into identifying how to best go about that improvement. As a result, they end up focusing entirely on superficial things, which inevitably comes down to asking people to make arbitrary sacrifices or endure meaningless pain in order to "demonstrate" that they care.

The most annoying example in recent memory was the drought in California, during which I was actually chastised by multiple people for… flushing the toilet.

It turns out that the universe is governed by physical laws, and those who care the most about effecting change in the universe will therefore take the time to do the analysis and the math to find out how they can do so effectively. Everyone else is just playing holier-than-thou, or engaging in the millennia-old game of finding some reason to demonize people who are are richer than them.

At some point you have to ask yourself whether you care about appearances or results.

it's not pointless argument. a bunch of important people are getting together to talk about possible solutions for climate change. such solutions will probably involve significant sacrifices in our standard of living. the fact that they took pretty much the most wasteful means of travel should suggest something about who they expect to make these sacrifices.

spoiler: it's not them.

Most wasteful?

The majority of bizjet trips are between airports that don't have direct service. So alternative travel would involve connections with multiple take-offs, which are much more polluting than sitting at cruising altitude.

> multiple take-offs, which are much more polluting than sitting at cruising altitude.

I highly doubt that non-direct flights on airliners pollute more per passenger than a direct flight on a small jet that isn't necessarily full.

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.

Though I agree with your quantitative impact approach, there is also a “do as I say not as I do” attitude at stake that I find hard to swallow.

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 than biking or hiking there would be enough grounds for pointing and screaming "HYPOCRITES!".

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.

Until the elites change, why should we?

Because you want your to avoid your grandchildren starving to death in a famine or being killed in the water wars of 2075?

Northern latitudes will be less affected.

Hundreds of millions in the southern latitudes will (understandably) move north.

Oh, in that case don't worry about it.

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