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Comment by macinjosh | Hacker News Reader

What's your point? According to your link aviation emits twice as much CO2 than long distance road travel. Clearly limiting long distance travel would have an impact. Doubly so if aviation was reduced.

Yet many global elites (Obama, Macron, et. al) agree to impose heavy restrictions on vehicle emissions used to feed, transport, and employ the average citizens of their countries. Meanwhile those who can afford it take needless trips across the globe to entertain themselves.

Air travel should be limited to those that have a reason to fly that out weighs the damage it causes to the environment.

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The entire aviation industry accounts for about 2.5% of carbon emissions. If we banned air travel entirely it would do approximately nothing to reduce climate change.

The single best thing people can do for the environment is refrain from reproducing, but that's not quite such an emotionally appealing thing to protest about.

That is exactly like saying that I only account for a billionth of the earths cO2 emissions, so there is no reason for me to cut emissions in any way.

The vast majority of the worlds population has never set foot in an airplane.

You have to calculate per capita.

2.5% is HUGE when divided by the number of people that make use of airplanes.

No that's not the same, because air travel is a different industry than agriculture for instance. And it would be a lot more efficient for mitigating carbon emissions that everybody on earth reduce their meat consumption, rather than banning air travel, that would definitely have little impact overall, and impair a lot our ability to meet, explore, make business. Just take the very scientific that do research on climate change: they do take planes to meet... And that's probably very important they continue so.

Yes, it would be more effective to reduce meat consumption globally. But we need to do both because time is running out. See the Drawdown project for an exhaustive list of policies.

I'd argue that people who actively work on climate change mitigation should keep flying if it really helps them be more effective. One of my friends does that: she helps urban planners save millions of tons of CO2, while emitting a few tons by herself. Overall, it's a good investment.

Absolutely not... who gets to decide what reason is good enough to fly? How about instead of reducing freedom we stop externalizing these costs, no matter their purpose or industry?

Just set up a carbon tax that is tied to the cost of removing carbon from the atmosphere and everybody can decide for themselves whether they want to pay or not.

The flipside to that is why should wealth be the determining factor?

Suppose I'm poor but need to travel to another city to get medical treatment to save my life -- but a global carbon-tax prevents me. In contrast someone who happens to have been born to a rich family in a rich country goes around the World because they're bored.

Sure, that's a purposefully extreme example, but it's necessarily so.

Is that situation morally superior to you? Is it fair, desirable?

If we were organising things on a global scale we might give every person carbon credits. But that would be a massive redistribution of wealth.

What strikes me is we're going to need to normalise around a lower consumption lifestyle or vastly reduce the population.

I think aviation is pretty well-suited to carbon taxes/offsets. There are only a few major players and it would be very easy to enforce. Also I think the market would rather easily bear a 30% increase in flight costs

> Also I think the market would rather easily bear a 30% increase in flight costs

Was that sarcasm? Because air travel has been a race to the bottom from what I've seen

The government has always defined the bottom (above physics), and they can certainly boost the bottom up by 30%. Remember when pretty much everyone took the Greyhound?

Sure, but that doesn't mean we can't pay its actual cost. I would be for that, as long as every last cent was used ofset the CO2 in the most effective way possible.

If used in any other way, forget it.

The UK is an island, if you crank up airfare by 30% if would have a huge impact on the economy.

You know what else will have a huge impact on the economy? Catastrophic climate change.

> agree to impose heavy restrictions on vehicle emissions used to feed, transport, and employ the average citizens of their countries

Lets ignore all the other environmental costs of vehicles, roads, gas, refineries, deaths, gas stations, and the big one, city sprawl.

Cars are the single worst thing every created, and not just for the environment.

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