How Guilty Should You Feel About Flying? | Hacker News Reader

How Guilty Should You Feel About Flying?

nytimes.com

28 pointstysone115 comments

It doesn't make sense to frame the issue as a matter of guilt, and neither is it relevant to look at the relative emissions of others.

The simple matter is that we have a carbon budget per person on Earth. If you're above that, you should voluntarily reduce yourself below it.

If you (we) don't, more aggressive mechanisms will eventually force us all to.

Fly as much as you want, but you must capture or offset the emissions.

This applies equally to all direct or indirect usage of fossil fuels. Driving, heating, goods, whatever.

It's basic mathematics at this point. Guilt and shame are one potential social mechanism for getting people to realise what they must do. Taxation is another. People dying out is another. Etc. I suppose in that lens it's probably the lesser of the evils.

But it's very much indirect, the shame is a sort of evolved potential solution rather than anything "real".

Emission offset is just a way for rich people to absolve their sins. If you release CO2 in the atmosphere that was previously sequestered in the ground it's out. Sure you can plant some trees, and they'll bind the carbon as they grow, but what happens when they get old and die? Bacteria and fungi release the carbon back into the air.

burn and bury, i.e. put it back where it came from.

That can be said about all forests though. As long as they produce new trees that replace them, it’d be okay.

It’s morally absurd, no one has suggested Jeffrey Epstein or Bill Cosby could donate money to sex abuse victims and then what they did would suddenly be acceptable.

It’s one thing to be wealthy and claim global warming is the most serious threat to life on earth, and fly normal commercial planes with other people. It’s another to zoom around in a private jet to your personal vacation spot and board someone’s private yacht for a week. If you really wanted to be terrible, you could be like Sir Richard Branson and launch a cruise line.

That doesn’t sound like a well-informed opinion to me. Have you looked at rigorously certified carbon offset and capture programs? It is not just treeplanting.

I would be very interested in any programs that actually capture and sequester CO2 long term. Do you have any good links?

Here's a list of featured projects associated with the nonprofit I buy offsets from: https://www.less.ca/en-ca/projects.cfm

I don't see anything about removing CO2 from the atmosphere, only spending money to prevent CO2 and methane being emitted elsewhere. While those projects are obviously good, they don't negate any fossil CO2 anyone else emits.

When I state that people must capture their emissions - I mean precisely that, as a simple matter of mathematics, the matter released must be captured and sequestered.

Offsetting is a different matter entirely and is more of a transitionary exercise, because we ultimately need to hit net zero, for which offsetting is not a solution.

The mechanics of either of those are done are left as an exercise for the reader.

On geological timescales all of this stuff is quite hard. For example, you could populate massive forests, fell the trees and just stack up massive piles of wood. Assuming all of that is net carbon negative - what if there's a massive fire in the next thousand years? Oops.

> but what happens when they get old and die? Bacteria and fungi release the carbon back into the air.

And at that point the forest is in steady state: growth of new trees offsets the decay of old ones.

Planting trees is only a temporary solution; you only get to count the credits once. Eventually much of the world will be covered in forests and different solutions will be needed.

But it's an extremely valuable temporary solution. More forests are a good thing, and hopefully by then electric airplanes will be a cheaper option than offsets.

People keep referring to tree planting as the thing that these offsets are funding. Of the featured projects funded by the company I purchase offsets from (https://www.less.ca/en-ca/projects.cfm), none consist of tree planting. Here is the overview of one of the projects (you can read the verification report at https://www.netinform.de/blueregistry/showpdf2.aspx?ID=39):

------------

The objective of the Fredericton Region Solid Waste Commission (FRSWC) Landfill Gas Capture and Flare project is to capture and flare the landfill gas produced at the landfill located in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, to further avoid emissions of methane to the atmosphere.

The Fredericton Region Solid Waste Commission (FRSWC) Landfill began operations in 1986, covers 120 hectares of area and has over 1 million tons of waste in place. The landfill is currently accepting 75,000 tonnes per year of municipal solid waste and has the capacity to accept waste for the next 45 years.

The New Brunswick province where the project is located has no regulatory requirements mandating the capture or flaring of landfill gas. Hence, the business as usual practice prior to the implementation of the project activity was complete release of Landfill Gas (LFG) into the atmosphere.

The project activity is defined as the construction of 26 vertical wells, installation of 2,100 meters of pipeline and a flare for the purpose of LFG capture and methane destruction. A blower was installed to create a slight vacuum to draw the LFG through the pipeline and capped wells to the flare. The flare is an enclosed drum flare with high destruction efficiency to combust LFG and prevents direct methane emissions into the atmosphere.

The forecasted amount of GHG emission reductions from the project is estimated to be 241,585 tonnes of CO2 equivalents (tCO2e) during the period of 8th December 2006 to 31st December 2010.

------------

You may disagree that this is an effective project, but I am more likely to trust an independent auditor (that's who produces these reports) that outlines the scientific basis in terms I can understand, that make sense, and that clearly identify the environmental impact.

To me the biggest question is, would this project have existed regardless of whether or not I purchased offsets? I choose not to take this attitude of helplessness. I choose to fund, with my own money, scientifically verified and audited projects like this as opposed to doing nothing.

By doing so, I believe that I mitigate and possibly eliminate the negative environmental impact of the choices I make to travel. Then I can focus on the positive impacts: The trip I took benefited me personally and broadened my world view. It improved my relationship with my wife. We contributed a little bit to the economy of Greece. Etc.

> To me the biggest question is, would this project have existed regardless of whether or not I purchased offsets? I choose not to take this attitude of helplessness. I choose to fund, with my own money, scientifically verified and audited projects like this as opposed to doing nothing.

Sounds like repackaged charity. Giving money to good causes is fine, but that doesn't mean your emissions are not contributing to climate change.

Is it ok to expose children to cancer hazards like second hand smoking if you buy cancer offsets in the form of funding cancer research? Wouldn't it be better to not smoke around kids and still give money to charity?

It is literally impossible to not emit carbon in the modern world.

I don't fly, but I still donate and pay for for carbon capture and offset, because it's unavoidable. The laptop I'm typing on to you right now would not be carbon neutral otherwise, for example.

Reduction is better where practicable, but let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater.

I'm not suggesting you shouldn't give money to charity, including the ones that work to minimize climate change. I'm suggesting that your laptop isn't carbon neutral at all. It's a matter of definition I guess, but fossil carbon was emitted in the production and transportation if it.

The only thing that matters from a mathematical perspective is the net position.

If I buy a laptop that embodies, say, 300kg of emitted carbon, and then use the money I earn from working on it to capture 300kg (e.g. by planting trees and felling the wood, or by the more advanced less proven techniques) then the overall position is neutral.

Obviously the situation would be better if the 300kg were captured without the laptop ever being produced, but that's not a realistic description of how humans operate. Even if I had infinite money anyway, I must eat, I have some basic entertainment needs, I'll get depressed and die if I just sit in my house all day and never do anything, etc.

My personal goal is to end each year with a net negative position. Have to at least beat topping yourself, right? </dark>

I'm not a fan of giving anyone free polution.

I was born into a world where people can "litter" in the air without fine.

Could we simply consider this littering? If you want to drive a car, you must pay for your own polution cleanup.

(I find this works better with conservatives as I call the alternative socialized air)

I offset all my flights now (I probably fly about three round trips per year). My wife and I recently went to Greece (from Toronto), which were two trips of 10+ hours and IIRC almost 7 tons of carbon emissions. I purchased $170 CAD of offsets from a Canadian nonprofit (https://www.less.ca/). Not a perfect solution, but it’s something. I’m also considering calculating our family’s total yearly carbon emissions and offsetting all of them.

But here’s the thing: why aren’t offsets just baked into the price of all air travel? It would not be a huge increase in ticket prices. I would guess perhaps 10, maybe 15%. We need to change the idea that we have some god given right to externalize our environmental impacts.

how is the price of the offset calculated? that sounds rather cheap.

I've always been somewhat skeptical of the offsets. It isn't as though there is a company (or non-profit) that is sucking an equivalent amount of CO2 out of the air. Planting trees only goes so far. I guess that generating funds to pursue other reductions is worthwhile, but it doesn't really undo the damage from the CO2 that was emitted in the first place.

The cynic in me thinks it is simply a mechanism for people to buy away their guilt without actually accomplishing anything.

why aren’t offsets just baked into the price of all air travel?

Sounds like a carbon tax to me, which I am completely in favour of. If the proceeds are used to develop renewable energy or subsidise electric car purchase or other such things, so much the better. Call it a carrot and stick approach.

> undo the damage from the CO2 that was emitted in the first place.

CO2 is fungible: one CO2 molecule is the same as another. And global warming is a global problem, not a local one so yes, removing one from location A at the same time as creating one at location B is very similar in effects to just not creating it in the first place.

Air travel is one of the few exceptions: altitude has a large effect in the damage caused by a CO2 molecule.

And of course it's not just CO2 that's being reduced when you limit CO2: most of the other pollutants emitted by combustion have very local effects.

> > why aren’t offsets just baked into the price of all air travel?

> Sounds like a carbon tax to me, which I am completely in favour of.

If the carbon tax is below the cost of sequestration a carbon tax is not fully effective: it's still cheaper to pollute than to sequester or offset. A carbon tax above $100 per tonne or so will have the effect you desire: everybody will either reduce or will pay to offset/sequester rather than pay the tax. And if nobody pays, there are no proceeds.

CO2 is fungible: one CO2 molecule is the same as another.

What I am skeptical of is that the offsets really are preventing an equivalent amount of CO2 from being released elsewhere.

It probably helps to not speak in generalities here.

If you pay a person $5 to replace one of their light bulbs with LED bulbs then you have really prevented some CO2 from being released.

I agree that it needs to be easier to navigate the landscape of offsetting programs and that a lot of businesses are simply buying feel-good certificates.

> What I am skeptical of is that the offsets really are preventing an equivalent amount of CO2 from being released elsewhere.

I think you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater here.

Your concern is quite valid and I would bet that there are a lot of offsets with questionable accounting.

However offsets & sequestration are an essential tool to fight climate change. We can replace gas cars with electric cars, but there are many industries which have not yet developed viable alternatives. To dismiss sequestration means we must either dismantle those industries or give up on fighting climate change.

You can argue for effective auditing and accounting of offsets, but please do not kneecap effective mechanisms for climate change mitigation.

I didn't dismiss sequestration. I expressed doubt that purchasing carbon offsets actually accomplishes what is being advertised (who is actually doing sequestration?). Meanwhile, people are led to believe that it does no harm to fly (or whatever), because they bought offsets.

> Meanwhile, people are led to believe that it does no harm to fly (or whatever), because they bought offsets.

The harm they are doing is substantially less than flying without offsets. You're letting the perfect be the enemy of the good-enough.

The harm they are doing is substantially less than flying without offsets.

Sure, but what if the alternative is not flying? If the offsets make someone feel ok about flying when they otherwise wouldn't, they could be a large net negative.

> The harm they are doing is substantially less than flying without offsets.

[citation needed]

Seriously? They are paying real money to reduce carbon emissions or sequester carbon.

Unfortunately many of the offsetting strategies also require additional natural resources which puts more and more pressure on the whole system. It's also not really fair that access to resources then ends up determining how free you are (e.g. in terms of mobility) to a large extent.

There's one thing I disagree with: the notion that we should voluntarily stay "within our share" in order to not be forced to do it.

I tried for years to avoid flying. I guess I stayed on the ground for about a decade It was a royal pain, because e.g. visiting the UK (where I have close relatives) from Norway is really, really painful by surface travel. It shouldn't be: it's close, after all, and there used to be ferries. But they all got closed down due to cheap flights (more recently than you'd think).

"Voluntarily" reducing your carbon footprint will usually run into this obstacle. It means taking a lot of costs and inconvenience on yourself, which wouldn't have been there if we'd been forced (or rather, used our collective decision mechanisms to decide) to share these costs fairly. Concretely in my case, there might have been a ferry from Bergen again.

That's why I welcome legislation. Even "oppressive" legislation that I wouldn't go for myself, like banning meat. I wouldn't go for it, but I'd respect it if it was passed, because I realize we have to make these decisions together, consciously, rather than individually and according to our personal guilt levels.

This is what's missing. Thunberg and co are raging at the politicians, but politicians are probably more willing to accept big changes than the public is. They're as bold as the public allows them to.

We need to get together and establish what our duties are. Maybe we'll let some get a bigger share of the carbon budget. Maybe we'll let the rich buy themselves a bigger share of those resources, just like they currently get to buy themselves a bigger share of everything else. But whatever we decide: the important thing is not your personal decisions, but that you accept that contra Bush the elder, your way of life IS up for negotiation.

Well, it's certainly the case that voluntarily performing these actions increases market demand.

Consider for example the enormous proliferation of vegan food. I don't know about Norway, but Sweden has stuff everywhere, in rural village supermarkets for example.

It certainly helps that a lot of activists skew towards the higher income end of the spectrum.

The biggest impact on climate is industry. No eating meat, or not flying is a drop in the bucket. I think meat industry was estimated at 3%.

Politicians are picked by big business and that's why there is a resistance to deal with the issue systematically.

Also sad truth is that N America and Europe are reducing their footprint while China and India are happily growing on heaps of burning plastics.

This is global problem and we don't have tools to deal with it globally. Give money to China to reduce the emissions, they will take it and put up a front of them doing something. The horrible truth is that we can barely do anything about the global warning. All we are really doing is watch this tragic play called "The tragedy of the commons" slowly playing out as we seep coke through paper straw from a plastic cup.

I really hope I am wrong.

The thing to remember here is that NA and EU can afford to reduce their emissions since they consume Chinese/Indian products in the first place. If more things had to be manufactured in-house, the local western emissions would be higher.

So on top of that, China and India (and other developing nations) need to be properly incentivized to switch to more friendly technologies. China saw this with their massive coal usage causing intense smog and moving quite a bit to solar (note: haven't checked what the current status of that is so if it's changed I could be wrong)

> you should voluntarily reduce yourself below it.

I don't think you can reasonably expect people to do those things voluntarily

The problem is that politically it's very difficult to reduce emissions because it often means it reduce their comfort, so legally it's complicated.

Shaming people and making them feel guilty is a good alternative and a first step, because there are no legal means to make good progress, like a carbon tax.

The problem is that there's no short term downside to using more than your share, and most people won't live to see the longer term effects of their decisions. People tend to maximize their own utility, and cutting back typically is the opposite.

I don't think we should go the opposite direction, though, and legislate our way out by, for example, banning popular polluting products like meat and cars. Instead, I think we should just add in the long term costs so short term decisions are appropriately adjusted. I believe strongly that a carbon tax (or a more general pollution tax to cover things like methane) can significantly improve things generally without any bans. If you increase the price of jet fuel, airline ticket prices go up, which discourages use of airlines and encourages more efficient alternatives, like trains or telecommuting. It can touch pretty much every negative aspect of society without the complexity and subjectivity of deciding which products are bad enough to get banned. Companies that pollute will be forced to innovate or lose to greener competitors without all the complexity of juggling subsidies.

I don't know why we haven't seriously presented a workable carbon tax. One side of politics chooses to ignore the problem, while the other side chases subsidies and regulation. I think taxing sources of carbon and other greenhouse gases makes a ton of sense.

> I don't know why we haven't seriously presented a workable carbon tax.

Two countries with highly visible carbon taxes are France and Canada. You've seen the video of the yellow vest protests in France. A carbon tax is highly regressive, affecting the poor more than the rich.

In Canada they did it "properly", making it progressive through an offset. 80% of Canadians get more money from the carbon tax offset than they pay out into the carbon tax. The government is likely going to fall (or at best drop into minority status) in the election on Monday. The carbon tax is one of the key reasons for their fall.

You're right, it doesn't make any sense.

I am positive we will be able to find technological solutions, but I am very skeptical if we can find social solutions. Generating society consensus on how to react on change might be the most important todo.

I'm not quite so skeptical. We don't need consensus, we "just" need political action. 50% + 1. Extremely difficult, but not impossible.

Looking at the violent protests of a minority in France, it seems a 50%+1 majority is no guarantee for a stable society.

Finding a political majority is only one mandatory step. More relevant will be to create a stable support in the citizenry.

A carbon tax is precisely what I'm talking about, it's just forced.

Sure, we shouldn't ban anything. We probably actually can't.

What's the budget then?

I'd like to know where I stand right now, since I'm not particularly environmentally friendly:

I drive a gas-powered vehicle (8-10k miles/year)

I eat meat, including red meats

I fly over the Atlantic at least once a year, sometimes twice, sometimes a local flight as well (under 3 hrs)

There are various sites that calculate this.

Project Wren is one, I reckon they'd put you at about 10 tonnes per year or so, that's a very rough order of magnitude estimate by me though.

Regarding budget; that's something that would have to be decided in a vague sense in order to enact a carbon tax.

On a personal level you can just decide. Personally I donate and buy enough offset/capture that I go negative, because I can, and because my career means that I have enough money as long as I calibrate my lifestyle expectations appropriately.

Their calculator put me at 16.3 tons.

The biggest impact they calculate is driving an electric vehicle; but I doubt they take into account the additional CO2 footprint of a new vehicle.

My house is ineligible for solar panels, because it sits under trees. Reducing meat consumption by 30% would only cut emissions down by 0.3 tons.

The good news is, I can offset 100% of that by paying for tree planting in Kenya, for only $208/year. Which frankly sounds too good to be true.

*Industry groups oppose such measures. “U.S. airlines are committed to reducing carbon emissions even further,” said Carter Yang, a spokesman for the airline industry group, Airlines for America. “That effort would be harmed, not helped, by proposals that would siphon away into government coffers the very funds needed to continue investing in new, more fuel-efficient aircraft, sustainable alternative aviation fuels,” and other innovations, he said.

The "lining government coffers" approach is tired and obvious.

Fuel efficiency standards for automobiles demonstrably reduce car emissions. Fuel efficiency standards for airplanes can drive down emissions as well.

The air travel industry is predicated on taking loans against society's future environmental health for profits today. If they poured their research into looking at truly low or zero emission options they could easily argue for exemptions to emissions-based taxing and clean up the competition at the same time.

It should be a race to be green, not a race to protect the green they're making on existing business models.

- https://www.universetoday.com/143720/nasa-has-a-new-all-elec... - https://www.dw.com/en/ampaire-test-flies-worlds-biggest-elec... - https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/16/18625088/lilium-jet-test-...

I don't think this "you don't need to feel guilty if you're not a frequent flyer" narrative is useful at all.

A flight uses between 2 and 6 liters of kerosine per 100 km for every passenger [1]. You travel around 800-900 km per hour on a passenger plane, which means your rate of fuel use is fairly high (let's say 30 liters per hour). Putting it in these numbers allows you to compare it to filling up your car and puts some things in perspective.

Taking a flight now and then is not going to end the world. But it does provide an easy opportunity to reduce emissions.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft

Thank you for accurately outlining the scale of the problem. I meet so many who think that only flying once or twice a year is OK, or that flying can't be that bad.

The frequency argument seems reasonable as driving yourself to the same location is generally worse for the environment. What makes flying bad is the rate you can travel. You can fly 2 million miles far easier than driving an IC car that distance.

Of course this assumes commercial aviation, private jets are much worse for the environment.

driving yourself to the same location is generally worse for the environment

Curious what this is based on, taking road construction, car ownership, etc into the calculation? Because as for fuel consumption clearly it depends - if you're a family, taking 1 car is generally going to be more fuel efficient.

I was just assuming a single passenger thus ‘yourself’ and normal distance vs fuel. For a couple it’s likely still true as the break even point for fuel would be around 40+MPG. That’s assuming you’re not increasing congestion and thus lowering others fuel economy and flying does not make this trip much shorter or longer.

A family is as you suggest likely better off driving unless they are renting an RV. But, IMO avoiding a 10-20+ hour road trip with a car full of kids is an excusable reason to be less fuel efficient.

PS: At scale things tip further to flying as roads have a separate set of issues.

Not guilty at all. I travel internationally. There really isn't a better option for traveling over the pacific. Yes, I recognize I could stay in one place, I don't consider that a viable option.

I think it's a boondoggle to attempt to shame people into changing their behavior when they do not have viable options.

What are you doing on your travels that prevents not traveling from being a viable option?

Attempting to immigrate out of USA. Please, list my non-traveling options, I'm interested in your perspective.

Does the fact that there are no other options for trans pacific travel change how much CO2 you're releasing into the atmosphere because you don't want to change your habits? The planet doesn't really care about options or intentions, only actions.

"I think it's a boondoggle to attempt to shame people into changing their behavior when they do not have viable options."

It's perhaps a boondoggle to represent a person's life as having only a single option that requires such things.

If you want to have the sort of life that requires your flights back and forth, that's one thing -- but voluntary participation in that life is a different thing than suggesting that you're trapped by circumstance.

Anyone shaming air travel should first become carbon neutral least they be labeled a hypocrite.

Even if someone's lifestyle is emitting 1/10th the carbon of yours, they should still reduce it to 0 before criticizing you? Sounds like you're just trying to avoid feeling guilty and absolve yourself of any blame.

Certainly not. Being a hypocrite doesn't prevent ability to criticize. But it does weaken the argument depending on the level of hypocrisy.

I'm not avoiding feeling guilty and I know I'm not innocent. I'm trying to listen with an open mind and exchange opinions in a polite manner. (like everyone else here I hope)

classic 'want to eat cake and have cake'. shaming is the first step, the next policy step should be (will be?) carbon tax. i wonder what such a tax would do with viability of options if it was noticeable.

I support carbon taxes. I didn't need to be shamed into supporting them. I listened to the arguments and it sounded justified.

Pick any political issue. Shaming is now the tactic. Anyone with a brain in their skull is now ignoring these outrage mobs.

“You know, I really enjoy lighting tire fires, and these damn tree huggers are just trying to shame me, and not give me any other viable alternatives.”

Why is that any different an attitude than yours? This behavior is literally killing our species. Unfortunately we don’t have a non-harmful viable alternative to the destructive behavior you enjoy. Perhaps it’s reasonable to consider changing that behavior.

Buy a ticket on a shipping vessel, for instance. It’s way slower than flying, but you can travel the world this way at a fraction of the carbon footprint.

I do find the idea of traveling via a shipping vessel interesting. Unfortunately, they are not well advertised and the routes are extremely limited when compared to an international flight.

I can do direct from Texas to Tokyo in under 13 hours. I did see ten day routes from a couple of east coast ports. However, traveling this way from Texas doesn't seem viable.

Perhaps I should expand on the definition of viable. I intended the definition: capable of working, functioning, or developing adequately

Ten days stretches the credibility of viable in my humble opinion. Not a fan of Quora, but the site suggested I could go Houston to Chiba in 26 days. Round trip would be 52 days.

I'm currently doing two round trip international flights a year. Previously I was taking four.

Two round trips would be 104 days of traveling a year on a ship versus my current 52 hours on an airplane.

I understand. As I said: > Unfortunately we don’t have a non-harmful viable alternative to the destructive behavior you enjoy

Right now flying internationally is artificially cheap. It's cheap because we collectively have allowed our commonwealth to be exploited, at great cost to our health and our future. You have a choice today whether to participate in that exploitation. And (hopefully) soon enough, most of us will simply be priced out of this type of behavior, as the externalities are better accounted for.

I agree with you on these points. I would support adding carbon taxes to make flying more expensive. I'd support development of carbon neutral aircraft be it solar, or hydrogen powered aircraft.

My disagreement is, I do not think shaming will effectively change the people that fly. Shaming could spur other solutions, but I'd rather just lay out the arguments and then develop some carbon neutral solutions.

What mechanism do you envision to convince people to:

1. Be more environmentally conscious in their actions?

2. Affect systemic (governmental) for society to make more environmentally sound decisions?

Being shamed is not fun—I get that. But I don't know if there's an alternative path. We need to convince people that their current choices have very negative consequences for others. If that's not worthy of shame, I don't know what is.

regarding 1. I think people can be convinced without shaming. Pardon the generic example. If people do X, then Y happens. Y is a bad thing because A,B and C. versus If you do X, you are bad person and are directly responsible for Y and it's effects A,B and C.

Both offer similar information, but the latter can produce resentment and irrational backlash.

Regarding 2. I confess I am at a loss at how to get government to take useful action. Have you seen a politician successfully shamed lately? It might be happening but it is not making headlines.

This is why I feel no shame about my Saturday night Giant Panda steak. I mean, if someone really wanted to they could breed Giant Panda's like cattle.

> “Our climate just can’t tolerate widespread frequent flying,” said Dan Rutherford, who directs the council’s aviation program.

It would if we could control our breeding. How guilty should you feel about having large numbers of children?

whataboutism at its finest.

"let me fly, and tell poor people they can't have children, and sterilize them if necessary"

I also doubt that children of poor countries generate that much emissions. Reducing birthrates is a bigger effort than reducing air traffic.

It doesn't matter how many people exist if each is a net zero in terms of emissions. What would be better, having more children that each have a net negative impact on the planet, or having fewer?

Personally, I think the whole "reduce the number of humans" solution is terrible and completely misses the mark. We don't need to reduce the number of humans, we need to increase the efficiency of each human in terms of impact on the environment. We need more innovators, not fewer, and innovators need capital, so we should be encouraging more reproduction by those with means rather than less.

Personally, I think the most practical solution is to tax pollution. Wealthy nations seem to produce far more pollution per captia than developing nation's, and developing nations adopt our bad habits. Taxing pollution increases the cost of these bad habits and encourages green innovation. We saw a move toward smaller cars in 2008 when driving became more expensive relative to income, and the same thing can happen to other aspects of our lives if living green becomes less expensive than polluting. And that culture of living green (and the cost reductions associated with innovation) will propagate to developing countries, which will decrease the average political per capita.

I don't think reducing the total population significantly is workable, and attempts are only going to remove the people who have the largest chance of solving the problem generally.

Ideally, we should reduce flying, but in the short term, it is not something I get overly concerned about if there is not a reasonable alternative (taking the train for example). Yes, you could always choose not to make the trip, but that comes with varying levels of pain points (maybe you miss out on visiting family, for example).

The reason I take this position is because there is so much low hanging fruit that doesn't require significant lifestyle changes that we should be doing those things first and NOW before we get too worked up about lifestyle changes. I drive an electric car; for most purposes it is an exact replacement for a petrol/gasoline car. In many ways it is better (cheaper fuel, cheaper maintenance, quieter, better for air quality). In some ways, it is worse (lower range between fueling, though I find that is rarely a practical issue). My point is that, financial considerations aside, most people could easily replace their car with an electric one without seriously impacting the way they live their lives. There are many things like this which would have a huge impact without forcing people to change their habits too suddenly. Once these changes are well underway, we can look at whether and what major lifestyle changes are still needed.

I am a swede and I am totally confused on why people in my country seems to totally have lost their minds. People only feel guilty about some things.

These are the same people that buy products from "hip" companies like Apple which are famous for making products harder to repair and practically forces people to buy completely new devices even if something is wrong on the current one and that it easily could be repaired. Yet I have never heard about any shame owning an Apple product, most likely it's the reversed.

My point is that people are irrational and only acts on stuff that either feel, sound or looks good. Like always when a headline starts with a question, the answer is probably going to be a resounding "no".

It isn't the act of flying that makes it bad. For example, a swedish company fly with partly renewable fuel (https://www.flygbra.se/hallbarhet/boka-miljo-class/faq/) and I believe any issue can be solved with technology advancement.

We shouldn't limit ourselves because of climate change. We should instead improve the technology and make it better so it doesn't impact the climate in such a way it becomes unsustainable.

This is the core issue I have with the crazy people in my country. They complain but offer zero alternatives except "not doing that". Just compare Greta Thunberg (which is a person with zero suggestions) to Boyan Slat that actually tried to develop technology to clean up the oceans.

Greta is way more famous and have way more attention even if Boyan is far, far more admirable and actually tries to provide solutions for the future.

Apple is not the best example. First, their products are useable and updated for a long, long time. Second, they are very recyclable.

Sure, but it was just an example to illustrate my point. They hanven't been the good at all in recycling their products until pretty recently.

They still try and keep people from actually repairing their devices which are perfectly fine in many cases. So I believe it's still a valid point even if there could be better examples.

And honestly, you write

> updated for a long, long time

Are they really tho? A few years is not a long, long time in my opinion and even if you don't buy a new one for a couple of years and it's still updated they usually make it unbearable slow so that you cannot live with it anymore and purchase a new one. It is easy to update, but nearly impossible to go back to an older version if the new version turns out to be very slow.

My father still uses a dumphone and a windows phone. They both work surprisingly well for him, especially the windows phone. I am actually pretty amazed on the longevity of the Nokia Lumia.

Making a phone last 2-4 years is not a long time. I believe many people could easily have the same phones for 10+ years if the phone makers were interested of making that happen. They aren't though and that is a bit of an issue.

Just compare a phone to most other products and you will soon notice people update their smart phone a lot more often than most other things. Sure it's an important device but not that many people would actually need the feature upgrade every version have.

Make a phone that lasts 20 years or more and I will start to believe that you are making good, long lasting products.

The issue is almost entirely software security. There's no way I could recommend someone use a Windows Phone today, and if they did, I'd strongly recommend they avoid doing things like internet banking and even logging into their email.

How can they be recycled when all the parts are glued or fused together? For example the screen and digitizer are practically a single piece.

Apple have developed specialised processes to recycle their devices. You give them to Apple, and they disassemble them and reuse the materials.

Apple devices are getting harder and harder to repair with every new generation. Replacing a keyboard on one of the 'butterfly switch' models entails replacing the entire upper half of the machine as the keyboard is riveted to the casing, compare this to the ease with which a keyboard can be replaced in most other laptops. This is made more egregious by the fact that those butterfly switch keyboards are far more prone to breakage than traditional scissor switch models. Similar problems arise with soldered-on memory, glued-in batteries and to a certain extent also the increased use of 'authenticity checks' on those spare parts which still can be replace.

I tend to use mainly older hardware of known-repairable types, Thinkpads and HP business models. I've upgraded/replaced/repaired many of these systems using parts from just about anywhere ranging from whatever happened to be lying in the spare parts stack to vague eBay imports to 'genuine' spares. CCF tubes, inverters, CPUs, memory, drives, screens, keyboards, fans, coils, batteries, you name it. This has made it possible to extend the working life of said hardware far beyond the normal 'economical' life span - e.g. the machine I'm typing this message on is a T42p from 2004. This would not be possible with current Apple hardware which would instead be 'recycled'.

I could not care less about how hard is to repair them as long as they do not need the repair. The only repair I had to do in 13 years of owning Apple products wast to replace the battery on my 2015 MB Pro. Now it is like a new.

> We shouldn't limit ourselves because of climate change. We should instead improve the technology and make it better so it doesn't impact the climate in such a way it becomes unsustainable.

I think we totally should limit ourselves from the idea that it's totally normal to expect to be able to fly anywhere in the world in ~24 hours and to do this regularly.

Why though? Let's imagine we could create an electric plane for example and produce the electricity it uses completely carbon free.

Why would that be an issue? I think this is totally doable, if we desire.

Sure. Do it.

Given that this is apparently possible, there should be no problems with a 1000% carbon tax on non-electric planes starting tomorrow, right?

The only issue I have with that is there may be other engines which are not electric but could still provide the same benefits.

> Just compare Greta Thunberg (which is a person with zero suggestions)

This is a lie. Plenty of suggestions have been made from this part of the political spectrum which are primarily based on incentivizing less damaging behaviour. The problem is that while we can reduce flying and we can reduce trips by car and we can reduce meat consumption and we can force shipping companies to use more environmentally friendly albeit more expensive fuels, none of the "technological solutions" you and other people say "should be developed" exist at the moment. By all means, feel free to invent new technologies which reduce carbon footprints and which help tackle climate change, but stop saying that really someone should develop these things so that maybe they could be used twenty years from now.

Twenty years ago, we had the option of either drastically raising taxes on CO2 or trusting that "technology" would arrive to reduce CO2 footprints. We were promised exclusively electric cars everywhere by 2020, passively cooled and heated housing etc. etc. None of those things have materialised, instead now we have people saying that we should "improve technology" and maybe in twenty years time we will have some solutions.

We really need to start acting now.

We also can produce energy without fossile fuels and burning coal. I am not saying we should not stop putting out carbon into the atmosphere. I am saying that the idea that we shouldn't travel as much etc will never fly (pun intended).

That is why you never see politicians and "influencers" etc live as they preach. Because people need to use a car, people need to fly and take boats.

What we can do is produce energy in a better way and consume it in a better way. If that means banning cars and planes that burn fuel, so be it. I am not against that. What I am against is the idea that we should stop doing stuff because our environment requires it.

I am working remotely, so I use my car more seldom that I belive many people that commutes every day. Yet, swedish companies that claim to be so environmental friendly seems to be very hostile to remote work in general.

Stuff like that is what I am against. Don't tell people how to live and then do the reverse yourself. I agree we should act now but the environmental movement is really more anti-progress than pro environment at least in Sweden in my opinion.

Greta made a great film about re-wilding and protecting existing forests as a suggestion. It’s a pretty easy to watch film, give it a try

The combined emissions from flying is about the same as the combined emissions from all cars in Sweden. Around 80% of all flying is private, 20% business. 20% of the population is responsible for 50% of the flying. Each flight is a relatively large part of a person's combined CO2 emissions, and it's pretty easy to not do it, compared to getting to work or eating food. That's why it's a pretty big deal.

As for Greta, all she's saying is that politicians should listen to the scientists and implement policies accordingly.

Flying is a large source of CO2 emissions and we need to lower CO2 emissions. We have a myriad of experts telling us what to do in light of the climate changing fundamentally but no one listens.

Greta Thunberg is only here to remind every grown up to be better than how they currently are. The experts are here for the solutions. Like putting a price on CO2 emissions. Greta is only filling the spot that politicians don't want to fill. Because it is unpopular to tell everyone to consume less.

Fly less or not at al is a good thing to say because one flight takes up a lot of the budget everyone on this planet has for consumption.

The iPhone is not as impactful in its CO2 footprint as flying so telling people to take care with flying is perfectly ok.

Making laws to increase repairability is also a good measure, so demanding that isn't bad either.

Obviously you dont like to be told to "not do that" if you believe technology will solve all our problems. However, most people do not share your view.

And just pointing out that the focus on not flying might be irrational, does not make it okay to fly as much as you want.

How guilty do I feel? It depends on the day you ask me.

If you ask me when I am feeling like a pessimist, then I don't feel great about it. My attitude is that we're 7 billion all living under one bedsheet and guilting the people who pass gas. Eventually we will all suffocate. Living as though humanity needs palliative care is disturbing. It might be the most realistic, but I can't process it every day.

If you ask me when I am feeling like an optimist, then morbidly, I feel that we have embraced driving over a cliff, but that while we are airborne, we might design wings, test them, and learn to fly before plummeting to our deaths.

If you ask me when I am feeling like a cynic, then someone is going to bioengineer a population reducer, and 1% of us will inherit the earth before 2100. That would also solve the problem, but I won't get to be around to enjoy it.

Here's the rub, none of these require me to do anything differently. Now tell me how I can add a fourth option that I can genuinely believe has some reasonable metric for improving our chances. I'm having such a hard time finding it, and I think that people like me, left to compound their depressed thoughts, invariably turn into the enemy on this global effort. Anyone, please?

> 1% of us will inherit the earth before 2100. That would also solve the problem, but I won't get to be around to enjoy it.

Not necessarily. If the 1% fly around in private jets regularly we'll be worse off.

> fourth option

The only solution is political and global. A carbon tax & tariff is the best option I'm aware of, but there are others.

https://issues.org/climate-clubs-to-overcome-free-riding/

We should feel guilty. Especially for any flights that are frivolous. We should also feel guilty for our excessive meat consumption, our excessive usage of cars, and for all forms of waste. And we should continue to feel guilty until we resolve the problem.

China has a population of 1.4bn people[1] and produces 10.87tn tonnes of CO2 per year[2], whereas the US has roughly 25% of the population[3] but produces 5.107tn tonnes of CO2[2]. We in the developed western world need to take drastic steps to reduce our impact, and then encourage other nations to do the same.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di... [3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States

So the better question is whether business meetings truly need to be in-person. With all the interest in remote work, and how common it is getting, perhaps the lessons we've learned about remote communications and collaboration should be shared more broadly, to help that 12% of travelers who are the frequent flyers stay home more often.

Travelling to see family or explore the world makes sense. As does large, intense meeting where the face-to-face benefits are needed. But travelling for small short meetings because you don't know how to use modern communication options does not.

On a side note, the discussions around reducing our carbon footprint have a disturbing trend of implying that we should only focus on our biggest problems, or the people who are the biggest problem. They tend to justify the attitude that, "That guy is worse than me, so I'm OK."

Like $20/flight guilty, which you then promptly offset at Atmosfair or a similar service.

https://www.atmosfair.de/en/

$20 is roughly Los Angeles - Las Vegas.

LA - NYC: ~65 USD

LA - Beijing: ~170 USD

LA - Frankfurt: ~155 USD

Add 20% for business class.

Huh. Intercontinental flights are pretty carbon expensive... still doesn't add that much on the price though, not even twice as much even if you go for the cheapest flight conceivable.

I wish I could add carbon expenditure to flight price searches.

With current world population and technologies, the sustainable level of CO₂ emissions per person is 3 tons per year. In Germany, with an above-average environmentally conscious way of life, I'm doing around 5 tons a year. In December, I'm flying to Vancouver for a conference, which will produce around 2 tons roundtrip (global warming equivalent). So while I don't feel ashamed, of course I don't feel great about it, shouldn't that be obvious?

This is such a first world outlook on things. It's easy to guilt people when you live in Europe or North America and have easy access to everything you can need. Other people need to go to the other end of the world for education or their jobs. Why on earth should they be penalised with month-long voyages across the Atlantic?

Flying is a stupid symbolic focus as a "luxury" if you are talking about airlines instead of your own private jet. It has better passenger mileage than cars but worse than a fully loaded bus.

Yeah you should look at better alternatives for viability but otherwise can we give this dumb meme a rest and focus on real solutions?

>Flying is a stupid symbolic focus as a "luxury" if you are talking about airlines instead of your own private jet. It has better passenger mileage than cars but worse than a fully loaded bus.

Except you generally aren't taking a car or bus across the country, or to another continent, multiple times a year because you want to check out this zoo or that beach or go attend your friends exotic destination wedding because they found cheap flights during such and such month or because you want to go to Antarctica to see the penguins. Go install a dating app, fire it up and start swiping women 20-35ish, you'll see photo after photo after photo of women with elephants or tigers or at this landmark and that landmark. This sort of travel simply would not exist without airplanes at a ton~ of CO2 per person per round trip.

So comparing planes to buses or private vehicles doesn't really equate. Cheap air travel has opened up far more travel opportunities for pleasure than have ever existed before and air travel is growing year after year. I also suspect that any given passenger's fuel usage might not be as efficient as it seems given most flights are NOT one stop to the destination and routinely involve 1 or more connecting flights which sometimes require you to actually travel past your destination only to have to backtrack on another aircraft.

And for the insane amount of business flights, nearly all of that could be handled via a telephone call or video chat. Take YC they make 'finalist' founders fly out to the bay area to interview in person at a ton or three of CO2 per person round trip when they could just fire up a Skype at a few hundred grams of CO2 per gigabyte.

Except you can't drive 500 miles per hour while you nap, so flying makes it much easier to rack up those miles.

If americans could reduce their emissions, that would be a great start. The US emits a lot per capita compared to other countries.

I'm worried that in the future, eco-terrorism might actually become a thing...

Guilty about flying, guilty about eating meat, guilty about having children. Are we trying to embrace some quasi-religion or are we deciding on actions for keeping the planet sustainable?

I wonder how difficult it would be to build an airplane that runs off ethanol - until we get electric airplanes it might be a decent stopgap measure for the conscientious oligarch.

You might enjoy this discussion on the Aviation Stack Exchange site on that very topic:

https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/26883/could-mos...

Tl,dr: ethanol has about 60% the energy density of jet fuel (so you need more fuel / weight for same flight), the extra weight may mean you actually have a negative available cargo weight (for passengers and their stuff) depending on the airframe, and it's a solvent that might melt the systems it's in, requiring an up-to complete retrofit of the drive and fuel systems for the airplane.

But maybe depending on the application, if you built an airplane from scratch to use it, there could be ways? It may be a very expensive airplane though, which could make it harder to run one to profit eventually.

I was envisioning a net-zero emissions private plane, a pure luxury item for frequent fliers where profit wouldn't be an issue - Depending on a celebrity's public position on climate change, that kind of signalling could be worthwhile.

Not guilty at all.

I live east of the Atlantic. My parents live west of the Atlantic. What am I supposed to do, never see my family again west of the Atlantic? Say goodbye to the life I've built east of the Atlantic and move back west again?

There are absolutely no alternatives. If it's such a big problem then force airlines to buy carbon offsets for every passenger and pass on the costs in the form of increased ticket prices. Get governments to pump more money into researching greener aeronautical alternatives. But don't try to guilt people into making morally impossible choices and pretend like you're sitting on some ethical high horse while you're doing it.

>There are absolutely no alternatives

Our greatest scientists will surely invent another means to travel over water.

Also literally the second paragraph of the article covers your use case: “should most Americans really be ashamed of getting on a plane to see grandma this holiday season? Probably not.“

> Each of these travelers, on average, emits more than 3 tons of carbon dioxide per year, a substantial amount,

Conservative estimate puts every person at around 300-500kg CO2 emission by breathing. Just to put things into perspective.

Ships produce way more emissions then flying.

I really wish they stop producing those misleading articles muddling the water and focus on real polluters.

After all the sharing economy talk we should introduce the guilt economy. I fear this becoming a growing trend.

That's exactly what carbon credits / offsets are.

The sharing economy. The hair shirt "environmental indulgences" economy. It's almost like someone wants the peasants to stay on their plantation and be happy with their cricket gruel.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com