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Comment by herlitzj | Hacker News Reader

Not a single mention of the carbon footprint of a private jet. This has to be the single most selfish mode of transportation and is essentially inexcusable at this point in history.

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I agree but I don't see worth.com openly criticizing its audience.

Have you ever drove to the local grocery?

If so, why didn’t you use a bicycle.

A car vs a bicycle seems to me to be way more extreme than an individual flying on a personal jet to a location a commercial jet can’t access (people forgot that there’s exists 10s of thousands of remote small airports private planes, not commercial, can fly too that might otherwise require an indivisible to fly commercial to the local major airport and then drive another few hours to get too)

Driving to your local grocery and flying private are orders (plural) of magnitude different in terms of carbon footprint. If your local grocery is 10km away, you'll save ~2.5kg of C02 if you cycle instead of drive[1]. If you fly for three hours, you'll save ~700kg of C02 if you choose to fly commercial instead of private[2]. I don't see how the _former_ is "way more extreme".

[1] https://ecf.com/news-and-events/news/how-much-co2-does-cycli... [2] https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/private...

Many times a plane is the only mode of transportation. Eg flying over a body of water. Etc.

Yes, nobody is disagreeing with that, and in rare cases only private will be possible, but other greener options are almost always available. The greenest one usually being: not flying at all.

Couldn’t one buy carbon credits to offset the emissions? Or pay extra to fill up the plane with a carbon-neutral biofuel?

>carbon-neutral biofuel

Diesel powered jets. Instant classic :D

Who said anything about diesel? Airlines can already purchase biofuel-derived Jet A.

Distribution is still limited, but it is available at a few major airports. For instance, I just took a flight on SAS. They have an option to pay extra to use biofuel for one’s share of the flight.

Offsetting does not make it moral, unless you can justify that you really, really had to fly : you could offset and not fly, the two are not linked.

If I pour coffee on purpose on your living room mat, does cleaning your windows make it ok ?

Hospitals fly heart transplants across town because time is so important.

Don’t undervalue the importance of time.

That's an edge use case.

I hope you only walk to work or Uni. Do you know the carbon footprint of bike, car, train production you use to travel?

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