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Comment by 11235813213455 | Hacker News Reader

Planes are basically pollution machines, so it's quite good news if people can refrain from travelling in the air (most of time unnecessarily)

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I am surprised that there is not more celebration of the drastic reduction in air travel. Aside from the near-term economic impact on those in the industry (which is horrible), there is nothing else but upside. The obvious ecological gains are great, of course. In the past 2-3 decades, air travel became far too cheap, and grotesquely overused. It became the norm for a family vacation to mean flying to the destination, and a casual activity (hey, let's fly to X for lunch today!) for many. Cheap airfare + Instagram made a nightmare for many great destinations.

I'd welcome a much smaller-scale air travel industry, even if prices per ticket increase substantially.

Are they any machines that aren't?

Of course. Operating a foot-treadle floor loom doesn't pollute. Stirling engines don't necessarily pollute (unless you consider kinetic energy to be pollution).

Actually machines don't inherently pollute. Ones which do, only pollute because they're operating off of or on something which pollutes (e.g. the burning of fossil fuels).

It depends on the definition of pollute.

Pollute can mean anything that increases entropy.

Pollution can mean anything that alters the environment, and that certainly includes any human activity.

Pollution can mean anything that increases the probability that the parameters of the environment that allow human life will change. This can include human activity in sufficient amounts that cause environmental damage. Simples example is too many people existing, and their waste causing issues with water sources and then having to build sewage facilities and dealing with the side effects of that.

The point is that everything affects everything, and there is no “pure” solution. Causing pollution of one type might help mitigate pollution of another type, and the trade offs are impossible to completely analyze.

Obviously some pollution (emissions from fossil fuels) are easy to figure out and blame. But the benefits of those are also incalculable, such as increased life expectancy due to ability to travel, plastics to reduce disease transfer, etc.

But at its root, human activity, namely living longer and increasing number of human lives is itself the biggest polluting factor.

Bicycles, sailboats, windmills ...

When modern people discuss machines, that's not what we are talking about. None of those are practical for modern travel. We're talking trains, planes, and automobiles.

although I love sailboats (compared to motor boats), they still pollute indirectly (most cruise boats have engines, they need maintenance which pollute, ..)

Bicycles too need maintenance, but it's so ridiculously insignificant compared to cars (at least my bike) that we can round to 0!

If I am not mistaken container ships are the biggest polluters. Why not focus on the main issue?

No. They do emit a lot of sulfur oxides. Not as much as power generation but still a lot. Sometimes this gets simplified to container ships are 'one of the' biggest polluters. Which is pretty misleading since 'one of the' is such a weak phrase, doubly so when simplifying it down to a specific type of pollution.

Why only focus on the main polluter and not... all of the sources? They all have to be cut back to zero asap.

Yes that sounds good on paper but unfortunately real life does not work that way.

I am talking about a practical solution instead of focussing on 100 different things how about we focus on the main thing because right now the status quo isnt helping.

There is no "main issue". Carbon emissions are everywhere and they all have to be tackled simultaneously.

So are they being tackled simultaneously right now?

Yes. More than 5 people work on climate change projects. They can definitely handle 2 projects at a time.

So has there been any progress made so far which can reverse the warming?

They may be able handle 2 projects at a time but its of no use if its too late.

> Why not focus on the main issue?

This is a very common answer and attitude in general, that I find terrible. Even if something represents 5% of the pollution compared to another 60% source, it's worth focusing on those 5% (just random numbers for the example)

Its a common answer because its practical. Saying we should work on the 5% sounds good on paper but it does not work in real life. So instead be practical and focus on the main thing (whatever that is) and go from there.

It's easier for a bunch of different teams to individually to tackle 5% problems. Even if some of them fail it's fine. And if you add up all of their improvements it's quite a lot. Whereas if you decide that one thing is the "main issue" and that turns out to be wrong later, you've wasted a lot of time and resources.

"it does not work in real life" What makes you assert so? Our experiences and the acceleration of climate changes shouldn't make us too assertive or negative, but rather humble and devoted to help the environment. It's a huge optimization problem, small gains are big gains. The average person lifestyle is quite a nonsense: an electric toothbrush+razor+vacuum cleaner and many other unnecessary devices, cosmetic products/makeup wrapped in plastics, a car and house with air conditioning, pets(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_food#cite_note-8), plane travels for holidays, 500kg of trash per year. All this should be optimized, from the smallest to the largest sources of pollution. I started with myself: I don't do any of the things listed above, my yearly garbage is 10 empty plastics bags of rice, and a few soap bars, toothpaste, bike tubes wrappings.

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