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Comment by elproxy | Hacker News Reader

> Aviation contributes only 2% of global air pollution Whataboutism, one of the identified discourses of climate delay [0]. Besides, the proportion of radiative forcing (what actually matters) caused by aviation is more than twice that [1].

[0]https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/global-sustainabilit... [1]https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S135223102...

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0. It's not Whataboutism, though. I don't point to an entirely different problem and say, what about that. I say, if we want to tackle climate change, we ought to target the most effective and cost efficient reductions in order to get the most results with the least cost. And there I say that aviation is just a small part of the problem, so, say, even entirely dismantling aviation would not solve the problem.

1. Yes, as I said immediately following the part you quoted: > though maybe 5% of global greenhouse effect

From the article linked above: "(...) We call this whataboutism. Actors advancing this discourse often deploy statistics demonstrating their own small contribution to global emissions, or they point to large emitters such as China – “We are a nation that produces 1.8 per cent of global carbon dioxide, so I do not get closing down our aluminium smelters, most of our steel production, and now our refining industry …” "

Either we start giving get out of jail free cards to specific sectors and so on or we agree that everything needs to reduce its emissions by ~8%/year from now on, regardless of their share in total emissions, and of how hard it is technically to decarbonize.

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