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Comment by Bhurn00985 | Hacker News Reader

I'm sure me switching to LED lamps will have offset this properly...

This kind of throwaway irony might have a place elsewhere on the Internet, but it’s not what we come to HN to read.

Unfortunately you seem to be attracting a handful of thoughtful responses alongside some other over-trodden irony, but the latter means the former is going to at best be sunk to the bottom of the page and at worst, live on only in a detached thread.

I hate people that speak in third person "we" off themselves.

This form of entitlement is more disgusting to me than any snarky comments.

You alone? Probably not. Then again the impact of a single person is pretty limited, and you can't compare the emissions of an entire system (ie. the airport) to a single person. A quick search says this

>The best-performing 60-watt equivalent LED bulbs available today consume 85 percent less energy than their incandescent counterparts. [...] Lighting accounts for 15 percent of global electricity consumption and 5 percent of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions

https://www.energy.gov/articles/rise-and-shine-lighting-worl...

I'm not going to do any math here, but based on those numbers it seems plausible that the whole world switching to LED lamps will offset all the "flights had been flown empty to keep slots" in the world.

Even if it weren't for energy use, not having to change light bulbs for a decade is a huge motivation to switch.

Have you heard of the Phoebus Cartel?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel?oldformat=true#...

So it's already possible to not have to change a normal light bulb for 10 years — in fact there's currently a bulb that's been burning for 118 years.

The parent comment actually makes a good point, and shifting the blame for global warming to non-corporate entities is disingenuous. Sure, go ahead and recycle, buy LEDs instead of incandescent bulbs, buy local produce, these are all good things to do and I would never discourage them, but let's not buy into the nonsense that it's going to make a dent compared to say, shipping containers (https://inews.co.uk/news/long-reads/cargo-container-shipping...). To do so would move focus away from where things really need to change.

If I was someone partial to conspiracy theories, I might point out that this shift in focus is convenient for the corporate entities I alluded to.

You're touching on an opinion of mine that has hardened a lot in the last decade. You aren't going to solve systemic issues by going after random individuals. Systemic issues exist because some center of power benefits. Keep the focus on them.

> Have you heard of the Phoebus Cartel?

Yes I have, actually https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26946432

>So it's already possible to not have to change a normal light bulb for 10 years — in fact there's currently a bulb that's been burning for 118 years.

yeah, the trade-off is that it's horribly inefficient and wastes more energy than it costs to replace.

That was specifically for "not having to change light bulbs for a decade" being "a huge motivation to switch".

As I said, I would never discourage people using LEDs, recycling etc. for other very good reasons. I just think it's important that we're honest on the impact of me using 2 LED bulbs in my house, vs. an entire office block having their lights and air conditioning on overnight.

Let's focus on making changes where it will have a large impact, like the shipping containers I mentioned. Anything else is counterproductive.

I haven't actually, thank you for the informative link!

The only solution is a quota on oil extraction. We need to cut the supply off at the source.

There is a quota on oil extraction. Ever heard of OPEC?

The way that it’s managed matters. OPEC also increases supply when it is advantageous to themselves, and certainly wouldn’t supply-limit themselves out of a market.

The quota needs to head near 0. It should not respond to market demands.

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