Comment by jmoak3 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jmoak3 | Hacker News Reader

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America is freaky rich - how many people in this forum grow food of any kind (outside of a hobby) for example?

I'm not too surprised on the % of share of the footprint, people making (or spending) at least $40k drive a lot of worldwide consumption (and shipping).

I'd wager a lot of the carbon emissions of the $100k and above group come from flights. Travel among that income level has become extremely popular in the past 50 years. For example, I used to live in California, and it was surprising when I did the napkin math to find the emissions generated to visit family near the Appalachians (just for my seat on the plane).

I calculated that a given person's portion of a round trip cross-American flight generated as much kg C02 as a typical American generates by consuming a year's worth of meat. My two round-trip flights a year were undo-ing the climate savings of two typical American vegetarians.

Given ~400 passengers on a 747, each plane that darts across the whole of America undos 200 Americans who gave up meat for a year.

The FAA claims to process 16mil flights a year of various lengths.

EDIT: some phrases

EDIT2: more

EDIT3: even more content

Not sure why we tend to start the discussion with air travel.

100,000 commercial flights, all over the world, every day of the year add up to about 2% of total emissions.

The 40% of the global electricity generated for the past several decades from those dirty coal power plants that no one wants to live near seem like a better place to start.

In addition to all that pollution, there’s quite a bit of CO2

You make an excellent point, but there is something about flights that's often overlooked. Night flights are actually significantly worse than day flights, because the emissions don't reflect heat from the sun but trap heat from the Earth.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2006/jun/15/theairlinein...

That said, this isn't a large enough effect to discredit your point.

That’s a very misleading way of looking at the problem.

There are no good place to start before tackling the other places. We have to start everywhere and cut everywhere. You can’t shield your life style behind the excuse that some things are worst.

2% is also a big number. Cleaner planes are on the way but trying to shift how you travel towards cleaner mean of transport is everyone responsibility.

So is helping the poor countries currently electrifying which constitute the majority of new coal plants being built have access to cleaner sources of power.

That’s not correct. There are large emission issues that would should tackle first. How we generate electricity is one of them.

Carl Sagan warned us almost 40 years ago that coal would be a future problem.

https://youtu.be/Wp-WiNXH6hI

That was clearly a large problem that could have been addressed, and still needs to be ASAP.

Coal-fired power stations emit over 10 Gt of carbon dioxide each year,[4] about one fifth of world greenhouse gas emissions, so are the single largest cause of climate change. 8500 coal power plants in the world.

“Coal-fired power stations emit over 10 Gt of carbon dioxide each year,[4] about one fifth of world greenhouse gas emissions, so are the single largest cause of climate change.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal-fired_power_station

So, we start the discussion with air travel, trying to reduce 2% to under 2%. While we’ve ignored 20% of global emissions.

We actually cost ourselves decades. So many miracles needed by 2050, when we could be talking 2070.

Now, let’s just tell everyone we need to do everything at once.

> That’s not correct. There are large emission issues that would should tackle first.

No we should and can and are working on tackling everything at once because we don’t have the time to sit on our ass and wait for others to solve issues which don’t affect us before moving if we want our way of life to survive.

There is no valid reason to work sequentially here.

You might be interested in https://shameplane.com/

If it’s any consolation, no US domestic carrier operates the 747 or A380 today, and their 2-engine cousins are much less thirsty.

How was it surprising? The carbon footprint of flying has been known for decades.

I suppose I was sheltered until several years ago.

Jancovici famously made the calculation in public in 2003: If you divide permissible emissions (3Gtec/yr) by Earth population, each human can EITHER:

- Use one Paris-NYC flight per year,

- OR eat meat,

- OR heat their home,

- OR drive to work.

Choose one. All EU calculations about emissions are based on this target, but it’s too early to tell people. It’s based on: Earth absorbs 3 gigatons-equivalent-carbon by night, so we can emit as much. And that’s what humanity emitted in 1990, so it’s achievable. Since then, we’ve double or trippled.

For myself, I consider that the only flaw in this reasoning is that dividing the global permissible emissions by population “is communism”, because it assumes that every human should be given the same pay. I consider it’s normal that some earn much more. That’s the only flaw, and that’s because I’m a capitalist, but it’s great to have the ballpark figure of what would be FAIR to consume for everyone.

(I also have doubts about scientists’ reliability when topics are heavily politicized, but that’s my affair, at least I’m repeating their conclusions as-is, so you can judge).

> And that’s what humanity emitted in 1990, so it’s achievable. Since then, we’ve double or trippled.

Note that global population in 1990 was 5.3 bn vs 7.4 bn in 2022.

That doesn't mean it isn't achievable - but it's implies a significant per-person reduction to achieve 90s levels.

To me, this is where direct air capture and geoengineering come into play: there's a saddle point where we (as a planet) can afford to pay to increase consumption and offset emissions above that.

Which is why globalizing a carbon market is so key. It organically (ha) funds what we want people to be researching and doing anyway!

This is misleading and creates the illusion that sustainability is impossible.

Instead, only the fraction of population using more that their fair share is responsible for reducing emissions.

And we can very much reduce meat consumption and car usage, improve home insulation, and fly around much less.

And do that while improving health, life expectancy and quality of life.

> Instead, only the fraction of population using more that their fair share is responsible for reducing emissions.

What is “fair”?

Again, it isn’t fair that a country can emit more, just by having more population.

Citation needed.

Why would you _not_ divide up emissions by people? (And especially by country, if that's what you're trying to say.)

Countries don't need to eat, countries don't live in homes that need to be heated, countries don't need to get to work, countries don't travel, etc etc etc, _people do._

> Why would you _not_ divide up emissions by people?

Because then you give an incentive to reproduce like rabbits, to be familiar. And reproducing too much is 90% of the reason why we’re terraforming all our forests and swamps. 90% humid zones of Earth have been urbanized in the last 30 years.

As capitalist you should recognise that permissible emission as a capital, not pay.

Of course you could distribute that capital by free market optimisation. But before there can be buyers there must be sellers. Who has the first claim of those permissible emissions?

Emissions are so close to how much you spend. Don’t fly but spend the airfare money on Chinese toys: Same carbon emitted. So having the right to emit n teq = having the right to spend m money.

So emissions are a flux and emission permits are capital, you are right, but it’s just a philosophical argumenation, like photons are both a particle and a wave, and real estate is both capital and a currency.

Maybe your question was, how do we impose others to not emit carbon, how do we set up the first emission permits. Well that’s hard. But it doesn’t matter - They should have a price and change hands when someone can afford them.

I was alluding to the geo-libertarian position that the ”fair” distribution or ”land”(in the economical sense) is fully compatible with capitalism, and not necessarily communism.

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