Hacker News Reader

Comment by ClassicOrgin | Hacker News Reader

What I really like about ElonJet and Sweeney's other accounts is they included emission estimates. Really blew a hole in the idea that you could ever consider Musk or Gates to be environmentalists. A recent Musk flight between Washington and Miami emitted 9 tons of CO2 [1], which is nearly double what a fuel inefficient car would emit each year. How can you tell me I'm the problem with my single truck and couple of commercial flights each year when you've got multiple Teslas and hundreds of private flights each year?

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20221213074257/https://twitter.c...

View on HN

> How can you tell me I'm the problem with my single truck and couple of commercial flights each year when you've got multiple Teslas and hundreds of private flights each year?

Because there are hundreds of thousands (millions?) of other truck owners also using the same justification to keep their truck?

This isn't sticking up for hypocritical wasteful billionaires, just pointing there are not very many of them in the grand scheme of things. Truck owners reducing emissions by a few percent (let alone dropping to what a car would do) would have a much bigger effect than billionaires or celebs reducing by 100%.

So the poor and middle class have to go beyond comfort and make concessions every day while these billionaires are free to burn the world at a 10000x rate of a normal person because “there’s not enough of them?”

Great logic. By that strand, I suppose they could also be allowed to abuse people, I mean it’s more important that we make sure the general population doesn’t abuse right? That’s what truly moves the statistic, not the crime perpetrated by a few billionaires?

You call out "Great logic" with an immense whopper of your own.

Where did I say it was OK for billionaires to waste so much? Did calling them wasteful and hypocritical sound to you like I was supporting them?

If we want to extend the fallacies in the other direction - Why should the rest of the world do anything when these wasteful Americans insist on having so many trucks?

Total strawman. We want everyone to emit less (or pay a steep price for the privilege) including and especially billionaires. It's just that billionaires are a drop in the bucket so them altering their behavior will factually not change much.

The 15 largest shipping container ships produce as much sulfur pollution as all non-commercial cars on the entire planet put together. There's thousands of those ships. Of all vehicle pollution, something like 95+% of it is large commercial vehicles.

Your switching from a truck to a car makes effectively ZERO difference in global emissions. If EVERY non-commercial vehicle in the US went down to ZERO pollution, it wouldn't even be noticed in the statistical noise of the country's pollution.

Sulfur dioxide has a cooling effect. So keep doing that, I guess.

My first web search seems to disagree on those numbers: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1185535/transport-carbon...

But if everyone just cherry picks a worse example than themselves to justify not doing anything until they are the worst, then no progress will ever happen.

You are making the mistake of thinking that CO2 is the biggest or worst polluter and that only greenhouse pollution matters. Look up sulfur pollution. It is basically non-existent in gasoline, but rampant in other fossil fuels and is far more impactful.

No, CO2 was just the context of the discussion.

I specified I was talking explicitly about sulfur pollution.

FWIW, often statistics talking about CO2 are actually talking about CO2 equivalent, which is a way of normalising the harm levels of different pollutants. Typically this is used to compare things like farming and fossil fuels, which produce very different gases.

Unfortunately, I can't tell if the source linked actually uses this metric but isn't being clear, or if it's just focused on CO2, and I'm struggling to find another source that does use CO2 equivalent emissions as a metric.

One mouse drops more mice hair in nature than all humans (~8B!) combined!

One mouse do what now?

But they only tested on mice so we can’t be sure

On such polarizing topics, there is no neutral. Both sides will detest you for not being on their's.

Logic won't win you any friends; and it certainly won't change anyone's feelings.

As trite as my post is: I don't see the merit in yours.

> How can you tell me... ?

I'm not presenting this as fact but the argument is clearly that Musk's net effect on the global population is positive through his career choice and life's work, and that jetting around is necessary for him to complete this life's work.

The thing that makes me think twice about that argument is that Elon has just spent an enormous sum of money on a social media website that doesn’t seem to further the goals of materially improving the world.

It's not all-or-nothing. Musk can still deliver a net environmental benefit without every activity being directed solely toward that goal.

> doesn’t seem to further the goals of materially improving the world.

why should that be a goal of his? I mean, unless you expect that just because he's rich, that he's obliged, how his enormous amount of money is spent is not something anyone else can critisize.

Agree this is the argument. I find it funny that people point to his individual CO2e footprint as kind of this gotcha moment. So thoughtless.

The baseline condition is everyone is still in ICE cars -- he changed that and have altered the trajectory - the transaction cost is his own emission to raise capital and build companies. Now add in the CH4 rocket fuel - might do some counter damage to the net impact but I haven't run the calculations -- probably could do a quick one. Should be using H2 if he cared about the environment ;)

He could do that shit with a Zoom meeting. Musk has enough money to get one of those really swanky Cisco telepresence tanks. He doesn't need a fucking jet to complete anything except being another asshole billionaire.

> What I really like about ElonJet and Sweeney's other accounts is they included emission estimates.

December 5th: 28 tons CO2

That's more than the typical American does in a year and he did it in a few hours. Between Dec 1st and Dec 5th his flights resulted in 100 tons of CO2.

Gates, between Dec 7th and Dec 13th (similarly 5 days) produced 262 tons. https://web.archive.org/web/20221214164008/https://twitter.c...

This is always the commentary about leaders and business people from all over the world flying their private jets to Davos to discuss solutions to climate change.

And rightly so. If they're that concerned they can video conference like the rest of us.

Each one of those flights also use several times the amount of carbon an American produces per year.

When people try to pin carbon emissions on an individual's travel it sounds willfully obtuse if not completely disingenuous. The trajectory of climate change will not be altered by a few thousand billionaires taking fewer flights. You know this, I know this, we all know this.

That's not how solidarity works though.

Solidarity won't stop climate change. Putting people in positions of political power who prioritize transforming our economy will stop climate change.

It won't but it will help to create more support with the rest of the people. Do as I say but not as I do doesn't work with adults any more than it works with little children.

I don’t agree with this. You can eat meat and try to convince as many people as you can to decrease their meat consumption. Or you can not donate but convince as many people to donate to charities as possible. Etc. Is it a bad thing? And if it a bad thing why’s that?

It’s a bit like telling people that volunteer that they’re just doing it to feel good and so that they’re selfish.

You are the problem. I am the problem (someone who’s never driven a car in his life and doesn’t fly in airplanes). Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and everyone else is the problem.

The sad reality is that it doesn’t much matter. The damage we’ve done is baked in and hundreds of millions of people in the next few generations are going to have it pretty rough. Can’t unring the bell of a century+ of society not giving a shit about the environment and just pointing fingers at someone else and calling them the problem.

If you’re loaded, you may as well just take the PJ flights and enjoy them.

I fear I must tell you you didn't make a difference and it's still up to policymakers (and people who elect them) to enact necessary changes to reduce carbon emissions.

Yes, this is the point I was making in my comment. Unless “policymakers” (aka people) are willing to enact some very unpopular policies then everything is just window dressing and rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

Those flights emit a couple of tons of CO2. Tesla has saved millions of tons of CO2 from being emitted. It's nicely illustrative of how little a jet flight is compared to all the car traffic emitting CO2 that's been eliminated.

You must offset those emissions saved with the emissions credits they generated for ice vehicle producers if you’re talking balances

Emissions credits don't just shift CO2 production. They make CO2 production more expensive and increase the effective cost of other vehicles, resulting in shifted buying away from CO2 vehicles toward EVs.

And that's indeed what happened. A huge amount of the luxury vehicle market shifted to the Model S. Model S sales went way up and other luxury brands had years of record low sales.

Also in general, people are buying EVs to replace their old cars, so every EV sale is a "not-ICEV" sale. It's going to be rare that someone buys a new EV and a new ICEV at the same time to replace their old ICEV.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com