Would any plane not fly if I weren’t on it?
You are part of the aggregate like it or not and this is aggregated demand that gets this plane flying.
You are free to do what you want but you can’t deny your impact. Given your post you probably have by yourself the carbon footprint of two to three families.
And you’re also assuming airplanes are flying at 100% capacity. I can tell you out of the 12 flights I was on between business and personal the last two months of last year [1] none of them were at capacity.
[1] ATL -> SFO -> LAX —> CHS -> CLT -> BNA -> CLT -> RDU -> CLT -> ATL -> SAV -> MCO
1) it's not just you, it's your partner too. So that's two seats x # flights/yr.
2) with the extra seat miles you are occupying, airlines can sustain their existing routes/itineraries or expand them if they're at capacity.
At a larger scope it can be viewed as: will the airline fly more flights with its existing fleet? Will the airline buy more aircraft to fly more flights? If yes to either, then your argument breaks down.
I fly for both business and leisure myself, but arguing that "the plane will take off with or without me on it" is beyond ridiculous.
Are you alone going to make a difference by not flying? Like that neocon anti-environmental Obama said “we aren’t going to save the planet by throwing a bottle in the recycling bin”
The airplane takes off if, on average, the sum of dollars that all ticketed passengers are willing to pay for the benefit of being on it is larger than the operational and capital cost of the airline for operating that one flight.
Your contribution (in a purely causal sense, regardless of what moral statement you might read into it) to all of this is very indirect and diluted, but that does not make it zero.
Silly questions aren’t they?
> How much could you reduce your carbon footprint if you didn’t use HN? Google?
Again, I don't really subscribe to the idea of carbon footprints, but for the sake of the argument: Insignificantly little, compared to the emissions caused by the flights I take.
> Silly questions aren’t they?
Absolutely.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34494390
From just a brief Google search, 500,000 people are in the air at any given time.
When my wife an I fly we are
0.0004% of all of the people in the air. Is that percentage “significant”?
My point is, carbon footprint or not, that buying flight tickets and airplanes flying are in a causal relationship, which you seem to be denying, which in turn I find absurd.
You are responsible (again, no moral judgement or carbon footprint shaming implied; again, I fly too, and not too infrequently) for the consequences your actions, and dilution of responsibility seems like an extremely immature way of dealing with that.
Buying a flight ticket isn‘t the same thing as chartering a private jet, but it‘s also not the same thing as riding a bike around the block in terms of energy and resource expenditure. What we do about all of these things is a question completely secondary to the discussion at hand.
Are you not also “diluting” the responsibility by not taking into account all of the energy you use by being on your computer? By being on the internet?
At what point does it become silly? Or do you set the bar right above “the things I don’t do”?
No, I am accepting the responsibility for all of these actions (at least insofar as I am aware of their consequences) – which are not nearly in the same ballpark as flying in terms of energy expenditure, but again, you're the one counting/comparing, not me.
> Or do you set the bar right above “the things I don’t do”?
Like what, taking airplanes? You seem to be intentionally ignoring the fact that I have repeatedly stated that I do. I just don't engage in ridiculous logical acrobatics in trying to rationalize away the consequences of doing so.
Having said that: fuck carbon footprint!
Again, I'll take having fun over saving the planet every time, let's just stop pretending that your travels add no carbon emissions.
Or should I also start a collective action to keep others from flying to reduce the number of flights overall? My refusing to ever fly is not going to stop one plane from flying.