ClimateJets: Private Jet Emissions | Hacker News Reader

ClimateJets: Private Jet Emissions

climatejets.org

51 pointslegrande32 comments

Honestly, I look at these numbers and I think 'is it really worth it to complain about these private jets?'

Looking at the top slot on the list, Thomas Siebel, he uses ~300x an average American. There are maybe 100 names on this list? And each uses less, so ballparking, lets call it ~15k Americans worth of CO2/year.

Yeah, thats a lot, but in the grand scheme of things its a drop in the bucket. If 15k Americans disappeared off the face of the earth today then nothing would change in the climate crisis.

To me this just tells me that we need to be focusing down on the bigger sources (big companies that make lots of CO2)

There are two problems with your assessment:

1. This is an underestimation of the actual flight durations:

> However, there are few enough volunteers outside the United States and Europe that coverage may be limited, leading to underestimation of flight time and distance.

2. Much bigger issue is that the comparison used is apples-to-orange. Comparing the gross footprint of an average American to just the private jet use of another person is not a fair comparison. From https://www.npr.org/2022/11/09/1135446721/billionaires-carbo...

> Some of the world's richest billionaires each emit about 3 million metric tons of carbon dioxide on average per year, more than 1 million times the amount emitted by 90% of people, according to a new study.

If you take into account all modes of travel and entertainment by the richest (yatchs, planes, fancy cars, giant mansions etc etc) and how investment props up fossil fuels, 15k quickly grows to be orders of magnitude more.

Your link compares is talking about emissions of their investments, which doesn't make sense to include as part of their CO2 footprint. If the ownership of these companies somehow were magically distributed in a "better" way, the incentives to pollute would roughly remain the same.

Consider also that Americans are quite high on the list of people with the largest carbon footprint compared to the rest of the world.

> ~300x an average American

Usage of average American on that page is 15.52. Not sure what the source is so I will use ourworldindata. It was 14.86 per capita in US in 2021. For example in UK it was 5.15 and in France 4.74 ...

Agreed. It's also not the whole picture. Bill gates is pretty high on that list, for example, with 3,058.71 metric tons of carbon dioxide emitted. But he also buys DAC carbon capture to literally take those all of those (and all of his family's carbon footprint) emissions back out of the air. That's not even talking about the secondary effects of being one of the world's largest funders of green energy innovation.

It is not about the numbers. It is about publicly shaming something shameful. Instead of condoning it.

Why is it shameful?

Because it is wanton destruction of public property.

This seems like an emotional angle rather than a rational one.

We are emotional beings. And it is past due for some strong emotional reactions on this topic.

If Bill Gates didn't illegally monopolize desktop computing, his customers would have that money to pay in taxes or donations to fund green energy innovation.

The sum of the 161 names on the list is 209109.64, or 13.4K Americans (making your estimate a pretty good one).

Thanks, this made my day :)

> Honestly, I look at these numbers and I think 'is it really worth it to complain about these private jets?'

This got me thinking about Nest thermostats, and how impactful it would be to simply mandate new constructions (or help retrofit existing ones) to have these programmable units that can decrease indoor temperature at night or when nobody is home.

I'd hate to find out that American houses don't have heating/cooking thermostats with a clock.

That doesn't automatically handle people being out, but for several decades they've been standard in other countries.

I can't figure out what you're trying to say

A programmable thermostat has been a basic part of any central heating system in Britain for over 40 years, probably longer. They are essentially timer switches.

One from 1980 would have a 24 hour clock face and two or four coloured pegs at the edge, labelled "on" and "off". You slide the pegs to the time you want the heating to turn on and off. If you have four pegs, there's a switch to use only the first pair, second pair, or both.

That was easily sufficient to set the heating to be on in the morning, off as everyone goes to work/school, on again in the evening, and off at night.

The more modern equivalent has a digital display and badly labelled buttons, and in reality is much more fiddly to use.

If these aren't also normal in American houses then I'm shocked at the waste of energy.

You can see both types here: http://www.gasapplianceguide.co.uk/Danfoss/Danfoss%20Heating...

I'll echo others that saying that adding this all together doesn't amount to much. They would still travel a lot (probably first class) so making them use airliners would amount to some savings, but not necessarily as much.

In an alternate reality where private jet ownership was outlawed, they would just charter flights. Or, if only jets were forbidden, they would take (far more efficient) turboprops.

This kind of thing also shifts the conversation from where we should be looking at. Industry is where most emissions come from. That includes farming.

However, it's a bit hypocritical when some of those that are flying on private jets for trivial reasons ask normal citizens to change their thermostats and bike commute. Sure, some plane trips may be unavoidable, but other than that they they should be sharing public transportation with everyone else, at the very least.

To be honest, a private jet is probably the only extravagance I would acquire if I was wealthy. I wouldn't buy a luxury car, a giant mansion (although I would buy a nice house, with an inground pool), a yacht, expensive art at Sotheby's auctions, or any other item beyond the reach of a household from the upper middle class. I would rather have a Xbox Series X than a Rembrandt, or a bag of M&M's than a plate of caviar.

But I probably wouldn't use it on more than one occasion a month on average, where the return trips are counted in the occasion.

> But I probably wouldn't use it on more than one occasion a month on average, where the return trips are counted in the occasion.

That would make it completely nonsensical to have a private jet from a financial standpoint (and you are not getting wealthy by making nonsensical financial decisions). Jets don't really like to stay put, depreciating. They need to fly.

Just charter a plane at this usage level.

Note that some of these ppl also work to reduce carbon emissions at a macro scale. I do not know the size of that impact

Arsonist donated to the local fire house.

> I do not know the size of that impact

I do, it's negative. Where do you think are all the money coming from? Investments, into companies, whose often single goal in life is to make people consume (energy) as much as possible, by hook or crook.

That is true. But one could argue that some like #2 are doing opposite at a macro scale.

A smash in the face of everyone who tries to do their part

Yes, the rich consume more resources and emit more carbon, what else is new? As a fraction of total worldwide emissions, private jets are irrelevant.

The environmental movement wants everyone to be poor. Live in a small house, don't use much heat in the winter, don't use A/C in the summer. Don't travel far. Walk to the grocery store and carry stuff yourself. Don't own a car - not even an electric car - take public transportation. Don't go far on vacation, don't ski, don't visit your friends or family all that often if they live far away.

Really, the environmental movement would actually be most happy with you if you killed yourself and stopped consuming resources altogether! But they only say that in private.

Well, we are actually going to kill a lot of people going down the current road, because we can't be bothered reflecting our life style.

The environmental movement wants people to pay the actual costs they incur on the world. If that means lifestyle sacrifices, so be it.

Because that's the reality of what our average life could look like if would have a sustainable life.

I don't think that's a fair characterization of the entire environmental movement, just a subset of it. I'd consider myself very pro-environment. I think we should be using more energy; there's lots of it out there, and using more seems to pretty strongly correlate to increased quality of life. I just think we are using the wrong energy sources.

> Really, the environmental movement would actually be most happy with you if you killed yourself...But they only say that in private.

I've been around environmental culture, sustainable agriculture and sustainable living practice communities for decades and I've never heard this sentiment, in public or in private; so I think you have constructed a strawman argument.

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