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Going on vacation to Europe is a totally reasonable thing to do. Don’t let people guilt you into believing it’s an outrageously selfish act that contributes to the destruction of our planet.

Millions of people listen to Tim Ferriss’ podcast because they enjoy it, or think they can learn from it. At that scale you necessarily attract some crazy people, just like pop stars and politicians do. Your suggestion that he could just abandon his life’s work is bad and judgmental.

I'm not letting people guilt me, I can do my own math. I can make my own choices on what my personal effect on this planet is and how I should feel about it. As Tim can. Saying I formed my opinions out of hyperbole from others condescending don't you think?

Anecdotally, comments like yours come from people with major anxiety disorders.

So I'm not surprised to find that just last week you wrote:

> So ever since lockdown I've pretty much spend like 18 hours a day on my bed: I sleep there and I do most of my work from there, including meetings, debugging and mild coding. [1]

You judge others for traveling, but you don't leave your bed for 18 hours each day? I'm just at a loss for words.

You're free to live how you like, but if a friend of mine decided to live your lifestyle I would stage an intervention. Not out of condescension, but out of concern. Mental health issues, when left unattended, can spiral out of control. When your brain is sick everything gets warped and twisted and you might wake up a decade later not knowing what happened or where all the time went.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35939554

Lol thank you armchair psychologist stalker, for your concern. I have generally found the contrary to be true in my anecdotal experience that people who travel all over, constantly go on hikes and seek out "nature" are the ones trying desparately to find purpose in life. I just decided I don't need to tour Italy to sense purpose in mine. I'm happy to lie down do my work make my money and decide what I'll do with the rest of my life.

> and decide what I'll do with the rest of my life.

Travel?

> Going on vacation to Europe is a totally reasonable thing to do. Don’t let people guilt you into believing it’s an outrageously selfish act that contributes to the destruction of our planet.

Reasonable by what standard? How is it not outrageously selfish to add extra carbon to the atmosphere which absolutely does “contribute to the destruction of the planet”.

Do you honestly think there are zero consequences to burning further fossil fuels?

It makes no sense to worry about this as an individual while entire countries are failing to act, making the problem worse by refusing to use clean nuclear power and building new coal power plants instead. Or you could see some corporation wasting a million times more carbon than you produce every day because they save a few dollars over a more responsible process. Whether you take that flight or not has no impact on the world at all.

While you worried about this guy going on a vacation, Germany approved dismantling a wind turbine farm to make space for a new coal mine :)

Air travel accounted for 2.5% of CO2 emissions in 2020, and its total contribution to global warming was probably closer to around 3.5%.[1]

Only 11% of the world's population travelled by air in 2018, with at most 4% taking international flights, and 1% of the world's population accounting for more than half of total emissions.[2]

Passenger air travel is projected to grow by about 44% by 2050,[3] and will probably take up an even more substantial slice of overall emissions by then because technologies to decarbonize air travel (other than direct carbon capture) do not yet exist.

The argument you are making is probably least compelling when applied to air travel compared to any other form of consumerism, and HN's readership (generally speaking) is uniquely culpable here.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-from-aviation

[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095937802...

[3] https://www.eurocontrol.int/article/aviation-outlook-2050-ai...

People aren’t going to give up travel and it’s unrealistic to expect them to do so. If we rule that out, what alternatives remain?

I assume the answer is going to come in the form of reducing emissions from a typical flight and extracting CO2 from the air.

ExEcUsE Me, ItS JuSt a TeMpOrArY MeAsUrE, AlSo I dOn'T wAnT tO lIvE nExT tO HiRoScHiMa./s

This is a responsibility Dodge at best. You wouldn't say that murdering someone is ethical just because there are many murders worldwide and one more person is just a minor contribution.

If you believe the total carbon emissions pose a problem, then you have to believe your personal contribution is a problem as well if you you are intellectually honest. The sum of the parts add up to the whole.

You can make an argument that maybe it's not the highest priority for public action if you were to stack rank issues, fine. However, to to claim an individual contribution is exactly zero is incorrect.

This is a ridiculous and hypocritical statement.

Posting on HN generates extra carbon, eating out generates extra carbon, everything generates extra, unnecessary, carbon.

You would agree that there are different quantities of carbon for each of the things you listed and air travel, right? Like, you recognize that it isn’t binary generate/not generate?

I was surprised to see comments stating that flying to a vacation destination is selfish? Are there many people who think this?

Honest question, how would he do that? How would he stop being famous?

It's not like you can delete all the references to your name and past actions from the web.

As long as people know your name, and the fact that you're rich, most of the threats on his list remain.

Tim Ferries is not George Clooney. If he actively avoided the lime light. He would probably only very occasionally be recognized in public within a couple of years. Celebrity culture moves on fast.

Tim who? I'd never even heard of him until today.

People are quick to forget, so following parents advice of just stop posting openly will achieve that very quickly.

People are quick to forget, but the internet is not.

Even if he stops posting today, and deletes everything he has control over, he'd still be all over the net. Easy target for truly malicious people.

All almost anyone needs to do to stop being famous is just stop putting themselves out there. In media traditional or social. In appearances. In the news. They're not royalty or Gandhi to be remembered in perpetuity even without trying. I doubt even those people would be remembered if they didn't try so hard.

This is funny because I never heard of Tim Ferriss until today.

Other than clicking on the link and reading the header, I’m still not sure who he is other than what appears to be a popular podcast host.

Celebrity is so relative especially in todays society.

In the early 90’s, there were literally three international celebrities.

- Sports: Michael Jordan

- Music: Michael Jackson

- Movies: Arnold Swarzenegger…maybe?

This Tim Ferriss has a following and is popular with some but he’s definitely not famous enough to warrant the post.

> This Tim Ferriss has a following and is popular with some but he’s definitely not famous enough to warrant the post.

Yet he's famous enough to warrant a death threat once a month, which is the point.

I'm not even sure what you mean by "warrant the post". Nobody has to justify writing a blog post.

You have valid points. To be fair to Tim, he’s quit so many things that use to make him famous and even left California to Austin, Texas in 2015 when that was unheard-of.

As for you my friend, go book that vacation for yourself, life is rather short.

Best regards.

Thanks, I think I have decided I won't travel across the world for purely leisure purposes except maybe for a honeymoon. I'll definitely check out the most fun european countries at some point in my life, but i figure I'll get the right work related opportunity some time or other to do so for each. It makes those visits all the more poignant and memorable to me anyway.

Seems like a lot of people from the Podcast scene are moving to Austin.

Is that a trend? Why is that?

Cool places in California have all been gentrified to the point they lost what made them special- the people and places and events.

So now they have all decided to move to Austin to do the same there.

We used to say 'keep austin weird', but last I was there (and this was back in 2018 or so) I was working on the new high-rises downtown.

Prices at local hotspots were insane, scooters running pedestrians off the sidewalks, 6th street on weekends was just a different kind of crowd (techbros). Rent was through the roof (the high rise we worked on had a rooftop pool, rooftop parking, etc) but place was already booked full.

Back then the number of California plates was huge and growing daily, as did the number of homeless and displaced. I knew a crew who moved to San Antonio and surrounding areas, hours away, because with increased commute and gas prices it was still cheaper than renting anywhere in Austin.

It literally is starting to look like San Francisco, where you have all these luxury condos/apts downtown and they are surrounded by homeless people everywhere.

> The irony is that he doesn't discuss that he could stop all of this...

That is true of a huge number jobs and social roles. Are your job or boss or management sometimes really unpleasant? Quit. Having second thoughts about poopy diapers and sleepless nights? Lots of places have no-fault ways to give your baby up for adoption. Etc., etc., etc.

More generally, your seeming resentment of Jim, his fame, and his lifestyle feel pretty orthogonal to the serious Health & Safety topic of his post.

> couldn't bring myself to book a ticket to Europe because it felt wasteful to spend so much money and carbon just for sight seeing.

Regarding the carbon, thank you. I cannot fathom why so many people still act as if there are no costs beyond the dollar value and consequently don’t feel any guilt whatsoever about the externalities stemming from unnecessary flights.

If your solution involves expecting a significant portion of the population to forego the things they enjoy, it’s doomed to failure.

No matter how much you’re willing to sacrifice personally, most others won’t and even if they did, the problem still exists.

I travel by plane and I don’t feel the least bit guilty.

How do you honestly function in day-to-day life with such a mindset?

Should I forgo my modern living entirely because of my carbon footprint? Where do you draw the line?

One of the filters in my decision making is what the impact is on climate change and then I have to assess whether it is subjectively “worth it” given that impact.

I haven’t found that it causes me to forgo modern living. As another commenter pointed out, international flight is reserved for a very small portion of the population. I’ve installed solar panels, electrified my home to avoid natural gas, I generally don’t eat meat or other animal products (perhaps the largest single act of low carbon lifestyle), and drive fewer than 7k km per year. I don’t feel deprived at all.

What’s shocking to me is that with the forest fires and smoke filled air, more people aren’t doing the same thing, but I guess that’s the tragedy of the commons.

Air travel is 2% of global emissions. It's a drop in the bucket.

So we should only tackle the things that are what? 10%? 50%? This mentality is why we are doomed. So long as every individual item is small we tackle nothing.

2% is huge at that scale.

"There are no silver bullets."

I think you're the kind of guy he is afraid of.

So anyone with a dissenting opinion is now a creepy stalker now?

You don't have a dissenting opinion. You did not talk AT ALL about the post, your original comment is 100% hate about the person.

Reread your post and go take a good look in the mirror, you need it.

You're gonna need to increase your carbon social credit score for that bud, it's what the state demands. /s.