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.
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.
Travel?
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?
Posting on HN generates extra carbon, eating out generates extra carbon, everything generates extra, unnecessary, carbon.
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 :)
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...
I assume the answer is going to come in the form of reducing emissions from a typical flight and extracting CO2 from the air.
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.