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Comment by heartjudytenuta | Hacker News Reader

What is the point of this? Why do people care? Do you expect these people to fly commercial like you and me? Hoping for that fateful day when you're sandwiched between Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos on a Ryanair flight, so you can give them your elevator speech with all three of your knees pressed up against your nostrils?

Taylor Swift would be mobbed everywhere in the airport.

Donald was a former president. The Secret Service doesn't let you drive a car after that, let alone fly commercial. Even if they wanted to; they can't. Many former presidents were car fanatics; Bush Jr. lamented to Jay Leno about not being able to drive his truck off private property anymore. 45 was known for sneaking past security detail in his pre-POTUS days to drive his Rolls around NYC. Not to mention Biden and his Corvettes, in his pre-dementia days anyway.

This article is implying wrongdoing for situations can logically cannot exist.

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I don't even think that these people need to "justify" their energy use.

It seems that the vast majority of people have an innate need to hate on other groups of people. Not only that, but it seems that when presented with a cross-cutting societal problem (like carbon neutrality), "hating on others" seems to be a substitute for actually doing something intelligent about the problem.

Our society is fundamentally based on energy use, and if we actually collectively cared about carbon-neutrality, we have an immense amount of potential clean energy available to us in the form of solar and nuclear. There's no need to play this silly hate game.

I wouldn't call it hate (or at least not all of it) – I would call it an understandable desire for some measure of fairness.

I'd even say this has little to do with carbon emissions, and much to do with the price of economy tickets for many routes having doubled over the past months, and it'll likely only go up from here in the foreseeable future as we (hopefully) shift to synthetic aviation fuels. Taking a private flight for a very driveable distance, or a connection that has excellent and frequent first-class services available, just isn't the best look right now between sustained high inflation and the common narrative of individualizing the responsibility for carbon emissions.

But yes, I agree that symbolic regulations and prohibitions without a viable alternative won't get us anywhere. Only setting effective regulatory incentives that properly account for the externalities of all forms of energy use will.

> It seems that the vast majority of people have an innate need to hate on other groups of people.

That seems like nonsense to me. And if it wasn't, if they had an actual need for that, who are you to criticize it?

> > Do you expect these people to fly commercial like you and me?

No but back in the old days people with money had the justified fear and paranoia to keep quiet in order to avoid drawing attention to themselves and not be expropriated and/or executed.

They now not only don't hide but go out of their way to broadcast whatever opinion they have through the airwaves and especially on climate change the juxtaposition of talking about climate change while pumping into the atmosphere 1000 tons of CO2 per year is symptomatic of a sense of entitlement and not fearing any punishment or repercussion for their actions.

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