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Comment by monkeywork | Hacker News Reader

>Not sure why you're so deeply triggered by this; is your name on that list that you would be personally affected?

Your only response to someone finding this a gross overreach is to try and strawman them by suggesting I'm personally on the list?

I'm not defending billionaires any more than I'm defending an average person. Going down the road suggested (putting yearly or lifetime caps on how much CO2 you can produce) is frankly terrifying.

Tax the hell out of the fuel, charge larger landing fees, etc etc are all better options than having some sort of invisible countdown over everyone's head that for CO2 emissions.

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I think you can put a cap by taxing: tax fuel 100 billion dollars per litre, then offer a tax break for the x first litres :)

I would immediately have x liters of jet fuel for sale at a price that would save them at least 99%.

I envisioned something like VAT (at least in Europe) where only the end user pays ;)

For $1 B/liter, I'll happily ride along if that's what's needed to make me the end user of it.

Haha well if at least more people are traveling when those private jets fly, it's not all lost ;)

It's the modern version of the "HOV lane hitch-hiker"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slugging

Maybe the disconnect here is a misunderstanding of how much wealth billionaires have. We could increase fuel tax by 1000x, increase landing fees by 1000x, and this would not even begin to give billionaires pause on waste and excess flying.

The average person will be priced out by taxes and increased fees far long before any mega wealthy person will even feel it as a stiff breeze against their accounts.

Or maybe the disconnect is on the other side of the coin, let's say every billionaire on that list did zero flights next year - how much of a reduction in the US CO2 emissions does that actually result in. Does it equate in any meaningful (statistically) way or does it just make people like yourself "feel" better?

Well, I'm glad we're finally on the same page that you are in fact specifically defending top-consuming billionaires. Conversation ends here

Oh I'm sorry asking you to backup your thoughts with actual data is a problem for you.

Just out of curiosity I took what seems to be the "average" of the reported number of billionaires in America as 800, and the average yearly CO2 from flying via the linked article at a high point of also say 800 tons (which is likely high but easy math). That works out to 640000 tons of CO2 from all the billionaires flying around in a year.

Another quick search on how much CO2 is produced in the USA per year came out as 5.2 billion metric tons.

That means these flights are accounting for 0.0123076923% of the USA's CO2 production ... or put another way it's a rounding error.

You're basically arguing that the peons should have to reduce their carbon footprint but not the hyper wealthy.

It's a bit inane considering crimping less than a 1000 peoples lifestyle would save us 1.2% right off the bat.

And seriously other than they are super duper rich why should we care about them at all?

might want to go check your math there, you moved that decimal quite significantly

> > That means these flights are accounting for 0.0123076923% of the USA's CO2 production ... or put another way it's a rounding error.

This is not about the percentage of CO2 over the total.

People don't want to be chastised by hypocrites, it's the same as a President who declares that "heavy human losses are a price to pay for victory" and then exempts his 2 sons from serving.

2 soldiers are nothing in the face of a National military mobilization for a war, but nonetheless the public opinion would rightfully be enraged as soon as the reports come out about how the President's sons are draft dodgers.

And in a country that has institutions that work as it should they are grounds for removal.

Similarly emitting 1000 tons or even just 1 ton of CO2 in the environment should be ground for removal from the public discourse about climate change.

>should be ground for removal from the public discourse about climate change.

But that's not what the person I was speaking with was arguing for they wanted a cap on CO2 emissions on an individual basis.

As far as being "chastised by hypocrites" how many of the billionares that were mentioned are out there "chastising" people - keeping in mind there is a difference between chastising (ie. Hey, you average citizen you're doing something wrong stop it) and bringing awareness to an issue (ie. Climate change is impacting the planet).

Someone using a massive platform (fame) to spread a message that they may not fully buy into but is for the greater good isn't a terrible thing.

> > Someone using a massive platform (fame) to spread a message that they may not fully buy into but is for the greater good isn't a terrible thing.

The moment a famous person says “we should” instead of “I should” they are chastising people

Define Chastise: rebuke or reprimand severely.

Saying "we should" is not chastising anyone - saying "you're evil for doing" would be chastising.

Standards evolve, for sure people are not feeling positive sentiments when seeing Taylor Swift or Leonardo Di Caprio appear on TV and talking about climate change.

Same thing for the PR of mr. Gates and the constant noise put into every media by mr. Musk.

So yes whatever you want to call it the point stands. Normal people don't like it and the approval rating goes down everywhere for the public person who does it, except among the fake circles of the Oscars and the Met Gala where swarms of aspiring celebrities don't miss a chance to give a good blowie and fluffing to what is perceived to be the celebrity of the moment who appeared the most all over media to virtue signal

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