Refusing to fly has lost me my job as a climate researcher. It's worth the price | Hacker News Reader

Refusing to fly has lost me my job as a climate researcher. It's worth the price

theguardian.com

11 pointstcfhgj15 comments

Finally, and most importantly, I hope my case might put a little crack into the wall of “selfishness, greed, and apathy”, which, in the words of climate lawyer Gus Speth, is the main hindrance to stopping runaway climate change. Many people will think that it is madness to give up their dream job to avoid taking one flight. But in the current era of climate breakdown, it is, in my opinion, insane to continue with “business as usual”, when science tells us that we are either dangerously close to or past the point of collapse for major ecosystems.

I applaud him. I hope he has a new job in hand by the time he gets home to Germany.

Indeed. It's nice to hear of a person with actual values in this day.

It's not a value unless it costs you something in some possible situation. That's why it is called a value: holding to it comes with costs.

For approximately everybody, "caring about the future climate" is mere virtue signaling and ingroup positioning.

I don't want to diminish the value of what he did, but things are so different in first-world countries. Here where I live, if I do that, I'll simply be unemployed for a long time. I, like others, also have personal values. I hate having to use algorithms to influence people to buy more in a world already worn out by excessive consumption. But, at the end of the month, I have bills to pay and a child to feed.

That is right and proper. This is one of the many ways in which first-worlders who claim to care about the climate refute themselves, that they do not press for coutries like yours to be developed as quickly as possible, leap-frogging over fossil fuels.

> I applaud him. I hope he has a new job in hand by the time he gets home to Germany.

The guy states openly in the article that he does not refuse to fly, and he only refuses when he feels that there are alternativas to taking a flight.

Frankly, I think it's all specious reasoning and the whole article reads as blatant virtue signaling. I'm sure that if anyone looks briefly under the virtue signaling veil they find all sorts of mundane non-virtuous causes for being fired.

> the whole article reads as blatant virtue signaling

I've never quite understood why, in some circles, setting a good example is derided as "virtue signaling." (In TFA, the guy is doing neither: He's being the village scold, which is a very different thing.)

If you read between the lines, the employer isn’t happy with the author’s work.

The employer supported their travel preferences before, but now the project is in a hell of delayed progress for all kinds of reasons.

The author is missing deadlines and the employer is sick of it. (Paragraph starting with “My fieldwork had been mired in unforeseeable problems”)

But on another topic, it might be nice if airlines offered options to fly on odd routes and/or an extended standby system that could guarantee that your flights are being taken on seats that either were unexpectedly unfilled or on routes with consistently low occupancy rates that have to be run (e.g., the kind of trips where the plane needs to be moved from one place to another but there isn’t sufficient passenger demand).

I commend the author's commitment to reducing co2 footprint, but also the planes continue to fly, regardless.

Unless this movement can reach a critical mass of equally conscientious souls, how will things change in the broader landscape? Humanity is.. complex.

Sure, planes continue to fly, but airlines will cut back on frequency if enough people opt not to fly.

Is there a trend of people dropping flights in favour of riding cargo ships?

I declined to attend my grandfather's funeral because I didn't want to fly. It may have cost me some connection with that side of the family.

I grudgingly flew with my spouse and our child because it is far easier to travel with a small child when you have help. As a couple, we're increasingly disinclined to fly due to concern about our impact on the environment.

Keep a few planes for the really important face-to-face meetings or research. Stop flying sports teams all over the place to play games.., and so on; reduce the extravagance and frequency of our luxuries, and there is still so much to enjoy in life.

idk ... i think this is somewhat ... aehm ... lets call it "stupid"!?

why?

i don't have the exact numbers for now, but a few years ago a stumbled over a statistic, that flights/flying produces about 5+% of the worldwide man-made CO2.

and for comparison:

the internet - or "digital communication networks around the world" - produce ... tatarataaaa ... nearly the same amount of CO2: 5+%.

nobody stops using the internet because of this: using DVDs or linear TV instead of streams etc.

let alone writing some brain-dead "look at me how good i am to / i ditched my career because of the environment" article in the guardian ...

but flights/flying is baaaad, really baaaad for the environment!!

just my 0.02€

ps. don't get me started on this "everybody is responsible for the climate-change" crap: its "the system", its our economy build on cheap (fossil) energy.

its not "us" personally - we can't save the climate, the economy has to change / the foundation its build on.

but in our neo-liberal world everything has an individual note attached to it - nobody looks deeper into the roots of problems anymore etc.

Flying and using the Internet are nowhere near equivalent. Many of the poorest people in the world use the Internet. Only the rich fly.

I think being concerned about the amount of emissions is childish. Rather, a good argument against flying is the amount of radiation one is exposed to.

He is right.

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