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Comment by echelon | Hacker News Reader

And the rest of us are using paper straws.

What's this about? It's at least the third time I've seen some comment about 'paper straws' in some way related to Swift / the 2024 'superbowl' match or something?

The commenter implies that "they" stole our plastic straws and that it is unfair because someone somewhere does something more polluting than using a plastic straw.

Essentially it amounts to "we shouldn't do anything about climate change because someone somewhere is worse than I am"

> Essentially it amounts to "we shouldn't do anything about climate change because someone somewhere is worse than I am"

I did not read it that way.

I read it as: The entrenched political/upper classes who push policies like banning plastic straws are content to push feel-good policies when they affect the "regular" people but are unwilling to be inconvenienced themselves. Taylor Swift's 30-minute private jet ride is just a recent high-profile example.

We're all supposed to make sacrifices, right? I'm not an expert but it seems to me that in a world where things are so bad that we've needed to ban the use of plastic straws it's fair game to point out that the entrenched political/upper classes has a habit of spewing more carbon into the atmosphere in a single day than most people will their entire lifetimes, for the sake of _convenience_ (private jets). It's not like Swift was hand delivering heart and kidneys to someone who needed a transplant or anything.

If the only way for [insert person] to get to [insert event] is to hop on a private jet then maybe that person should take long look at whether or not they could attend remotely or watch the event on TV. We're all in this together, right?

> The entrenched political/upper classes who push policies like banning plastic straws are content to push feel-good policies when they affect the "regular" people but are unwilling to be inconvenienced themselves. Taylor Swift's 30-minute private jet ride is just a recent high-profile example.

But Taylor Swift is not a lawmaker and is not herself banning plastic straws. If this was about policy, the point would be better made by pointing out actual politicians who support plastic straw bans flying in private jets. And people do point these out, with the yearly "LOL Private Jets To Davos" memes.

Taylor Swift may not a lawmaker but she publicly supports and endorses politicians who are pushing those policies. She also has the money to adopt whatever lifestyle she wants without worrying about consequences, yet chooses to do things like take a 30 minute flight on a private jet instead of using an electric vehicle, or a fleet of electric vehicles if you count her staff/bodyguards. It's not like she has a boss who is telling her when and where to be - she makes her own schedule.

I don't blame her (or others in her position) for enjoying their success, but I do think that people who are in a position like that have a responsibility to practice what they preach (or support politically).

substitute Swift for Musk or Kerry or whoever - the argument is the same.

> it is unfair because someone somewhere does something more polluting than using a plastic straw

It's unfair because I don't prescribe to a world view where plastic straws are a sin.

I hate that the people that hold these views are making business decisions that impact the quality of life for people who don't hold these as virtues. At least make it a choice!

I'm mildly OCD about dish cleanliness, and paper straws are an assault on hydration, to phrase it charitably.

> we shouldn't do anything about climate change

To what degree do straws actually impact climate?

> To what degree do straws actually impact climate?

They don't. The concern was ocean plastic, where the majority of it comes from Asian rivers or boats. So it's yet another of example of politicians pushing a meaningless policy to look like they're addressing a problem.

More like the rich won't do anything about climate change because they can do whatever they want and the poor will be made to do pointless things that don't really impact anything. As long as it seems like 'something is being done' it'll 'feel' like something is being done. If we really gave a shit, cargo ships with massive house sized oil burning engines would be first to go and we would move to nuclear power. We would also start producing products locally instead of shipping them halfway across the globe because people have less labor laws across the pond. Instead the government and corporations make it the middle class' problem and the best part is environmentalists actually buy this horseshit wholesale. It'd be funny if it didn't make me sad.

But it is the middle class’s problem. If we take the Oxfam figure that the top one per cent cause sixteen per cent of the world’s emissions, it’s impossible to achieve sufficient reductions in emissions without action by the ninety-nine per cent.⁰ And of course quite a lot of the top one per cent are in fact ‘middle class’ by Western standards.

0: https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/richest-1-emit-much-...

Your source also says 'The richest 10 percent accounted for half (50 percent) of emissions.'

Right, well, again, it would be very hard to meaningfully respond to climate change ignoring half of emissions.

It’s plausible that very little should be asked of the bottom half, who contribute under ten per cent of emissions if we follow Oxfam’s methodology.⁰ That would exclude nearly everybody in the West, though. And I take it that people on HN do not mean the global middle class when they say ‘middle class’.

0: https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10...

Ah I see, thank you. One of the others was a graphic of all the jets leaving after the match, just to explain my association.

But still wrapped in plastic.

You know. For your protection...

And Japan peels away the banana of its natural coating and puts it in a plastic bag.

Do you mean the "Mongee" banana?

It is wrapped in a plastic bag, but the peel is actually edible.

https://www.newsweek.com/you-eat-these-newly-engineered-bana...

The over-packaging problem in Japan

https://univibes.org/blog/over-packaging-problem-in-japan/

I actually came across this tidbit while watching a vlog on youtube where the vlogger mentioned that Japan uses too much plastic for everything.

And rich people fly to big sporting events like FIFA World Cup causing so much pollution by air travel. They could have watched it from convenience of their home.

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