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Comment by duped | Hacker News Reader

I didn't want to make a snarky, unabashadly NIMBY comment until I read this response. For every dollar you lower barrier to entry in aviation, I'm going to be calling my local government representatives to raise it back up by two with taxes and fees.

The solutions to environmental problems aren't to grow markets with technology we know is bad so we have the money to make it less bad. The solution is to make it so expensive for the average consumer that it's uneconomical to do the bad thing at all.

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> I'm going to be calling my local government representatives to raise it back up by two with taxes and fees.

Sometimes I think this sort of approach is why so many people on the right are sick of global warming. Sure, global warming is a serious problem, but that doesn't mean that taxing things you don't like is wise, fair, effective, or in any other respect a good idea. If you have a problem with emission of gasses with global warming potential, do that, but please do it across the board.

Let's not specifically tax GA planes, ban gas water heaters, and do a bunch of other random minor-ish things that annoy people and don't actually target the problem.

Burning fossil fuels is the problem. We can argue until the cows come home about things like plastic straws and bags, but the fact is that burning fossil fuels is rapidly destroying the planet and no amount of burning is sustainable. Banning that is table stakes.

Proposing to ban burning fossil fuels entirely is a great way to get very little support for your proposal.

Hence the decades of inaction and even subterfuge to prevent action.

Don't talk about banning, talk about giving people a good alternate. Fix zoning so that people don't have to move so far out just to afford a nice place to live (people who want a hobby farm will have to live that far out, but many in the suburbs would be happy with a 5 bedroom apartment for a similar monthly costs - but none exist). Build good transit so that people have a reasonable option to driving.

If you want to ban fueles you just attack people's way of life. If you want to provide the things I list you don't need to ban fuel as they will switch to not driving.

I'll take the "ban fossil fuels" comments seriously when nuclear energy is back on the table.

Plane fuel does not have the same taxes than the fuel you use on your car.

Should car and plane fuel have the same tax level if used as personal transport?

Depends whether you think it’s reasonable for fuel tax to also price in road maintenance and local pollution along the route. Airplanes don’t make potholes in the sky, and the cruising portions of their routes don’t expose anyone to any appreciable concentration of particulate, NOx, etc emissions from planes.

Taxes on fuel are a way to deincentivize the use of private cars, at least in my country with the fuel tax you can't pay all the infrastructure cars use.

We already have prototype electric aircraft. As battery costs decrease and battery performance improves, it makes perfect sense that aircraft will electrify. The reason for this is economical, not environmental. Electricity is cheaper than fuel, and maintenance for electric vehicles tends to be less than their combustion equivalents. Both of these factors mean that once the batteries become cheap enough, cost per passenger mile will be lower.

If you decrease the potential market for a product, companies will put less R&D into those products. In the US, general aviation is less popular than horseback riding, which is why we're still using leaded gasoline and piston engines.

The laws of chemistry that govern batteries and fossil fuels are known very well. We will never get batteries anywhere near as light weight as a liquid fuel. Sure the battery/motor is much more efficient, but not anywhere close to enough to make up for the massive energy/weight advantage liquid fuels.

It's not about weight or efficiency. If operating costs are lower, it will win out eventually. Current electric aircraft can carry 5 passengers and have a range of 250 miles. They cost half as much to operate per hour, because electricity is so much cheaper than fuel. The main reason why they're not popular is because batteries are expensive. As battery costs decrease, we'll see more of the market adopt them.

Will electric aircraft cross oceans? Probably not. But the batteries are already good enough for useful flights. And you have advantages such as VTOL, quieter operation (allowing you to use urban airports at times when other aircraft are banned due to noise restrictions), and less maintenance.

250 miles isn't nearly as much as it sounds - you need to leave plenty of buffer in case something goes wrong so cut some of that off. You also need to get to an airport and then from the other airport to where you are going. Thus most of the time for distances of that range driving is faster.

The cases where I've seen this in use are from island to island (or mainland) - where a boat is much slower and there is no bridge for a car. A useful niche, but not general purpose getting around. There are also a few people who happen to live near (often on) an airport and work near an airport who will fly, but that is also a small niche.

The 250 mile range is with the buffer. Beta Technologies has flown their CX300 craft 386 miles on one charge.

Look, go ahead and increase fuel taxes. If you reduce car fuel consumption by just 1%, but this company succeeds and quintuples (!) the fuel consumption by piston engine planes, the environment still comes out ahead. Flying is a tiny environmental factor compared to driving.

[Avgas consumption in the US is about 200m gallons a year, car fuel consumption some 130,000m gallons. Car plus planes 130,200m. Car -1%, planes x5: 128,700 + 1000 = 129,700m gallons.]

> Flying is a tiny environmental factor compared to driving.

That's a common fallacy.

For example, i could say that the environmental impact of driving in my city is insignificant compared to the total. And that if you reduce emissions in others cities by just 1% in the rest of the world, but my citys emissions increase x5, the environment still come out ahead.

Their planes cost half a million dollars, I’m not too concerned about everyone flying just yet. These are expensive toys for the wealthy.

So wrong. You can get an airplane for the cost of a car. Yes, it won't be new and it won't be fancy, but you can definitely fly without being wealthy.

So right. Look on the website, they say it’s half a million. I’m not talking about any plane, I’m talking about the subject of this thread.

I take it from your attitude that you don't drive, fly commercially, buy resource-intensive consumer goods, use electricity produced from nonrenewable sources, or eat food produced from large-scale agriculture then, and agree we should make those so expensive for the average consumer that it's uneconomical to do these bad things at all?

Because otherwise your comment sounds more like hypocrisy.

Perfect is the enemy of good. I fly on rare occasions and I'm against flying unnecessarily. I drive a vehicle (shared with partner) because I don't want to be a hermit, yet I'm against driving in general (of course there'll need to be exceptions for when you're moving or too old to walk to/from public transport) and rather in favor of building out the more sustainable alternatives we have already today. That's not the whole solution because we will still run out of lithium etc., but it's the best we can do today even if it's not perfect

Perfect is indeed the enemy of the good. So we should realize that not everyone values the same things and not single out something as deserving extinguishing just because it's something we personally don't value.

> not everyone values the same things

Pardon? We don't all value human lives? I'm not sure we're having the same conversation if your attitude to pollution is "that's just your opinion"

These things are objectively measurable. I don't even know where to begin, your comment is so odd to read idk if I'm misunderstanding you or what part of climate warming leading to all sorts of issues virtually everywhere, air pollution leading to health issues and premature deaths, the ongoing mass extinction that threatens our food system, etc. you're unaware of

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