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Comment by seydor | Hacker News Reader

i bet he will ban plastic straws to compensate

Exactly. We're all expected to suffer the inconvenience of soggy straws to offset this guys near daily commute.

And it's not just this. Near all elites have unsustainable lifestyles that we are expected to offset by changing our daily habits.

Private jets should be required to burn biofuels or purchase carbon offsets.

If you can afford a private jet, you can easily afford to make it carbon neutral.

How about this instead: if the company you are a CxO at has ever once spoken about how sustainable/green/environmental it is, you're not allowed private jets. In fact if the trip doesn't require you to cross an ocean, you can take a bike.

Any violators will be held personally liable with a fine up to 150% of said corporation's global profits

Taxes on jet fuel for private usage should be 3x higher too.

It's not real money to these folks; I doubt he'd even notice.

Insanely, the Chicago Convention of 1944 exempts international flights from any fuel tax. https://www.icao.int/publications/pages/doc7300.aspx

Various attempts to work round this without rewriting the convention have been discussed, e.g. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn00... but I don't think they've got anywhere.

The US _might_ be able to tax fuel on domestic flights, but that would result in the California to Seattle flight going via Canada to avoid the tax.

Part of this has a decent reason: If fuel is much cheaper in e.g. Dubai, airlines will chock their planes full of fuel instead of the optimised amount, leading to overburning of fuel due to excessive transportation of it.

And the opposite, they will skimp on fuel going inbound to there. Of course fuel qty is the captain's decision, however a lot of airlines already pressure those. As one example Ryanair had a "list of shame" of captains bringing too much safety fuel in their eyes.

The idea that airlines can pressure captains in to doing _anything_ is terrifying and should be utterly outlawed.

If you consider the per seat cost compared to commercial, I don’t think making it a bit more expensive will move the needle.

Exactly. And the old story of "oh well the rich will take their money elsewhere" won't work. They need to stay in the US, that's the whole point.

Maybe there will be a point where it works out cheaper to fly to another country to fuel up though. I'm sure some tax policy folks could figure this out better than I.

Tax the ~~rich~~ ultra-wealthy, and their thoughtless damage to our environment. It's about as close to a victimless tax-rise as could ever exist.

Biofuel-fueled jets aren't carbon neutral.

The building of the jets, the material extraction, the maintenance, the work around growing the fuels, the processing, the transportation, most of that is not fully sustainable.

It's only "less bad" for the climate crisis, not better. Definitely not perfect.

Something is better than nothing.

Taylor Swift demands Jack Sweeney stop tracking her jet - The Washington Post - June 2, 2024

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/02/06/taylor-...

There are so few lords, it doesn't make sense for them to change their livestyles. But we peasants are numerous, so we are the ones who must suffer austerity and reduce our standard of living. That's why it's good for these rich people to fly around in private jets to attend conferences about the virtue of making common folks eat bugs and walk everywhere.

This isn't exaggeration either [1], 300+ jets to a climate meeting discussing how they will restrictively control our lives to reduce emissions. The people proposing these rules are unwilling to change their lifestyle to help the environment, meanwhile your neighbour Joe Bloggs drives his car because he has to get to work to pay for all of these green taxes, which he gets more tax for because he can't afford an electric car.

[1] https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2023/dec/opinion-why-are-people-s...

Walking everywhere is great if you are able bodied and live in a place that is even halfway designed for it.

Having to walk limits your employment opportunities, particularly if you're not able to just pick up your life and move homes. It also limits which stores and other businesses you're able to reach; less competition means you end up paying more for goods and services. If you're a yuppy living this lifestyle by choice, able to change apartments on a whim and rent a car whenever you need to go to costco and able to shrug off higher prices in local shops anyway, then it's all good. But for the average member of the working class, quite possibly with a mortgage and kids in school, being forced into this kind of rootless urban pedestrian lifestyle is a raw deal.

(I think I might be the only one in the world who actually prefers paper straws based on their qualities.)

You may be interested in reading Nicholson Baker's novel The Mezzanine, where he wrote about preferring paper straws.

http://weblibrary.apeiron-uni.eu:8080/webdokumenti/6304-ip.p...

One of the first things I'd bring back if I were him, seen them creeping back in a lot of coffee shops and no one complains when they do, not to mention bubble tea shops which are growing in popularity all have plastic.

I don't understand the point of straws. Can't you just use your mouth?

I prefer drinking straight from a cup.

Straws are the answer to drinking through a lid, which is the real necessity for takeout restaurants. Costco figured this out with a self-sealing flap on the lid you can sip from.

That said, it's all window dressing. As a kid I drank from paper cups with plastic straws. An iced coffee from some restaurants is now a massive plastic cup with a paper straw.

Not a great way to drink milkshakes, they're too viscous to drink straight from the cup. Paper straws collapse on themselves due to the low pressure inside the tube combined with weakened structural integrity due to moisture flowing into the paper. I wish I could say it sucks, but it doesn't sadly.

Also those paper straws are full of PTFE :(

You have something that's too viscous and your solution is to put it thru a straw? Am I getting that right?

The problem is that without a straw to mediate the max volume you can move, you end up with a massive blob of viscous liquid. When you get enough of an angle to start it moving, it will move as one and end up all over your face.

Yes. Have you had milkshakes? You should try 'em, they're good.

So people are buying their daily caffeinated milkshake from Starbucks, and we wonder why there's an obesity crisis in America.

I drink a milkshake occasionally, non-caffeinated (just plain old vanilla), from a local place, I'm not obese and I'm not from America. Why are you setting up a straw man and getting upset about it?

I guess technically, this whole comment section is just straw man arguments.

But aside from the pun, we're talking about Starbucks. That is supposed to be a coffee/espresso business. You should be able to drink those without a straw. The fact that espresso milkshakes are so overwhelmingly popular that people require straws from Starbucks in America really isn't a straw man argument, it is entirely relevant. If people weren't buying milkshakes from an espresso stand, they wouldn't need straws. I certainly don't need a straw for any variety of normal espresso. The fact that daily caffeinated milkshakes are normalized in America is very likely linked with our obesity crisis.

They also require plastic see-through containers so that people can visually see the layers on their milkshake.

We'd be doing better if that didn't exit or was considered much more niche rather than entirely mainstream.

I thought we were on a tangent that relates to the new Starbucks CEO's commuting habits as compared to us plebeians who have to make do with paper straws to spare the environment. I guess obesity caused by Starbucks milkshakes tangentially relates to that in turn, but I wouldn't call it entirely relevant. As far as your point goes I agree, as a European I had no idea Starbucks espresso milkshakes were even a thing and it doesn't surprise me at all that a daily Big Gulp of sugar and caffeine makes people fat. People can do whatever they want, but I wouldn't.

Aside from the reasons others have provided, a not-insubstantial number of people can't use their mouth: for reasons of disability or other, they cannot produce enough suction with their mouth alone.

For this demographic, paper straws are a significant issue: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/07/11/627773979/wh...

Most people don't need straws. Default should be no straw, but have the nice plastic ones available for those who request them.

Agreed. Just do something like charge 10 cents for it and waive the fee for anyone with a disability, that should kill most of the waste.

Once upon a time, women wore heavy, probably toxic lipstick that smudged and smeared a lot on cups.

Also, some people drink coffee, tea, acidic, and/or sugary drinks from straws for dental cosmetic or health reasons.

Finally, disability or convenience reasons.

Maybe we all just need to start bringing a titanium folding sporf and a metal straw with us wherever we go and do away entirely with some single use plastics and their substandard, compostable imposters.

For me the amount of ice in e.g. Mcdonald's drinks hurts my teeth if I have to drink from the cup. And no, you can't order it without ice here in Europe. All orders go through a machine and you can't customise this.

It's also much easier to drink on the go without spilling.

Of course you can. In France, Germany, Italy, Poland you can ask for less ice or no ice. I always do.

Here in Spain you can only order on the portal screens anymore (the only thing you can do at the desk is to pay if you only have cash). And there are no ice modification options there. You can only modify some of the burgers.

I didn't realise that in other countries they still have staffing where you can order. But I bet that will be changed soon too. They recently rebuilt all the restaurants here to make this change.

The good thing is that they have table service now though.

No, you are right - the orders are more and more taken via screens (not everywhere but almost). But for some fast food places you can edit your order (BK, KFC if I remember well) and for those where you can't (McDonalds I think) I go to the counter with my command and say "no ice please" and it always worked.

Yeah true, BK has always advertised with customisation options so I'm not surprised they do allow this. I don't have one near me so I don't go there so much.

But I didn't realise I could ask at the desk to modify my order once it's placed. Thanks!

You missed the big question: why is a CEO not only not moving to the HQ city, but taking a private jet every couple of weeks instead?

It says there he will take it 3x a week in fact :(

Someone needs to make a decision to raise the starbucks coffee prices 2x. Finally, here's the actual reason. No one can blame him: his commute is really long! And someone will pay for it. /S

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