Dutch City the Hague Is First Banning Oil and Air Travel Ads
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Kind of ironic given the flight from the UN headquarters to Tonga generates nearly 1500 kg of CO2 per person.
Loves the drink but curses the bottle.
I’ve been thinking about what carbon price would change people’s behavior and incentivize alternatives, $100 a ton is a round number close to estimates of what it costs to capture carbon from an oil refinery or coal burning power plant. It adds $1 a gallon to gas prices which people would bitch about in the US (e.g. Kamala Harris’s answer to “what do you do about climate change” in the debate was basically “drill baby drill” because she wants to win) but I don’t think would change behavior (gas was $1 a gallon before and I didn’t change my driving habits; $500 a year more in gas is not quite enough to make an EV attractive, 3x that is getting there)
Similarly adding $150 to that ticket isn’t going to stop people from making that flight.
But blaming oil companies for providing for consumer demand while they also propping up modern Western economies is kind of pointless. Oil companies have even signaled a willingness to divest from their products. Investment in new exploration was at an all time low until the current administration actively encouraged the industry to expand.
That's a wildly optimistic number, and almost certainly too low for the carbon sources yoU're naming. Equinor estimated over 600USD for gas burners at an LNG plant, under almost ideal conditions (existing nearby storage site, company with lots of experience): https://industrydecarbonization.com/news/is-carbon-capture-a...
That said, it would be refreshing if public figures led by example. So if we're serious about changing public perception, maybe we should create viable alternatives to jet airline travel and encourage them to use them. Here viable means getting there with comparable travel time and cost but fewer CO2 emissions.
Until then, without viable alternatives, criticizing environmentalists for traveling the way everyone else does is not a great look, and I think we're entering an era where we'll be seeing influencers and politicians called out for it in real time.
That's the rub. It's rarely comparable travel time except some point to points. Even in Europe. I travel by train within Europe (mostly) whenever I can. But it usually takes longer, costs more, and may involve sleepers on longer routes.
To your point, I don't think people take umbrage with creating or advocating for compelling alternatives. But there's a difference between that and playing the blame game.
Right, it's indeed the "Al Gore flies first class so let's not do anything about global warming" zombie rising from the dead.
Your type won't shut up with this nonsense until you hear a hermit saying it from the comfort of his hut. Except you won't listen then as well.
Leadership gets their power from the same plants as everyone else.
What if alternatives are worse? Slower? More expensive? What if alternatives will only be available after we get a steady supply of biomass driven by clean fusion?
What if "encouraging" doesn't work?
Then what -- keep flying, pumping CO2 and sleepwalking into disaster we all know is happening?
You're talking as if air travel isn't the slowest and/or most expensive option in some cases. See for example high-speed rail for travel distances under 800km.
Focus on solveable problems. If you plot on the vertical axis amount of CO2 emitted and on horizontal public enthusiasm, flying is in the bottom right. It's a stupid thing to lobby against because for each unit of effort expended you're removing comparatively little CO2.
Just like the sacrifices they expect the rest of us to make? They want me to give up my car for one with worse range or no car at all, while they still get to own cars and fly on jets because "there aren't many rich people, it's only logical that we are given a pass for everything we want you to stop doing."
Speaking as someone who flies for high-value meetings, I will beat the guy literally phoning it in about three times out of four solely because I expended the effort to meet in person. Partly because it's a social gesture, showing I'm willing to expend time and resources for the person [1]. Partly because we're human beings who connect better in person than virtually.
When the stakes are international relations, the CO2 impact of the flights is peanuts.
And what are the stakes in practice?
Meetings of the G7 probably have a real impact on international relations. But in this comparison, the UN is cargo cult politics (they pretend really hard to be doing it) and Guterres' travel to Tonga a barely masked vacation at someone's else's dime.
Not just refreshing, but absolutely crucial. If there is a critical shortage of something in 2024 politics, it is integrity and trust. Everyone can hold speeches, but few can do it in a way that doesn't make them instant hypocrites.
https://www.quotidianomotori.com/automobili/laja-pubblicita-...
There's a neat map and some contrail science at https://contrails.org
> The Hague became the first city in the world to ban advertisements promoting fossil fuel products and carbon-intensive services including cruise ships and air travel.
[0] https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/investing/2024/09/13/the-hague-i...
Germany is reactivating lignite coal plants, for goodness sakes.
People who have strong reasons to fly aren't really the main audience for those adverts, then. It's more about advertising cheap fights to Italy for example.
The existence of air travel is its own incentive; every time someone looks up and sees a plane in the sky, it's a reminder that they could fly somewhere. Flight advertising is just about market share, ie which airline will you choose for the flight you already want to take.
I know the feeling, but you do not need to travel to the opposite side of the planet to enjoy nice weather.
Why?
I'm not sure you realize this, but travel ads are used to create demand among those who do not have a compelling reason to go to the advertised travel destination. That's the point, and the whole reason they are posted. I mean, if you already have a compelling reason to go somewhere, how would an advertisement affect you?
Ads for airlines aren't encouraging people to fly so much as inviting them to choose one carrier over another. If you have X people going from Den Haag to Neu Amsterdam and there are multiple airlines serving that route, then airlines have to compete on price, comfort, customer service, etc. Nobody looks at an airline advert and then tries to think of a place to go in order to enjoy flying on a plane.
Let’s fix the 98% of emissions that are not air travel first and then let’s fix air travel with syn fuels
Don't we have enough proof by now that this doesn't work? Just thinking of recent examples like masks, vaccines, stricter tobacco laws.
Besides, it's not a zero-sum game, you can work on "fixing" air travel while at the same time also work on "fixing" other emissions.
Just a suggestion: perhaps a city council should busy itself with running the city, look after its infrastructure, grow the economy, provide great services.
Yes, people will still fly, but maybe a few trips a year won't happen due to it not being right in someone's face.
There's no harm in reducing consumption.
Climate change didn't start today, so it makes no sense to blame whoever happens to be today's top polluter as the culprits. China emitted half the CO2 as the US, and India around 10%. Calling out those two countries is absurd.
What I mean is that it is possible to emit some CO2 and it will just get absorbed and transformed back to O2 via natural processes in a sustainable fashion. So really from a country's emissions you should subtract off this number in some per capita fashion to get the actually relevant or excess emissions.
If you do that I think you will find that a good number of countries have never emitted any excess emissions at all, and more than half have barely emitted anything of consequence. The blame on US, Europe, Canada, Australia will be even bigger than the ~70% shown on this chart.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co-emissions-by-re...
The EU and USA are both shrinking, unlike China and India which are growing.
We should all be cutting.
The other part that I actually don't like about any of these metrics is that they don't take land-mass and population into account.
Ideally you'd measure CO2 emissions per capita per square km/mile and compare that.
In this case, yes, you can.
US, EU became developed by polluting first at the cost of the rest of the world, and now can't simply morally tell India, China to remain poor and undeveloped because that might harm the environment.
You should also keep in mind that, US/EU's manufacture is done in China and other countries in Asia, and when you factor in consumption as well as production, even today, US/EU will fair very poorly.
Will countries with a head start, who got rich by harming the environment- subsidize, say, infrastructure for environment friendly steel processing in Indian plants?
Or will US/UK taxpayer pay for EV subsidies for Indian people? No, Right?
Now company B comes along, and they are allowed to pollute the river way above what is now accepted as OK, but because company A did so, it's allowed?
A better one would be a cities or provinces. And, yes, I believe every city should be given the chance to develop at the risk of short term harm to the environment.
People from City B don't deserve to remain poor just because City A had a head-start and polluted the river first.
Ideal scenario would be City/State A getting heavily taxed to subsidize City/State B's investment in renewables, people's education and healthcare, rehabilitation of people to other sectors, etc.
Would you agree to taxing US and UK each 500-700 billion dollars each year and the money flow to India so that India closes all coal plants and citizens get 90% subsidy in electric cars, or to develop environment friendly steel processing? You wouldn’t agree to it.
Why would US/UK taxpayer pay for India's infra and people? Right?
So, stop virtue and moral signalling from the high tower you are on. Let India and China develop themselves.
It's also very poor looking when it comes from UK. They got rich by exploiting India. And now they just can't say- "remain undeveloped because environment".
United Arab Emirates 25.8 t
Saudi Arabia 18.2 t
Australia +15.0 t
United States 14.9 t
Canada 14.2 t
Europe 6.9t
World average 4.7t
Lower-middle-income countries [1] of 1.8 t
Low-income countries [1] 0.3 t
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-bank-income-groups?...
It's a classic tragedy of commons problem.
Not just that. US and Europe got into the position of prosperity and hegemony we are enjoying right now thanks to industrial revolution which emitted all that CO2 in the first place.
Blame isn't helpful, period. Industrialised nations industrialised by polluting. But CO2 in the air is orders of magnitude more difficult to recover than carbon unburnt.
Most CO2 was emitted by the industrialised world. Most CO2 we can prevent from being emitted will come from India and China.
There is no good guy bad guy here, just places with a higher or lower return on action.
Per capita CO2 emissions of
India China US UK
2.07 9.24 13.83 4.42
The amount of carbon you emit to go to the groceries is probably equal to produce all my groceries for a week.
So, if you factor in consumption as well as production, the Western world does even worse in terms of responsibility for CO2 production.
NZ just raised their tourist tax...