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Comment by probably_wrong | Hacker News Reader

Not everyone's footprint is the same, though.

If I cut down my plane flight in half that means I'll take a plane every two years, meaning I'll also see my family half as much. You'd also have to include that, since I travel economy, you'd divide my contribution by ~350.

If Taylor Swift cuts her plane travel by half she'd "only" make 51 trips a year [1] on a plane that carries 12 and would still make more money in a year than what I'll see in my lifetime.

IMO, saying that both of us are contributing equally as much to global warming is just unfair.

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/taylor-swift-spent-160-hours...

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I didn't say we're all equally culpable. We're not. Yet en masse we're all guilty to some degree.

There's only what 10's of thousands Taylor Swifts in the world. Yet there's billions of everyone else. The majority of greenhouse gasses likely come from the aggregate of everyone.

But OP said exactly that: "We (meaning all of us) have broken our world for the greed of a few."

It doesn't always work that way.

A personal example: I don't drive. I use public transit a couple of times a year. I am in private cars maybe once every two year. I haven't flown in about 15 years. Clearly this is a contrived example. My energy use patterns are much more typical when using other metrics. That said, it is also the flip side of being a Taylor Swift of the world. There is a point in the developed world where the millions are using much more energy than the thousands.

I said developed world because there are also parts of the world that simply don't have access to my gratuitous level of energy use. To say that they are guilty of contributing based upon the technicality that they are directly or indirectly using a disproportionately small amount of energy is beyond insulting. It is also a blatant way to paper over our responsibility.

> Globally, the poorest 50% emit roughly 4.4 billion tons to 4.7 billion tons equivalent annually, accounting for about 11% to 12% of total global greenhouse gas emissions.

The “less-developed” bottom half of the world population still produces about a tenth of the annual co2 production annually.

That means instead of potential climate catastrophe in 10 years it’d take 100 years if the top half disappeared tomorrow. Obviously an overly simplistic argument but its meant to show that the problem would just be slower but not gone if we got rid of the “wealthy”.

Now I don’t believe they’re equally as culpable. Yet I also firmly believe the vast majority would choose the same as us in developed world have if they could.

Ultimately that’s more of my point. What’s happening isn’t due to some evil plot by the ultra wealthy. It’s the result of human nature.

Some unscrupulous ultra wealthy might hasten it by a few years or a decade, but the core problem is human nature and an abundance of fossil fuels.

The “wealthy” are also the most likely to prevent catastrophe by developing renewables, etc.

> I didn't say we're all equally culpable.

That didn't come quite through. You seemed to be taking a rather extreme position, while replying to someone who just pointed out the systemic issues, which of course don't absolve anyone of their own responsibility.

> If Taylor Swift cuts her plane travel by half she'd "only" make 51 trips a year [1] on a plane that carries 12 and would still make more money in a year than what I'll see in my lifetime.

Taylor swift travels so much because the people want to see her in person.

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