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Comment by bluebarbet | Hacker News Reader

I was rather talking about the multiple tons of carbon emitted for the purpose of one person's 40-second esthetic experience. Disappointed that here we are in 2026, the world is burning before our eyes, and yet still almost nobody is ready to accept the slightest constraint on their personal choices.

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Well, we also have straight up data why the world is currently burning, and it's not because few people travel with airplanes to other places in the world to view eclipses once or twice in their life.

But it's easy to blame the individual, rather than the larger problems, probably because you can't really write directly to "Larger Problems" and get that off your chest, but it's much easier when it comes to individuals.

Flying is a completely unscalable form of transport. One scientist has calculated the marginally sustainable lifetime quota at "4" long-haul flights.* If you or I are flying and the climate is still livable that's because most people in the world have never got on a plane. If all 8 billion people did it to view eclipses even "once or twice in their life", the impact would be massive.

My arguments are "easy"? What's even easier is to blame politicians, and corporations, and systems, and basically anyone and anything but oneself. In the end we're all in this together and every action will count.

*https://www.lechotouristique.com/article/quota-de-4-vols-par...

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