Copenhagen climate summit: 1,200 limos, 140 private planes and caviar wedges | Hacker News Reader

Copenhagen climate summit: 1,200 limos, 140 private planes and caviar wedges

telegraph.co.uk

16 pointsrg24 comments

So I guess the expected reaction is some sort of outrage?

Seriously, who expects anything different when most of the world's decision makers gather in one city? I'm impressed that they don't need more vehicles to make things work.

The result everyone hopes for from Copenhagen offsets any negative impact from these "limos and private planes" by so many order of magnitudes it's not even funny. This is simply attention-seeking whining.

I think a large part of the problem is the crass level of hypocrisy involved here. We look to leaders to be well... leaders. To paraphrase others, it's difficult to think of climate as a problem when the people who are telling us it's a problem aren't behaving as such. It's as if they're asking the rest of us to make all the sacrifices when they make few to none.

As I've said elsewhere, I've personally made some changes and tried to reduce waste and I do think that AGW seems likely though the science appears far from certain.

Small stuff won't solve global warming. Not yours, not mine, not politicians.

It is of no use to care so much about these small details.

If global warming is such a big problem as claimed then our collective actions will make a difference. Thinking it doesn't would be like startups not pinching pennies and unnecessarily increasing the burn rate with an underlying assumption of success.

Collective. Not a buncha' people meeting once. Those people meet to (hopefully) negoiate how to build useful incentives for a collective change in behaviour. And that's (incentives) what's the important thing. Not symbolic fluff.

Spot on.

One way of looking at this situation is that it is an investment. Yes, we have to spend some of our resources in getting these people together to talk, but the return on our investment (the resources saved as a result) is going to be maaany times greater.

I would think investment is something that most people on this board would understand...

So, in business terms, it's like the venture capitalist flying his private jet out and chartering a limo to meet with a portfolio company to tell them they're pulling the plug the because times are tough and they have to save where they can.

Might still not be the jet and the limo throwing off the balance, but it's still hypocritical. At least he could be direct and say "We don't believe in your business any more, and we're not going to throw good money after bad. So long".

Especially given all the talk about the sacrifices we all have to make, it's curious how politicians, activist leaders and especially public servants can't at all be bothered to make those sacrifices.

Yes, many of us do understand investment. We also seek to maximize our returns by minimizing our "investment". In this analogy, this would just be a crass spend of capital in anticipation of returns that are far from certain (ie it's not certain that we will even get an agreement or that the agreement we get is even enforceable).

You are forgetting about the risk reward. Let's assume there is a 1% chance we will reduce global green houses gas production due to this conference. And let's assume to total benefit was a 1% reduction in global emissions for a single day. If you do the math that's still a better than break even propitiation.

The sad truth is a carbon tax set at 1cent per gallon of gas or that equivalent amount of CO2 produced from any other fossil fuel to directly build wind farms would provide enough money to fund a significant reduction in green house gasses. Start playing around with the numbers and 40 years till zero green house gasses produced by the electric grid or home heating is a reasonable possibility. Transportation is a hard problem, but even if we ignore it we can still do a lot.

Exactly. What's the alternative? President Obama taking a commercial flight to Copenhagen, then a bus to the summit? I'd love to be the Secret Service agent in charge of that detail.

The American president is a target and must be protected. It's when it's argued that the precautions you take for yourself doesn't apply to others in the same situation that the wheels come off. Fortunately, no-one is nearly as critical a target as POTUS.

I think the main part of it is how politically short sighted NOT making a big effort to do it "green" is.

Sort of like this: http://www.graduatedtaste.com/2008/11/20/if-richard-branson-...

From the article:

"We haven't got enough limos in the country to fulfil the demand," she says. "We're having to drive them in hundreds of miles from Germany and Sweden."

And the total number of electric cars or hybrids among that number? "Five," says Ms Jorgensen. "The government has some alternative fuel cars but the rest will be petrol or diesel. We don't have any hybrids in Denmark, unfortunately, due to the extreme taxes on those cars. It makes no sense at all, but it's very Danish."

The airport says it is expecting up to 140 extra private jets during the peak period alone, so far over its capacity that the planes will have to fly off to regional airports--or to Sweden--to park, returning to Copenhagen to pick up their VIP passengers.

Quote from deceiver.com (http://deceiver.com/2009/12/07/no-sleep-till-carbonhagen/): "Taking a private jet to a conference on stopping global warming is a bit like traveling in a sedan chair carried by indentured servants to a summit on stopping human trafficking."

I think what they are trying to do is to create a systemic shocking amount of CO2 to totally throw our climate off kilter, and thus cool things down. Kind of like reverse psychology for climate change.

Democracy is in peril when leaders don't subject themselves to the same standards as they subject their peoples to. "I'm a leader, my leadership is in itself important, thus I'm actually morally obliged to take my private jet" is a very dangerous line of thought.

Also, I can help but think that at least some of the guys in the 650 GBP hotel rooms, eating caviar (on the taxpayers dime, of course), have spend some time during the past year berating greedy bankers.

Bringing up the limos and planes makes sense; bringing up the caviar and expensive food doesn't. At a certain point it seems like the author is just trying to foment generic populist outrage.

Possibly - depending on where you get it from: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/america-to-introduc... [In reply to original comment on whether eating caviar means you don't care about the environment; this being said, one of the key considerations in the environmental movement has always been an underlying concern about overconsumption and resource conservation.]

1,200 limos and 140 private planes?

There are at most 15 groups attending that require such amenities. The rest don't have that kind of thing at home, most probably make do with public transport, so why exactly do they require it here?

If someone says that a problem is so important that I should change my behavior but is unwilling to change their behavior, they're telling me that they're not really interested in the problem, that they're really just interested in screwing with me.

Let me put this into business terms:

If you have to "spend" a relatively small amount of CO2 up front to "save" tremendous amounts of CO2 long-term, then it is completely worth it.

The point is that they don't have to "spend" CO2 on limos and private jets.

So what's the plan? They all ride bicycles on that one day, and then resume their standard travel mode outrage free the next day?

And what's the point?

Another atempt at a Climategate/SwiftHack hitjob?

Trying to have the tail wagging the dog?

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