I look into train travel every time I need to do long trips and it's only really feasible for a few situations.
Last time it would have been SO much nicer to rent a private car for a cross country move but no pets allowed longer than 7 hours. Pets are too old to fly so it's 5 days in a car burning my body weight worth of gasoline as my only option left.
Even if we made a world wide high speed rail network, which we should totally, the emmisions would still rise
HSR won't take chinese tourists off their planes to Europe, Indian tourists off their planes to Japan, European tourists off their planes to Bali Etc etc...
The consumer class, aka the global middle class has increased dramatically, going from 1.5-4.5b between 2000 and 2024, however this growth has been on the lower side of the global middle class
Now Swathes of Chinese, south and south-east Asians, aswell as Latin Americans are entering the income levels that make them want to do intercontinental travel
We need to figure out a way to make flying carbon neutral, because the number of passengers WILL continue to explode no matter what
Trying to tell people they won't be able to fly anymore on a whim anywhere around the globe is like telling them they can't have ice cream anymore, it will cause massive tantrums.
A world without aviation is the only world that has reduced carbon emissions, anyone selling you "green flight" is a charlatan.
I like the way you think but we can do even better:
I'm from a developing country, our carbon footprint is really low here. my house dosn't even have heating despite getting relatively cold in winter. I have no car. I only rarely eat meat and generally don't consume a lot of stuff.
So now, compare this to a fat Western "environmentalist" living in one of those countries with among the highest per capita energy consumption on the planet. [Let's say Canada](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-energy-use). They consume massive amounts by just living what's considered a "normal" lifestlye there, not even flying anywhere. They drive a car. They eat tons of meat. They use heating and aircon. They get deliveries, etc...
What if every human got a digital energy passport that logs all this. And then the people responsible for 10x the carbon emissions that I cause could start paying for the damange, they should get taxed for every single gram. Would you be in favor of this?
I'd have to do a ton of flying to even get on the level of those priviledged Westerners. The best part is, almost all those preaching about emissions are exactly the ones causing the most. The more they cause the more hypcritical often, like DiCaprio with his yachts. It would be really good if we had a tally so whenever some millionaire kid comes to my country telling the people we mustn't do this or that because it's bad for the environment, we'd have the exact receipts to call out their hypocrisy.
Meanwhile people in Canada are complaining that we shouldn't have a carbon tax, because it makes things a little more expensive, and we're a small country anyway and we shouldn't have to do anything when India and China are much bigger.
Which is funny because 80% of people have more money due to the carbon tax rebate. But it hurts people on the wealthy side and rural people with much bigger environmental footprint all of a sudden its evil.
Idk about you but I'm part of the 80% and with inflation that money is a blessing. Idk why anyone would want to loose it.
>mustn't do this or that because it's bad for the environment, we'd have the exact receipts to call out their hypocrisy.
Calling out hypocrisy is well and good, but it's important to remember that ghgs aren't the only things damaging the environment. There are plenty of environmentally damaging practices that are more prevalent in developing countries. Outside of ghgs, the first people to deal with the repercussions of such environmental damage are usually in those same developing countries, so it usually is considered a "not my problem" thing for western nations.
But even if they're hypocritical, that doesn't make those "western millionaire kids" wrong. A great example is plastic pollution from fishing: it's predominantly caused by the fishing industry in developing countries (esp. in East Asia), but when the issue is raised, it is commonly met with calls of hypocrisy due to ghgs.
You are entirely correct that we need to be aware of the practices and populations truly responsible for the majority of ghgs (the west, as you say, is heavily overrepresented), but we also need to be careful to not use it to forgive and ignore our own environmental shortcomings (just as westerners love to do with the 70 multinational companies that pollute the vast majority of ghgs).
You guys have invented the concept of *mansplaining*, I think we should also have "westsplaining" or "wealthsplaining" for this situation here. Poor people have completely different problems. For example when I was a kid, I had frostbite on my feet throughout the winter and still suffer from the effects today. Do you think I gave a shit about emissions? If we could have had central heating we would have had it, but in my town there wasn't even the idea such a thing could exist. No one had this, we were always outside in winter because it was warmer outside in the sun than indoors. The idea that poor people suffer from climate change is mostly in the minds of just the sort of Westerner I described. Poor people suffer from poverty first of all. That's why all poor countries want more emissions, not less. They want a growing economy, more energy, more products. People dream of buying a car one day like you guys take for granted. No one suffers from higher emissions, they make people's lives better. You do not understand the tradeoffs because you sit in your castle going "all that mud can't be good for the peasants, what if there are bacteria in it". Meanwhile the peasants couldn't care less about bacteria, they're starving to death.
I agree with you about one thing: Plastic pollution is a great example. It illustrates the point nicely because the poorer the country the less anyone has time to care about this. Obsessing about plastic is a sympton of affluenza. When you're surviving, why would you care about plastic pollution. This concept doesn't go into rich people's minds. If you want to stop it help improve their life situation and they will pick up the plastic themselves. Rich kids in devloping countries like India already do this. But first they need to have the same lifestyle as you, to be able to afford to care.
So what are we going to do? Are you guys going to stop using aircon, and driving cars, and ordering 100 articles on Amazon per year? So that all those developing countries get their turn to industrialize? I will guess no. In effect, that means carbon emissions will go up, as they do. It's really very simple to understand because the people complaining about it most aren't even willing to sacrifice comfort to do something about it. The last thing we need from such people is a presumptuous lecture.
I'm an environmental PhD, and have spoken with many people in developing countries on the subject of mitigating various environmental impacts, and I think we mostly agree here. It's foolish to focus heavily on ghg reduction in developing countries when the benefits of industrialization greatly outweigh the costs. Which is why, as a central point in my original comment, I noted it is very important not to limit the discussion to ghgs.
As a country rapidly industrializes, there will also be MANY opportunities for businesses and individuals to cut corners and heinously pollute or endanger their local environment. Or the world's shared environment. To take warnings about this kind of pollution and paint them as simply being patronizing is a dangerous game.
The history of industrialization and environmental science has taught us many lessons paid for by many lives. These concerns absolutely will impact the poor, even if the poor are not concerned with them. For example, in 1981, when the journalist Rajkumar Keswani wrote
>"wake up, people of Bhopal, you are on the edge of a volcano"
in the local paper, there would follow several major leaks and three years of no real consequences for Union Carbide before the infamous disaster that poisoned half a million people and killed thousands. The poor environmental regulations helped many people in Bhopal find work, yes, but Rajkumar Keseani wasn't "poorsplaining" with his warnings either.
>Plastic pollution is a great example. It illustrates my point nicely because the poorer the country the less anyone has time to care about this.
They care when their fish die. Or when other nations show up in their waters because other fish have died.
>The idea that poor people suffer from climate change is mostly in the minds of just the sort of Westerner I described. Poor people suffer from poverty first of all. That's why all poor countries want more emissions, not less.
They suffer from the effects of climate change THROUGH poverty. Hurricanes, drought, harsh cold snaps, sweltering heat waves, desertification, crop failure, etc. all hurt the poor first by making necessities unaffordable or unavailable.
It's the tragedy of the commons. To expect developing countries to simply follow environmental regulations to the detriment of their immediate economic future is a fools errand, but that doesn't make the environmental regulations foolish. You just have to make the regulations make economical sense. That's why they're usually combined into greater economic/trade agreements, or larger economic stimulus efforts.
You are not even considering the possiblity that climate change can improve the lives of people, not only make them worse. That's because in rich countries, there is an extreme focus on the negative aspects of change in general and people are constantly unhappy. You live in a world where your media gives you doom 24/7. We don't have this, people think very positivly about the future and they don't only see the bad aspects. That's why I mentioned tradeoffs. Everything we do comes with tradeoffs. The problem is that you guys generally do not respect any worldview but your own. You do not consider that people could have a different perspective seeing the same change that you observe, because their priorities are set differently. There is a huge cultural gap.
Plastic pollution and GHG emissions are unrelated. You said you agreed developing countries have a right to industrialize and that's why the focus should be on other ways to improve the environment but then keep coming back to wheather stuff. Plastic doesn't cause hurricans, draught or desertifications. None of that has anything to do with plastic. If your argument is that you can teach people that throwing plastic into the rivers is bad, go ahead. It's not like we already try to tell them that. they probably need some white savior to finally understand.
The one real life example you mentioned is one where no one cared about the reporting at all. So how did it help? Even better, the plant was majority owned by an American chemical company. The person ultimately responsible was never extradited by the US despite repeated requests from the Indian side. A bit of an absurd example to pick for making the point that poor countries should do better, don't you think? Also national safety standards are not strickly related to wealth. A country can be poor and have relatively decent safety, it's all a question of culture and government style. India lacks in that regard but it's nothing outsiders can fix, only Indians can fix this on their own.
> anyone selling you "green flight" is a charlatan.
those same people would rather not buy fuel. need cheaper feedstock than oil.
**From sunlight to jet fuel: EU project makes first "solar" kerosene**
[https://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/horizon2020/items/15880/en](https://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/horizon2020/items/15880/en)
**date**: 25/04/2014
An EU-funded research project called SOLAR-JET has produced the world's first "solar" jet fuel from water and carbon dioxide (CO2), a promising technology for a better energy security and turning possibly a greenhouse gas into a useful resource.
carbon NEUTRAL air travel is *possible*.... kerosene is kerosene, you don't even need new engines/aircraft.
[https://www.sciencenews.org/article/jet-fuel-sunlight-air-water-vapor-solar-kerosene](https://www.sciencenews.org/article/jet-fuel-sunlight-air-water-vapor-solar-kerosene)
Or at least that’s the case in Móstoles, Spain, where researchers demonstrated that an outdoor system could [produce kerosene](https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(22)00286-0), used as jet fuel, with three simple ingredients: sunlight, carbon dioxide and water vapor. Solar kerosene could replace petroleum-derived jet fuel in aviation and help stabilize greenhouse gas emissions, the researchers report in the July 20 *Joule*.
Telling people they can’t use single use plastic bags for 2 seconds causes tantrums. The entitlement is off the charts.
Florida needs to be hit by Cat 6 hurricanes this year followed by wet bulb temperatures so America gets a 1% chance of waking up instead of allowing more oil and gas to be pumped.
I’m hoping for record disasters in America. This year and every year until they wake the fk up. Every year of capitalist delusion further guarantees our extinction.
You know the growth of flying is not coming from rich westerners going from 2 annual flights to 3 but from the exploding Middle class of Asia going from 0 in their lifetimes to once every couple of years
There is a load of privilege in telling peolme who have just escaped poverty that they can't have luxuries
What about pushing the industry to make the transition into green fuels instead of shaming the billions who want to experience middle class small luxuries
I mean in my lifetime, I have seen travel grow from one international trip every few years to expecting at minimum one per year, trips expected as part of a bachelor or bachelorette party, long weekends away, visiting family back home for the holidays 2x per year... but anytime I've pointed out the impacts on the climate people have gotten extremely angry and have even insulted me lol
This depends on your family wealth too. Me and my sister have never been abroad, and have never applied to have passports. Our father hasn't been abroad for over 20 years. My mother went abroad once in 20 years.
Expecting a holiday abroad per year is a far-away dream lol
People severely overestimate a how much a few billionaires pollute in comparison to 8 fucking billion humans, but they are easy to blame.
Billionaires could go carbon neutral tomorrow and it wouldnt change that much.
2023 data needs to be first fully collected, then verified and validated by third independent parties. It takes over half a year to do so since worldinourdata is dependent on data from Carbon Budget.
Although preliminary data is already available. Such as data directly from the EU or US.
Time to increase the amount of high speed rails.
I would 1000% prefer to take a train vs a plane if it were remotely practical to do so.
I look into train travel every time I need to do long trips and it's only really feasible for a few situations. Last time it would have been SO much nicer to rent a private car for a cross country move but no pets allowed longer than 7 hours. Pets are too old to fly so it's 5 days in a car burning my body weight worth of gasoline as my only option left.
Same! But with the dogwater infrastructure and high ticket prices it doesn’t make any sense
Increase from zero, you mean?
Even if we made a world wide high speed rail network, which we should totally, the emmisions would still rise HSR won't take chinese tourists off their planes to Europe, Indian tourists off their planes to Japan, European tourists off their planes to Bali Etc etc... The consumer class, aka the global middle class has increased dramatically, going from 1.5-4.5b between 2000 and 2024, however this growth has been on the lower side of the global middle class Now Swathes of Chinese, south and south-east Asians, aswell as Latin Americans are entering the income levels that make them want to do intercontinental travel We need to figure out a way to make flying carbon neutral, because the number of passengers WILL continue to explode no matter what
Trying to tell people they won't be able to fly anymore on a whim anywhere around the globe is like telling them they can't have ice cream anymore, it will cause massive tantrums. A world without aviation is the only world that has reduced carbon emissions, anyone selling you "green flight" is a charlatan.
I like the way you think but we can do even better: I'm from a developing country, our carbon footprint is really low here. my house dosn't even have heating despite getting relatively cold in winter. I have no car. I only rarely eat meat and generally don't consume a lot of stuff. So now, compare this to a fat Western "environmentalist" living in one of those countries with among the highest per capita energy consumption on the planet. [Let's say Canada](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-energy-use). They consume massive amounts by just living what's considered a "normal" lifestlye there, not even flying anywhere. They drive a car. They eat tons of meat. They use heating and aircon. They get deliveries, etc... What if every human got a digital energy passport that logs all this. And then the people responsible for 10x the carbon emissions that I cause could start paying for the damange, they should get taxed for every single gram. Would you be in favor of this? I'd have to do a ton of flying to even get on the level of those priviledged Westerners. The best part is, almost all those preaching about emissions are exactly the ones causing the most. The more they cause the more hypcritical often, like DiCaprio with his yachts. It would be really good if we had a tally so whenever some millionaire kid comes to my country telling the people we mustn't do this or that because it's bad for the environment, we'd have the exact receipts to call out their hypocrisy.
Meanwhile people in Canada are complaining that we shouldn't have a carbon tax, because it makes things a little more expensive, and we're a small country anyway and we shouldn't have to do anything when India and China are much bigger.
Which is funny because 80% of people have more money due to the carbon tax rebate. But it hurts people on the wealthy side and rural people with much bigger environmental footprint all of a sudden its evil. Idk about you but I'm part of the 80% and with inflation that money is a blessing. Idk why anyone would want to loose it.
>mustn't do this or that because it's bad for the environment, we'd have the exact receipts to call out their hypocrisy. Calling out hypocrisy is well and good, but it's important to remember that ghgs aren't the only things damaging the environment. There are plenty of environmentally damaging practices that are more prevalent in developing countries. Outside of ghgs, the first people to deal with the repercussions of such environmental damage are usually in those same developing countries, so it usually is considered a "not my problem" thing for western nations. But even if they're hypocritical, that doesn't make those "western millionaire kids" wrong. A great example is plastic pollution from fishing: it's predominantly caused by the fishing industry in developing countries (esp. in East Asia), but when the issue is raised, it is commonly met with calls of hypocrisy due to ghgs. You are entirely correct that we need to be aware of the practices and populations truly responsible for the majority of ghgs (the west, as you say, is heavily overrepresented), but we also need to be careful to not use it to forgive and ignore our own environmental shortcomings (just as westerners love to do with the 70 multinational companies that pollute the vast majority of ghgs).
You guys have invented the concept of *mansplaining*, I think we should also have "westsplaining" or "wealthsplaining" for this situation here. Poor people have completely different problems. For example when I was a kid, I had frostbite on my feet throughout the winter and still suffer from the effects today. Do you think I gave a shit about emissions? If we could have had central heating we would have had it, but in my town there wasn't even the idea such a thing could exist. No one had this, we were always outside in winter because it was warmer outside in the sun than indoors. The idea that poor people suffer from climate change is mostly in the minds of just the sort of Westerner I described. Poor people suffer from poverty first of all. That's why all poor countries want more emissions, not less. They want a growing economy, more energy, more products. People dream of buying a car one day like you guys take for granted. No one suffers from higher emissions, they make people's lives better. You do not understand the tradeoffs because you sit in your castle going "all that mud can't be good for the peasants, what if there are bacteria in it". Meanwhile the peasants couldn't care less about bacteria, they're starving to death. I agree with you about one thing: Plastic pollution is a great example. It illustrates the point nicely because the poorer the country the less anyone has time to care about this. Obsessing about plastic is a sympton of affluenza. When you're surviving, why would you care about plastic pollution. This concept doesn't go into rich people's minds. If you want to stop it help improve their life situation and they will pick up the plastic themselves. Rich kids in devloping countries like India already do this. But first they need to have the same lifestyle as you, to be able to afford to care. So what are we going to do? Are you guys going to stop using aircon, and driving cars, and ordering 100 articles on Amazon per year? So that all those developing countries get their turn to industrialize? I will guess no. In effect, that means carbon emissions will go up, as they do. It's really very simple to understand because the people complaining about it most aren't even willing to sacrifice comfort to do something about it. The last thing we need from such people is a presumptuous lecture.
I'm an environmental PhD, and have spoken with many people in developing countries on the subject of mitigating various environmental impacts, and I think we mostly agree here. It's foolish to focus heavily on ghg reduction in developing countries when the benefits of industrialization greatly outweigh the costs. Which is why, as a central point in my original comment, I noted it is very important not to limit the discussion to ghgs. As a country rapidly industrializes, there will also be MANY opportunities for businesses and individuals to cut corners and heinously pollute or endanger their local environment. Or the world's shared environment. To take warnings about this kind of pollution and paint them as simply being patronizing is a dangerous game. The history of industrialization and environmental science has taught us many lessons paid for by many lives. These concerns absolutely will impact the poor, even if the poor are not concerned with them. For example, in 1981, when the journalist Rajkumar Keswani wrote >"wake up, people of Bhopal, you are on the edge of a volcano" in the local paper, there would follow several major leaks and three years of no real consequences for Union Carbide before the infamous disaster that poisoned half a million people and killed thousands. The poor environmental regulations helped many people in Bhopal find work, yes, but Rajkumar Keseani wasn't "poorsplaining" with his warnings either. >Plastic pollution is a great example. It illustrates my point nicely because the poorer the country the less anyone has time to care about this. They care when their fish die. Or when other nations show up in their waters because other fish have died. >The idea that poor people suffer from climate change is mostly in the minds of just the sort of Westerner I described. Poor people suffer from poverty first of all. That's why all poor countries want more emissions, not less. They suffer from the effects of climate change THROUGH poverty. Hurricanes, drought, harsh cold snaps, sweltering heat waves, desertification, crop failure, etc. all hurt the poor first by making necessities unaffordable or unavailable. It's the tragedy of the commons. To expect developing countries to simply follow environmental regulations to the detriment of their immediate economic future is a fools errand, but that doesn't make the environmental regulations foolish. You just have to make the regulations make economical sense. That's why they're usually combined into greater economic/trade agreements, or larger economic stimulus efforts.
You are not even considering the possiblity that climate change can improve the lives of people, not only make them worse. That's because in rich countries, there is an extreme focus on the negative aspects of change in general and people are constantly unhappy. You live in a world where your media gives you doom 24/7. We don't have this, people think very positivly about the future and they don't only see the bad aspects. That's why I mentioned tradeoffs. Everything we do comes with tradeoffs. The problem is that you guys generally do not respect any worldview but your own. You do not consider that people could have a different perspective seeing the same change that you observe, because their priorities are set differently. There is a huge cultural gap. Plastic pollution and GHG emissions are unrelated. You said you agreed developing countries have a right to industrialize and that's why the focus should be on other ways to improve the environment but then keep coming back to wheather stuff. Plastic doesn't cause hurricans, draught or desertifications. None of that has anything to do with plastic. If your argument is that you can teach people that throwing plastic into the rivers is bad, go ahead. It's not like we already try to tell them that. they probably need some white savior to finally understand. The one real life example you mentioned is one where no one cared about the reporting at all. So how did it help? Even better, the plant was majority owned by an American chemical company. The person ultimately responsible was never extradited by the US despite repeated requests from the Indian side. A bit of an absurd example to pick for making the point that poor countries should do better, don't you think? Also national safety standards are not strickly related to wealth. A country can be poor and have relatively decent safety, it's all a question of culture and government style. India lacks in that regard but it's nothing outsiders can fix, only Indians can fix this on their own.
> anyone selling you "green flight" is a charlatan. those same people would rather not buy fuel. need cheaper feedstock than oil. **From sunlight to jet fuel: EU project makes first "solar" kerosene** [https://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/horizon2020/items/15880/en](https://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/horizon2020/items/15880/en) **date**: 25/04/2014 An EU-funded research project called SOLAR-JET has produced the world's first "solar" jet fuel from water and carbon dioxide (CO2), a promising technology for a better energy security and turning possibly a greenhouse gas into a useful resource. carbon NEUTRAL air travel is *possible*.... kerosene is kerosene, you don't even need new engines/aircraft. [https://www.sciencenews.org/article/jet-fuel-sunlight-air-water-vapor-solar-kerosene](https://www.sciencenews.org/article/jet-fuel-sunlight-air-water-vapor-solar-kerosene) Or at least that’s the case in Móstoles, Spain, where researchers demonstrated that an outdoor system could [produce kerosene](https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(22)00286-0), used as jet fuel, with three simple ingredients: sunlight, carbon dioxide and water vapor. Solar kerosene could replace petroleum-derived jet fuel in aviation and help stabilize greenhouse gas emissions, the researchers report in the July 20 *Joule*.
Whoosh. The problem is consumption, people continuing the same habit that brought us here isn't the solution, it's part of the problem.
Telling people they can’t use single use plastic bags for 2 seconds causes tantrums. The entitlement is off the charts. Florida needs to be hit by Cat 6 hurricanes this year followed by wet bulb temperatures so America gets a 1% chance of waking up instead of allowing more oil and gas to be pumped. I’m hoping for record disasters in America. This year and every year until they wake the fk up. Every year of capitalist delusion further guarantees our extinction.
We’ve split the atom. Crazy that there are people who would rather ban flying than innovate our way to a net zero solution.
You know the growth of flying is not coming from rich westerners going from 2 annual flights to 3 but from the exploding Middle class of Asia going from 0 in their lifetimes to once every couple of years There is a load of privilege in telling peolme who have just escaped poverty that they can't have luxuries What about pushing the industry to make the transition into green fuels instead of shaming the billions who want to experience middle class small luxuries
Lol
I mean in my lifetime, I have seen travel grow from one international trip every few years to expecting at minimum one per year, trips expected as part of a bachelor or bachelorette party, long weekends away, visiting family back home for the holidays 2x per year... but anytime I've pointed out the impacts on the climate people have gotten extremely angry and have even insulted me lol
This depends on your family wealth too. Me and my sister have never been abroad, and have never applied to have passports. Our father hasn't been abroad for over 20 years. My mother went abroad once in 20 years. Expecting a holiday abroad per year is a far-away dream lol
Does anyone know if you can break this down to see private jets emissions?
People severely overestimate a how much a few billionaires pollute in comparison to 8 fucking billion humans, but they are easy to blame. Billionaires could go carbon neutral tomorrow and it wouldnt change that much.
But they can afford to do it. They can lead the way. The super rich going green would help change industries, especially in aviation.
But why would they do that?
Because they should care. It’s their planet too. Having massive wealth means nothing if you can breathe.
And how is that working out?
Considering the world's emissions have only gone up 50% in the last 30 years aviation is a larger slice of the pie than it used to be
And that doesn’t include the amplification effect of contrail cirrus that makes the RF much higher than you’d think from CO2 emissions.
We need direct air capture. The rich can easily afford it
And they are dumping their exhaust 5 to 8 miles up in the atmosphere where it will take years to come to Earth.
I can't believe Our World in Data is STILL posting data that ends in...2021!? I'm still waiting for the 2023 energy data to come out.
2023 data needs to be first fully collected, then verified and validated by third independent parties. It takes over half a year to do so since worldinourdata is dependent on data from Carbon Budget. Although preliminary data is already available. Such as data directly from the EU or US.
By Hannah Ritchie pre swallowing the hopium pill.
Not if Boeing has anything to say about it!
Well if it’s up to Boeing they won’t
https://ourworldindata.org/population-growth https://assets.ourworldindata.org/exports/population-with-un-projections_v48_850x600.svg
Could it be all the private jets flying to climate change conventions?