597
Twelve billionaires’ climate emissions outpollute 2.1m homes, analysis finds
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2023
597 points (97.9% liked)
News
23268 readers
3077 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
That would have a negligible impact on climate change
Almost everyone has a negligible impact when taken individually, that’s no excuse. Flying is terrible, private jets even more so.
All human air traffic combined is 2% of emissions. A private jet is not a big deal.
Calling out private jets from rich people is a conservative tactic to make wealthy people who advocate for climate policy look like hypocrites. It's a nonsensical position that was never intended to be thought through. It's a kneejerk slogan for the boomer hordes.
But it’s actually a problem. It measures whole percentage points, it’s not a rounding error.
Dismissing an issue or person because conservatives are also using it as a punching bag doesn’t remove the problem, it just lets the conservatives control the narrative. I don’t think participating in that polarizing behavior is good or useful.
That's all air travel. All.
100,000 flights and 6 million people every day. A private jet is a drop in the bucket.
Arguing semantics? All flights are equal? A loaded a380 is just like a 6 passenger Lear?
If we argue that someone should take the bus or bike instead of drive, isn’t this the same argument?
No, because the intent is to reduce aggregate demand. One person's life choices are completely irrelevant, but when you spread ideas like ride-sharing, public transport, and walking/biking, the goal is for many people to choose one or more of those options regularly.
Long after we have carbon taxes, planes will still be flying.
Do the math on one person flying alone on a Lear jet while running a lawnmower for fun just to pollute a little extra, vs 6 million other people taking 100,000 flights. Or don't, because the math should be quite obvious.
It’s not one person though, there are more private jets than commercial airliners. This thread started with the declaration that taking needless private flights over the Atlantic is negligible and we shouldn’t bother expressing frustration or ire that they continue.
I never said we should stop flights, just that we can criticize irresponsible usage of it. Why is that such a sticking point here?
Because that argument only exists, only ever existed, to chip away at the credibility of wealthy people who are putting actual effort into fighting climate change