I notice zero mention of the private jets used to attend climate change conferences, globalist conferences etc all over the world.
Nor am I the least bit impressed by "slow travel". Slow Travel is like Slow Food - great if you're rich and can sail around the world because you don't need to work or can spend 10 hours making and consuming a Whole Foods organic meal; impossible for most people.
The most damning is the economic illiteracy of this entire premise. Travel - whether of people or things - is not just a function of cost or pollution.
It is also a function of time.
We fly ourselves and things when the time cost outweighs the literal money cost - that's why Fedex overnight and Amazon fast shipping exist. Why not outlaw the air freight of things, if pollution is such an issue?
Similarly, if pollution is the prerogative instead of time or cost - what about sea vs train vs. truck transport? (Again, both for people and goods) Each of these also represent different time/cost/pollution profiles.
If you seek to promote the hobby horse of ecological sustainability - you really need to try harder to actually understand what you are talking about.
Not sure if you read the piece on slow travel, but I guess not, as it highlighted as problematic the very point you do. Flying has higher emissions than trucks/trains—so their relevance is low. As I wrote up top, my view is for a need to reduce—not eliminate.
First: by IPCC's own methodology, reducing emissions by 50% in the 1st world will reduce future warming by a tenth of a degree or so. So why exactly is this going to matter?
Secondly: focus on fuels is stupid. For example: roughly half of energy consumption with vehicles is the manufacture of the vehicle. Whether it is combustion or "EV" is thus only focusing on, at best, half the problem.
The sad reality is that any real effort to "prevent climate change" more or less requires a reversion of standards of living in the West to 1930s levels. And I do mean Great Depression era including the higher percentage of the population living as subsistence farmers, etc.
So while I understand a desire to "be more considerate" and practice it, it is nonsense to believe that such consideration will actually make any difference whatsoever.
And note that I am not a drill and burn type. I don't even own a car, but my work and where I live allows this. 99% of Americans could not do so. I recycle carefully knowing full well that anything beyond metals and glass is literally a waste of time.
But I do travel a lot - both for work and pleasure - and I do so via both high-end and low-end means. Advocating against air travel is extremely discriminatory against those who are poorer - they have the least capability for flexibility and trading off hours worked/vacation vs. carbon emissions/time.
Meh.
I notice zero mention of the private jets used to attend climate change conferences, globalist conferences etc all over the world.
Nor am I the least bit impressed by "slow travel". Slow Travel is like Slow Food - great if you're rich and can sail around the world because you don't need to work or can spend 10 hours making and consuming a Whole Foods organic meal; impossible for most people.
The most damning is the economic illiteracy of this entire premise. Travel - whether of people or things - is not just a function of cost or pollution.
It is also a function of time.
We fly ourselves and things when the time cost outweighs the literal money cost - that's why Fedex overnight and Amazon fast shipping exist. Why not outlaw the air freight of things, if pollution is such an issue?
Similarly, if pollution is the prerogative instead of time or cost - what about sea vs train vs. truck transport? (Again, both for people and goods) Each of these also represent different time/cost/pollution profiles.
If you seek to promote the hobby horse of ecological sustainability - you really need to try harder to actually understand what you are talking about.
Not sure if you read the piece on slow travel, but I guess not, as it highlighted as problematic the very point you do. Flying has higher emissions than trucks/trains—so their relevance is low. As I wrote up top, my view is for a need to reduce—not eliminate.
Reducing emissions is also highly problematic.
First: by IPCC's own methodology, reducing emissions by 50% in the 1st world will reduce future warming by a tenth of a degree or so. So why exactly is this going to matter?
Secondly: focus on fuels is stupid. For example: roughly half of energy consumption with vehicles is the manufacture of the vehicle. Whether it is combustion or "EV" is thus only focusing on, at best, half the problem.
The sad reality is that any real effort to "prevent climate change" more or less requires a reversion of standards of living in the West to 1930s levels. And I do mean Great Depression era including the higher percentage of the population living as subsistence farmers, etc.
So while I understand a desire to "be more considerate" and practice it, it is nonsense to believe that such consideration will actually make any difference whatsoever.
And note that I am not a drill and burn type. I don't even own a car, but my work and where I live allows this. 99% of Americans could not do so. I recycle carefully knowing full well that anything beyond metals and glass is literally a waste of time.
But I do travel a lot - both for work and pleasure - and I do so via both high-end and low-end means. Advocating against air travel is extremely discriminatory against those who are poorer - they have the least capability for flexibility and trading off hours worked/vacation vs. carbon emissions/time.
This makes me even happier that we managed to reduce our flying so much this year.
Gold star!