All aviation, altogether, private jets inclusive, is less than 3% of world emissions. Getting people fired up about rich people using private jets is just a distraction from the truth in the same way that paper straws are. The reality is that a small handful of industries generate the majority of pollution, and they have no meaningful regulatory pressure to stop, and that even that mostly pales in comparison to the emissions generated by electricity production, which we need to decarbonize as quickly as possible.
> The reality is that a small handful of industries generate the majority of pollution
You can pick your pie chart, and they'll all be a bit different based on the categories they choose. I like this one from 2016 because, even though it's 8 years old, it seems to have all the sectors:
If you want to get to zero emissions, you have to replace or remove all of these:
Iron and Steel: 7.2%
Road Transport: 11.9%
Aviation Transport: 1.7%
Commercial Buildings: 6.6%
Residential Buildings: 10.9%
Cement: 3.0%
Those are all small percentages. There's really no one thing you can eliminate to solve the majority of the problem.
If you went by broader strokes, let's say you get rid of:
ALL of Industry: 29.4%
ALL of Transportation: 16.2%
ALL energy for buildings: 17.5%
ALL agriculture: 18.4%
So at that point, we're basically back in the stone age and the various waste categories will be zero too. But then you'd have 8 billion people huddling around fire pits, which isn't zero emission either.
If anyone is inclined to find another pie chart to contradict this one, make sure it's not focused on the emissions in just one tiny sector. We can say that everyone should have electric cars because ICEs are 99% of vehicle emissions, but fixing 99% of 11.9% of the total problem isn't going to solve the total problem.
No there's not. There's multiple things which need to happen. If you halve those commercial, residential, road and aviation figures that's a decent start. It's not the full answer, but it's part of the answer.
People have to see everyone doing their part though. Back in WW2 when food was rationed it didn't really make any difference if the 1% had 3 times as much, but if people saw that we weren't "all in it together" then nothing would get done.
I don't agree with that. It makes people feel good to say "every little bit helps" as they pretend they're doing their part, but I don't hear anyone saying that halving emissions is sufficient to stop any problems. And halving that list is less than 15% of the total. Little bits don't help - they're pointless gestures.
I rather that aviation contributes 1.5% instead of 3%. Of course, industries that pollute more should work harder to reduce their pollution.
Rather than banning private jet, we could ask that private jet uses only carbon neutral fuels, since they could afford it. However, it might cause rich people to pollute more by using their cars instead of flying, so there's a balancing act.
> we could ask that private jet uses only carbon neutral fuels
As was pointed out, this would be for "feel good" purposes only. Private jets are a small part of total aviation emissions, which are themselves a small part of global carbon emissions.
It would be a case of something like "statistical murder" where resources or dollars are spent on making a small difference when the same resources or dollars could be spent on something else that make a much bigger difference.
The elephant in the room is electrical generation. That is where all effort needs to be focused until we reach the point of diminishing returns and the tradeoff vs. other opportunities makes something else worth pursuing.
> However, it might cause rich people to pollute more by using their cars instead of flying, so there's a balancing act.
Sustainable Aviation Fuel is ~$1/liter vs ~$.5 for regular fuel. For a "big" Global 7500 that burns 2kL/hr the markup is $1k/hr on a plane that usually costs $15-20k/hr to rent.
Doesn't seem like a big markup for people who care about their public image.
> rather that aviation contributes 1.5% instead of 3%
This describes massively raising the cost of package shipment and air travel. (You can’t cut aviation emissions in half with only private jets or even all of general aviation.)
Were that to happen, I know my responses would probably include buying a larger car (to make travel more comfortable) and possibly expanding my house (since I can’t leave it as often). It would probably play differently in Europe, where passenger rail is a real alternative, granted.
> we could ask that private jet uses only carbon neutral fuels
> I'm happy if restricting single use plastic like plastic straws helps even a small amount to reduce plastic pollution.
Then well, okay. A small victory for you, a huge loss for the focus on solving the problem.
Is it a coincidence that the Media focuses on trivialities that are all about “consumer choice”? No. It’s so that we lose focus on the greater picture. Things like restructuring society.
Oh, everything in this store is wrapped in plastic? Nevermind that, shopper—use our reusable bags that cost way more energy and plastic to manufacture. Don’t be a plastic-sinner.
And you’re just gonna lose that battle. The Media can churn out thousands of concern-troll articles about plastic straws for every little nudge of care in a plebian comment section somewhere on the Internet.
The only reason the Media has to care a little bit about it is because of the absurdity of taking a private jet to Davos or whatever to discuss climate change.
> PFAS were found in the majority of the straws tested and were most common in those made from paper and bamboo, found the study, published in Food Additives & Contaminants. [1]
I would prefer not to consume this with my drink [2].
Not every seemingly positive action is actually positive. Second order effects must be always considered.
> Personally I don't want plastic trash polluting the environment.
Ban throwing them into the environment, then. I've never thrown my plastic straws into the ocean, that happens further down the line of trash disposal. So why should I be the one who's punished for it?
We might have been able to get away with a goal of non-zero if we had reduced carbon emissions 40 years ago, but now our goal is 0. So that means we must eliminate or sequester from all sectors, including aviation.
If you say "we should attack the bigger numbers first", well we have started those. We have started replacing electricity generation with renewables, started replacing ICE cars with electric, and started replacing fossil heating with electric heat pumps.
Banning private jets may be an unreasonable ask, but forcing private jets to 6x their fuel costs to use net-zero fuels is not an unreasonable ask, IMO.
Presumably any coordinated global action on climate change including from countries who produce semi and auto. If globe wants to limit emissions, they're not going to be taking 3% from billions who emit less than that. Gov that cares will lower your standard if living if they care enough. See France trying to ban domestic flights. I mean obviously no one is going to kill global aviation, but private jets, why not.
The problem is that the idea is we should make personal sacrifices for the sake of the climate (I agree that we should generally speaking) and do things like ban gas stoves. Ok.
But when you tell me that and then I see people and companies writing off private jets as a business expense, all that makes me want to do is say get your hands off my stove because clearly this can't be that serious of a problem [1] if this is continuing to occur.
Nobody will be willing to make sacrifices voluntarily that wealthier people aren't and so we have a big marketing problem here. Raise the taxes on private jets and aviation fuel for them 5,000% and have those go to funding climate science (or some other general idea here) and we can talk about my stove.
> The reality is that a small handful of industries generate the majority of pollution
No, your argument is the distraction. "Lets do nothing, there's these big guys over here doing worse". And for whom do these industries generate goods and services for?
Please point to where I said "Lets do nothing" /anywhere/ on this issue? I think we need to do numerous things, immediately, and drastically. Distracting ourselves with complaining about the rich is not one of those things, because it /is/ a distraction.
>> 3% is a pretty big reduction for such a simple thing...
> You think getting rid of aviation is a simple thing?
That's not what was suggested, initially. Just the private jets. Then there have been some numbers thrown around, so it's not clear where the 3% comes from (1/2 of 7%?). Kneejerk opposition by taking the least charitable interpretation, is not constructive. One point is that something measurable, is action in the right direction, rather than whataboutism...even if it's only marginally effective, it's a mindset change for the following generations. Policies that are easy to understand (like banning personal jets) are more likely to be enacted than complicated carbon capture laws. That's another point being made.
The very first sentence in the parent comment is "All aviation, altogether, private jets inclusive, is less than 3% of world emissions." So your comment is completely off base.
Okay, and the person who replied was clearly talking about private planes. Hence the “so simple” part. Unless you interpret it uncharitably, like the person who replied to you said.
Hence, this is what I meant by choosing the least charitable interpretation. At least read through the thread to get the context and try to imagine different positions. Usually, people are trying to contribute to a conversation, even if they communicate it badly. If that's too much, get used to nobody caring about what you think or arguing until they get bored. It's certainly boring to talk to a wall.
Notice, it's a very common occurrence. People note that something posted is inaccurate, in their own personal interpretation. It's usually not directed at them, but there's a need to correct the posted because of their personal interpretation (re: xkcd Duty Calls). This is not to say, I've never been guilty of this (maybe this post is a great example). Sometimes I want to argue. Sometimes I want to explore my own beliefs, given another person's position, and get it recorded somewhere. That being said, I can recognize that it's not constructive for the conversation at hand and I'm trying to do better, while still growing my own understanding.
Very easy, easier you would thought Just drill few holes on top of the jets, pour hot water as long youll see the water leveling from windows, make it half. Pour also few bucket of yeast and ton of sugar. Shield the holes carefully, let the jet be in sunshine and follow from needed distance what happens.
The problem with this line of thinking in my opinion is that we have 30x3% problems... sure individually they would not make a difference but we need to act on all front.
This is the NIMBY of polluting. Everyone can point to other emissions and say "mines only 3%, worry about those other 50% guys over there." when I bet one of the top "small handful of industries" you're going to point to is something like concrete that is literally making affordable buildings for the peasants to live in while homelessness is already far too high.
The real question is what actual reductions you think are easy to make on which particular industries that doesn't make housing, electricity, and heat more expensive for the global median income of $3k, while these people are private jetting to watch a football game in person that's on TV. Because when it comes to 0.5% of emissions, I know I'm going to pick taxing wasteful private jets rather than charge the global poor another $50 they don't have. Not to mention the messaging and optics, ffs look at that thread. Hypocritical private jetting is not how you get people collectively on board to fight climate change. If they have to sacrifice, you do too.
I know it's super in vogue to hate the rich or whatever, but if we want to effectively fight climate change we have to do so strategically, supported by data.
The data is pretty clear on this matter, the absolute priority is reducing the carbon footprint of electricity production, the second priority should be reducing the carbon footprint of cargo transport and agriculture, and the third priority should be reducing the carbon footprint of manufacturing. Aligned to each of these is a consistent reduction in how much fossil fuels we extract, especially natural gas which due to pipeline leakage contributes a huge amount of methane into the atmosphere, which is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.
I am /very/ specifically not doing some sort of whataboutism based fingerpointing to things that affect the poor in order to defend the rich. I don't care about rich and poor, we're all human beings, and we're all currently headed towards an extinction level event for our entire species because people are distracted by stupid things that don't matter and ignoring the data. Your heart bleeding for the global poor is smoke and mirrors in the face of it all.
We, as a species, cannot afford to bring everyone to the same standard of living that exists in the West today while combatting climate change. If we're being really blunt, the standard of living in the West must also be reduced. Perhaps if we ever completely get on renewable electricity production and find a way to turn excess energy into removing carbon from the atmosphere we can reassess what it takes to increase the global standard of living, but we're already fucked as it is just doing what we're already doing, expending more resources extracted from the earth to spew more waste into the atmosphere than we already are is an absolute non-starter.
My mindset is likely 95% the same as yours. However, it is also important to curtail wasteful private jet emissions, even if electricity and standards of living are bigger priorities. What I'm also trying to get at, is if you want political consensus on tackling climate change (which half of the US electorate doesn't give af about emissions currently), then we need to have better optics and put some self-sacrifice in. This reddit thread is a damning example that you can't tell everyone climate change is going to affect their standard of living, meanwhile "doesn't affect me, I can throw unlimited $ at private jets whenever I need to watch football."
There was a Bill Gates interview with some guy from the BBC doing a half hour sit down. He asked about the private jets, Bill waffled about having lots of meetings and that his work/investment was to help with projects that would reduce carbon use, etc. etc.
You could tell that 1st class on a public airline was below him and that was his red line. We can take his "help" with the private jet, or we can leave it.
These are elites that want US to change our behaviour. I'm sure a lot of people would rather drive their car than use public transport, Bill. Maybe you could lead by example...
