European. Liberal. Fundamentalist green. I never downvote opinions: jeering at people is poor form. Comments with insulting language, or snark, or gotchas, or other effort-free content, will simply be ignored.
Calm down. The USA is not by any measure an “authoritarian dictatorship” with “no rule of law”. Not yet. Instead of wailing histrionics like this, Americans would do better to roll up their sleeves and do something to stop the slide.
Make sure your representatives know what you think. Get involved in local politics. Protest. Its precisely because your country is not an authoritarian dictatorship that you (still) have so many options.
This is the closest to a sensible response so far. The problem then is that it is basically impossible to spend lots of money without creating pollution somewhere up or down the chain. Because money is itself a vector of pollution. But your point is taken.
Absolutely illogical. The flight is going because you created demand for it by buying the ticket. This is exactly the same as saying, “Why bother voting? Your single vote won’t make any difference”.
Who’s getting angry and defensive in this debate?
My concern is with not being a hypocrite, that’s all.
The 3% figure is going up, up, up exponentially with no end in sight. Because right now, most of the world’s people have never set foot in a plane but they sure want to. And why shouldn’t they? After all, we do (or do we?).
That figure is in fact misleading for the purposes of this debate, because for individuals flying has a huge impact on one’s carbon footprint. That’s not surprising when you think about it: it’s similar to driving (alone in a smallish car) for the same distance, but who drives to NZ and back? The problem is distance and time. And most people in the world have never taken a plane. It’s a completely unscalable as an activity.
About alternatives, the premise of this whole debate seems to be that the only good holidays are ones far, far away. That is very debatable.
I’m less bothered about being a killjoy than I would be about being a hypocrite.
On an individual level, vacations are not an “incredibly small factor”. For an average person, a single flight will wipe out all their other conscientious efforts in terms of diet, housing etc. For some reason most people are only dimly aware of this fact.
If people really aren’t interested in the impacts of their choices, why should I not be disappointed? Why aren’t you? Surely it’s disappointing. Nobody will be taking any luxurious distant holidays on a planet that’s been made unliveable by the cumulative impact of 8 billion people who don’t give a shit.
I will answer for them. Because flying from the Netherlands to New Zealand in economy class will emit the equivalent of about 4 tons of carbon dioxide. Roughly equivalent to driving a car every day for a year or so.
Do hypothetical questions automatically have no moral dimension?
This one is on the way. Big thanks to China, small thanks to the EU, no thanks to the usual suspect.
Disappointed but unsurprised to see nobody acknowledging that there might be reasons other than money for not flying business class to the other end of the world.
Removed by mod
The treaty to fix it was 38 years ago but the hole only began to close in the last decade. As expected and now confirmed.
Norway really proves that a country can be both tough and civilized. If you want more, here’s a shortish doc about the (very young) Norwegians currently guarding Nato’s northern border with Russia.
Same, same, and same.
I like it. The reasoning’s good.
I hate the term “instance”. It’s hopelessly geeky (it derives from object-oriented programming). It brings to mind nerds and gamers in basements.
The correct answer.
Warning people to stay inside their bubbles to avoid the awful possibility of reading things they disagree with. A nice metaphor for our times.