[akkawwakka]

I feel more guilty about our usage of non-renewable, GHG-generating power sources like coal or natural gas power plants, and about driving around in my car (even though it’s electric).

Aviation accounts for just 2% of CO2 emissions. While it’s good that Airbus is considering alternative, greener fuels, because aviation will continue to grow, there are larger determinants of GHG emissions and warming.

Also, how you even certify use of hydrogen on an aircraft will be a challenge. The current design for fuel has been well-understood for seventy-five years now, and like the rest of aviation some improvements have unfortunately but unavoidably come from tragedy (see TWA 800). You can throw a match into Jet-A and it won’t catch fire. Throw a match into a flask of hydrogen and you have a fire or explosion.

[coeneedell]

I've noticed that a lot of the discussion around environmentalism is focused as if the bad decision-making is happening at the consumer level. The pervasive belief that A: electric cars directly reduce your personal carbon footprint (they do, but the substantiality of that depends on where you live) and B: travel is a major drain on the environment are very suspicious to me. These are pervasive beliefs among environmentalists. Meanwhile very little attention is paid to corporate and nation level changes. The best thing you can do for the environment is vote. This feels counterproductive but it's entirely true.

In addition, it seems to me that the discussion around nation level changes has become focused on a developed nations vs developing nations issue, when in reality it's all of our issues.

[politelemon]

I do agree, and take it a bit further: I feel that one of the greatest modern tricks that have been played on us is to shift attention away from the actual culprits and make us believe that it is us, at the lowest levels, who need to make the changes and fix the environment. Things like flight shaming and straws stand out as prominent examples and this could very well be due to the tangibility of the actions. When they avoid a flight and take public transport, or use a metal straw, they can feel like they are doing something. But the impact is miniscule compared to what they could be doing which is enacting a policy change at higher levels, changes which will have an impact for years to come.

This 'attention shift', it's similar to the way the plastic/oil industry successfully instilled recycling as a way to get us thinking we're doing something useful, while the larger goal was to keep plastic bans at bay [1]

This trick plays itself out in other spheres; recently in the UK we would have people "clapping for the NHS". They would stand outside their doors and clap or bang pots/pans together. Very few of us wrote to our MPs asking for better working conditions and better pay. Anyway, just last week, our government voted against protecting the NHS from a post-Brexit trade deal.

1: https://www.npr.org/2020/03/31/822597631/plastic-wars-three-...

[WalterBright]

The most efficient solution is ridiculously simple - put a tax on the emission of pollution. Couple it with a corresponding tax reduction on productive behavior.

This is based on the blindingly obvious maxim that if you want more of something, subsidize it. If you want less, tax it.

And by taxing pollution instead of regulating it, you generate revenue for the government.

[PaulHoule]

In the us people riot if police kill an unarmed black.

People in the us accept that the price of fuel goes up and down but they are the only ones. In other countries people riot when the cost of fuel goes up.

Many people have a lot of fear that tradable emission permits are an Enron-style scam that will suck money out of our pockets into somebody's pocket who will recycle 1% of profits back to politicians to maintain their privilege.

What we need to is either ban certain uses of fossil fuels or introduce an energy source that is so superior that people don't want to use fossil fuels. The latter is hard but doesn't violate the laws of physics, but any other kind of Collective action on climate violates the laws of social physics which are absolute for N > 10^9.

[lcam84]

return the money from these tariffs to everyone through a unconditional income

[PaulHoule]

Definitely if you did a carbon tax it could be made revenue neutral by either paying it back to people and cut other taxes.

[imtringued]

People don't like paying taxes and they also don't like their taxes being wasted. If the tax is revenue neutral (refund total co2 tax revenue divided by number of tax payers) there is no problem in theory but people still hate taxes.

[Gibbon1]

I go a step further and say for consumer stuff, put a stiff excise tax on things that emit pollution at the point of sale. Don't apply a $60/ton carbon tax on gasoline. Put a $100/ton excise tax on new cars. Use the cash flow to buy back older cars.

When it comes to industrial stuff, that's what you just work with industry to generate mandates that everyone has to follow. Manufacturing managers I talk to say they don't mind mandates. They just don't want to the be the sucker. As in Gallant installs $5 worth of emissions controls. Gooffus ships the factory to Indonesia and bribes government officials to look the other way.

[guerby]

Nothing fishy or secret, in the EU for example transport is about 30% of CO2 emissions:

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/201...

Only source of CO2 that has relatively grown for the past two decades.

> they do, but the substantiality of that depends on where you live

This is true but misleading: yes if your electricity is produced by coal plants electric cars are just slightly better CO2-wise (but cleaner on NOx and other sources of pollution), but the idea is to move away from coal so that running your EV become cleaner over time. (1)

A striking example is the UK, this chart tells the story of coal to renewables:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jun/09/great-brita...

(1) and as a consumer in most countries you can vote with your money by choosing to buy electricity coming from renewables.

[ehnto]

General consumption drives the need for heavy industries that contribute the most to pollution, so it's indirect but still the consumer at the helm.

However, I totally agree that the focus should be on those heavy polluting industries. I don't believe it's evil for humans to want to live the lives they do, with the technology we've created, and I also don't think we can change enough people to ever make a dent in those consumption requirements. Better to fix the issue more efficiently, at the source of the pollution, by switching heavily polluting industry out for greener alternatives, as the input into the consumption machine.

[Gibbon1]

At least I think we agree the whole solve the problem by nudging consumers personal choices but otherise slap them silly when they make or worse previously made what or now bad decisions is kinda terrible. See imposing a stiff carbon tax on someone filling up their 15 year old car.

The size of needed changes and consumers limited agency makes anything but coordinated society wide action a worthless endeavor.

[melling]

There are about 2,500 coal power plants in the world and hundreds of millions of cars.

Perhaps you could come to some sort of conclusion about why we should start the switch to EV’s now?

[lcam84]

Aviation is responsible for 2% of carbon emissions but was growing at 4% per year. Aviation is responsible for the mass tourism that drives people out of cities to make way for airbnb's. This increases their commute. It also increases real estate speculation, i.e. more construction of houses (cement alone accounts for another 2% of emissions). We cannot take a reductionist view of the problem. Mass tourism was one of the biggest environmental problems and was based on aviation. Travelling by air is a privilege that only a small percentage of the population has access to. If everyone did that we would quickly exhaust our carbon budget.

[PaulHoule]

It is funny that people in the aviation business don't treat it as if it was a growth business. That is why Boeing feels entitled to keep making a 50 year old airframe forever. You couldn't do that if you were making cars.

When it comes to environmental consequences aviation is a growth business, the most important thing we can do is address the 737-class airplanes that people ride in, not the widebody airplanes that are advertised in magazines. Too often ideas like blended wing body, hybrid, and hydrogen are used as excuses to delay a 737 replacement. We've been watching this movie for decades but these is enough $$$ going to the media and politicians and nothing will replace the 737 until the Chinese do it with to the C919 and then all the people who brought you this disaster will say they were blindsided. They get blindsided every time because that's what they do.

[WalterBright]

> You can throw a match into Jet-A and it won’t catch fire.

Yeah, well, we all know jet fuel burns very well and that's why it's so useful. Fire is the worst crisis on an airliner.

[MertsA]

No he's right, Jet-A has plenty of energy but it's not very volatile so unless you've got a very large hot fire it will not sustain itself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nL10C7FSbE

It takes a spray nozzle atomizing it for him to actually meaningfully burn it with a blowtorch.

[busterarm]

Because fire consumes oxygen (which you have an enormous supply of) that people need to breathe as well as the airframe/wings you need to stay in the air and the landing gear you need to safely get back on the ground.

Not because of jet fuel.

[Melting_Harps]

> Aviation accounts for just 2% of CO2 emissions. While it’s good that Airbus is considering alternative, greener fuels, because aviation will continue to grow, there are larger determinants of GHG emissions and warming.

Agreed. This is why, despite being an active member in the sustainable movement for nearly 18 years now, I've never once felt 'ashamed' due to my travels all over the World and will continue to do so. The model shows that unsustainable living habits, particularly those of waste and uncaptured value due to loss in these network,s are the real glut of not just CO2 emissions, but also of CH4 and other more harmful GH gasses.

If anything Travel, not to be mistaken with tourism, can open your eyes to seeing your Fellow Human as you see yourself as you interact and briefly and live as he does and in turn walk away with a Global sense of Community and an understanding that cannot be conveyed in books, TV or movies. I think it's why despite my 'radical thinking' I sincerely feel that the ICE based model for airplanes, and rockets will likely always remain. We should strive for constant refinement, not scrapping it since it accounts for so little of total GH emissions and can have a high ROI.

> These are pervasive beliefs among environmentalists. Meanwhile very little attention is paid to corporate and nation level changes.

No, its just not enforced up on by Nation States, as they often have strong incentives to keep things as they are, the environmentalists (I'm one) have been pushing for corporations to be held accountable for eco-cide [1], and be held accountable for all the costs it has and will incur, which in turn could help fund the remediation of those sites.

> The best thing you can do for the environment is vote. This feels counterproductive but it's entirely true.

No, entirely false, for the reasons listed above. The best you can do is think Globally and act locally about the problem. That is begin to get active in these matters in your community and share your ideas and build a collective of people driven to see these goals get accomplished in real-time; the State will not do it for you, and waiting and relying on them to do so is how we got to this point and why its so wide spread. People are still surprised when they're expected to use their corrupt Legal system and expect another result?! Your diffusion of PERSONAL responsibility to this apparatus is the real problem, not what specious reasoning or beliefs some 'environmentalists' may or may not have or use.

Voting gives you the illusion you're doing something, when you really aren't and are only really validating a flawed concept with your continual participation, and the idea of it ever really making any difference is where you see the divide between people who actually do, and those that only talk about it. The former being where most people remain to this day on the matter(s) even as the problems continue to compound.

1: https://ecocidelaw.com/the-law/what-is-ecocide/

[dd36]

Voting matters. In Arizona, state government prevents local government from more progressive policies.