> Gates is one of the world’s biggest “super-emitters” due to his regular private jet travel.
Is this behaviour net-negative for climate is the actual question, in my opinion. This one is much harder to answer than compiling a list of his trips and summing up estimated emissions.
Personal emissions are only responsible for a small portion of total emissions regardless of how rich the individual is. There are a small set of companies doing most of the damage. Attacking individuals for their emissions continues an oil company - driven personal responsibility frame that stops us from solving the problems.
I don't understand this argument. Do these corporations exist in a vacuum? We use their products and services. They don't just emit co2 for the fun of it. No, we're not all individually responsible alone. We're all responsible together.
The worlds big emitters are not products or services we use directly. They are significantly up the food chain from us. Changing our individual behaviors have basically no impact on demand for anything they do. People aren’t going to live in half the size of house or get more roommates, or stop having children, or stop using office space, so the construction industry continues to be one of the largest emitters in the world.
Changing this requires focus on the largest problem companies and extremely targeted lobbying. Individual choice pressures just make us fight with each other while we burn to death.
Going after individuals is part of framing by the oil companies to make us blame each other, instead of targeting the small number of huge companies responsible for the majority of global emissions.
If you don’t know anything about oil companies, you may be missing big parts of the climate change conversation. Individual actions, even from rich people, do not invalidate the points they make. Attacking them on those grounds is part of a campaign by the oil companies to make you and I fight people who are not the root cause of the problem. Don’t be taken in by it. A small number of large companies are responsible for the vast majority of omissions, and even many rich individuals changing their behavior have no impact on that.
You haven’t gone into what these companies are doing, but I fully believe you.
...but that’s not the point. Gates makes Gates look like a hypocrite not some unnamed “oil companies” mounting a conspiracy.
He should try riding a bike or catching a public train or a boat if he wants credibility. Heck even using a normal airline like the rest of us if he really has to fly.
A private jet is like a gold bathroom; it doesn’t matter how righteous you think you are it ain’t a good look unless you’re a third world dictator.
Gates doesn’t make himself look like anything. Individuals burning fossil fuels for transportation is simply not a problem. The system that makes that the only reasonable choice for us is the problem. We need your help, you personally, to stop spreading that frame.
Repeating that makes it harder to fight climate change. We are not all complicit, most of us as individuals are limited by the systems around us. Those who have actual power in the system are the ones who need pressure. If you pressure everyone to change every little thing about their life, they burn out and stop caring.
there are choices you make every day without giving it another thought which contribute a drop in the bucket of destroying our own habitat and biome. and many people are making those same choices together. you could sacrifice and live like a poor person but you don,t. like a nouveau riche, you buy things you don,t need from the global economy which are trucked and shipped around the world on diesel many times over before you see them, and you know it, and you still do it, because you,re too lazy to make a change. then you blame the ones you just hired to do the damage for you. you're giving your power away and have no one else to blame.
I used to subscribe to this approach of personal responsibility. But even if absolutely everyone made all the personal choices they can, using up all their energy and time, they would cut world emissions by between 10 and 20%. Climate change is simply not something we can fix this way, and if we focus on that tiny chunk of it, we ignore the really important conversation about the companies that generate the vast majority.
The firm that manages his money is. Gates himself might not even be aware of this. Managing billions is not like opening an app and checking your back account.
Is this behaviour net-negative for climate is the actual question, in my opinion. This one is much harder to answer than compiling a list of his trips and summing up estimated emissions.