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by greggoB 4 days ago
> People who complain about aviation do more harm than good.

I find this a bit hard to swallow. It speaks to a sense of impunity wrt emissions for a demographic that very arguably drives much of the rest of the way energy is consumed. It is one of many choice this demographic has the privelage of making, in contrast to much of the rest of the population.

Have you ever met a coal or oil exec who was shy about flying? If anything, the latter would no doubt lobby hard against efforts to reign in flights, as it's directly tied to the interests of their industry.

2 comments

Who cares. Fix the big problems first. The general public is already complaining about subsidizing EVs, renewables, etc.

It’s ridiculous the amount of fossil fuels we still burn for electricity.

This “shame, shame” garbage that people did never worked.

Hard to tell what you're specifically bothered by - is it a focus on emissions that aren't specifically fossil fuels burned for electricity, or "shame, shame garbage", as you put it?

In either case, I think we can be expected to walk and chew gum; to see every source of emissions as its own individual problem (scaled to proportion, ofc) AND recognize that they inevitably feed into each other. To do less is counterproductive, IMO.

> subsidizing renewables

Except this isn't happening. Oil is subsidised (and not just by the constant action for the last 50 years to keep oil flowing from the middle east), and has been for decades. Even coal is subsidised in the US

Renewables are increasingly banned in the US.

I agree the nonsense about the tree botherers saying "we need to be vegetarian and use no more than 1kWh a day of energy" are twats that do more harm than good, but the US specifically has an agenda against renewable energy, presumably because it's not the subscription model that the US loves. You buy your solar panel and it works for decades. You buy a gallon of gas and you're back the next day to buy it again.

> we need to be vegetarian

In my experience it's been vegan even :P And yes, agreed, this is indeed counterproductive virtue signalling.

Even then you get complaints

"oh you use almond milk, that's terrible you should use soya"

"oh you use soya, that's terrible you should drink black tea"

"oh you're having tea, how dare you continue plantation slavery"

The people driving it tend not to be flying 300 miles on a public 767, even at the front.