
For the love of Earth, stop traveling - rkda
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/theworldpost/wp/2017/11/02/plane-pollution/
======
mnm1
Sure, once corporations are regulated properly and prevented from contributing
unnecessarily to emissions, I will stop taking leisure flights. That's a
promise I know I can make because I will never have to keep it. Until then, I
don't see what the point is and I actively refuse to make changes when the
entities most responsible for emissions, corporations, are allowed to do
nothing and go on about their polluting ways. Nothing I do will make a
difference. The plane I gave up my seat on will still fly and still use about
as much fuel. My not flying on said plane will not prevent thousands of other
planes from, for example, delivering tomatoes from the other side of the world
when there are plenty of local ones. Pass legislation addressing the 80% of
the problem (corporate pollution) and then ask individuals to address the
other 20%. Doing things in reverse is not only dumb but quite ineffective.

------
alexasmyths
How about nationalize all Uranium on planet Earth thereby resolving fuel costs
only to the cost of extraction, and building 1000 CANDU heavy-water reactors
in Northern Ontario in a 10x100 grid - building only 3 variations (proven
models) with very simple designs, and then simplifying the fuel cycle process
dramatically.

The French do 85% of their Electricity on Nuclear because they built a bunch
of identical plants at the same time thereby saving massively on costs.

And then repeat in the Nevada desert.

Costs have a lot do do with 'insurance' 'fuel' massive overhead of
bureaucracy. It's like building a tunnel in Boston - massive soft corruption,
stupidity etc.

The actual, bare-bones costs of a nuke plant should not be that high.

Do 1000 at once, as an 'international project' ...

And then coordinate with major economies to do likewise: China, India, Europe
& Africa (built in Sahara), Middle East (built in Saudi Arabia defended by
American troops), Argentina.

Built in regional pricing mechanisms (i.e. guaranteed x% to Iran, Pakistan,
Egypt, Vietnam, Brazil etc.)

And 15% goes directly to atmospheric CO2 capture.

Now there's a 'Marshall Plan'.

~~~
Turing_Machine
No need to nationalize the uranium (I am quite skeptical that would reduce the
"massive overhead of bureaucracy" you mention), but other than that your plan
would indeed solve the problem (to the extent it is a problem).

The problem is that the people behind this don't _actually_ want to solve the
problem. They just want to use it as an excuse for a power grab.

~~~
alexasmyths
Nationalization would be required because once the plan was announced, the
price of Uranium would go through the roof - and then bidding/speculation
would start and Uranium would be coming up all over the place. Specifically:
Russia.

Australia, Russia and Canada have most of the known deposits.

If the market price of Uranium is literally $0, well, Russians get nothing
directly out of digging it up.

The grand concern would be, once something like this got going, there would be
copycat entites in places that are not ready for it, i.e. China, Russia, Iran.
Maybe China is today, but they are always teetering on revolution, or some
kind of massive upheaval. There's no place like Canada for a vast expanse of
boring, stable, calm, political stability and basic (but never exceptional)
operational effectiveness.

~~~
Turing_Machine
1) How would nationalizing it make the price $0? Government services are
notorious for costing more than private sector equivalents.

2) How are you planning to get the Russians to go along with this?

Edit to add:

3) Why shouldn't the Russians (or anyone else) get paid for digging it up?
Mining uranium isn't something that people are going to do for fun.

~~~
alexasmyths
Western governments would only pay 'cost' for digging up Uranium in Canadian
(or other sanctioned) mines, thereby creating 0 demand for Uranium on global
markets.

Nothing would stop the Russians from doing whatever they please. If this
'massive project' done by private entities - Uranium prices would rise
dramatically, thereby creating incentive for Russian gov/private entities to
ramp up Uranium production.

But with a 'nationalization' \- well, global Urainum prices might remain weak
knowing ain't nobody in the 'Western World' going to pay crazy prices for
something that's too dangerous and no government would allow the sale of.

The 'nationalization' by Western Governments would surely be accompanied by a
ban on private sale of it.

So the market would collapse making Russian gov/private entities less willing
to put any dollars behind it.

But of course they can do whatever they want whenever they please - as they
can today.

By the way - even with governments notorious and dysfunctional bureaucracy - I
still think it would be cheaper than buying it from private entities where
most of the cost would be in the form of some kind of rent extraction, not
very related to the cost of extracting it.

------
coldtea
Or stop consuming so much.

Traveling, especially without airplanes (which is perfectly possible in lots
of parts of the world -- vacationing to a train/car-accessible country that
is), is trivial compared to industrial production of crap.

Making advertising illegal would decrease needless consumption (and pollution)
by a ton, plus all the benefits for our quality of life.

~~~
Auricoma
>Making advertising illegal

Might as well make money illegal.

~~~
cousin_it
Let's say you're selling product X at price Y. There are three kinds of people
you could reach with advertising:

* People who have an unmet need for product X at price Y.

* People whose need for product X at price Y is already met, but who can be manipulated into buying from you rather than someone else.

* People who don't need product X at price Y, but can be manipulated into needing it.

Advertising is only good for society to the extent it reaches the first group.
Influencing the second and third groups can be profitable for you, but on a
societal scale it's just a game-theoretic arms race that wastes resources,
plasters our environment with ads, and makes people miserable with new needs.
We should totally try to discourage it.

~~~
mbrock
Do you volunteer to be the one to inform business owners and small art house
cinema operators that they're now forbidden to engage in any marketing of
their goods and services, and all the media that the majority of their revenue
is now illegal? This is a completely unrealistic fantasy unless you want to
provoke a large scale uprising.

~~~
coldtea
> _Do you volunteer to be the one to inform business owners and small art
> house cinema operators that they 're now forbidden to engage in any
> marketing of their goods and services, and all the media that the majority
> of their revenue is now illegal?_

Actually, small business owners and small art house cinema operators would (or
should) be delighted from such a change -- it means the films they play could
get as much marketing revenue (0) as the blockbusters now advertised all
across town.

This would TURN people towards the more quirky, smaller scale and generally
the less able to advertise today, not the opposite...

~~~
mbrock
Depends on how you define advertising. It's fundamentally impossible to have a
market without marketing. The cinema gets its audience by posting events on
Facebook, and that's advertising, right?

~~~
coldtea
> _The cinema gets its audience by posting events on Facebook, and that 's
> advertising, right?_

No, that's just posting their events on their own channel that people have to
subscribe to to see.

But even if we classify that as advertising we can still allow that -- we're
inventive, as humans -- without still not allowing for 90% of what today is
used for advertising.

~~~
mbrock
When you ban that 90%, all that desire and energy and capital will sink into
the other channels, and the outcome will be nothing like you wanted, just like
banning drugs is nothing at all like deleting drugs from society.

~~~
coldtea
Aside from drugs and alcohol, which are addictive, it has worked wonders for
tons of other things...

------
mbrock
Telling people to please stop doing things that are profoundly enjoyable, in
opinion columns, seems like the stupidest possible idea for how to solve the
climate crisis.

~~~
jacobush
Also, you see, other peoples' travelings are mostly stupid and pointless, but
my own travels enriches the world!

~~~
mbrock
Or, like, my life is a nightmare for reasons X Y and Z and now I can't even go
on vacation to a warm place when the winter comes?

How much of flying is business travel anyway? You think people are going to
tell their bosses they're not taking the plane for that sales meeting because
of teh climate?

Maybe a tiny amount of virtuous people, but generally hell no.

The vegetarianism and animal rights movement has had many decades to convince
people to give up meat and it's just not happening. People eat more and more
meat.

~~~
chillingeffect
> The vegetarianism and animal rights movement has had many decades to
> convince people to give up meat and it's just not happening. People eat more
> and more meat.

Where are you getting your stats from? Vegetarianism seems on the rise to me.
There are some stats to Back it up, too: 2.5% in 2009 to 5% in 2014.

[1] [http://www.onegreenplanet.org/news/is-2014-the-year-of-
the-v...](http://www.onegreenplanet.org/news/is-2014-the-year-of-the-vegan/)

~~~
mbrock
I'm on mobile and can't find great sources, but there's OECD statistics and it
seems like global meat consumption per capita rises.

[https://ensia.com/articles/these-maps-show-changes-in-
global...](https://ensia.com/articles/these-maps-show-changes-in-global-meat-
consumption-by-2024-heres-why-that-matters/)

I first heard about it in Swedish statistics when all my friends were
vegetarians or vegans and I really expected the trend to be reversing but
Swedes were indeed eating significantly more meat (this was a few years ago).

From what I see in restaurants it seems obvious that meat eating is at no risk
at all of declining except within a small enclave of virtuous herbivores.

And from what I understand of human nature, a juicy steak or burger is way
more vividly satisfying than the idea of marginally improving the climate
prognosis. It's like if sex turned out to be harmful to coral reefs—people
would kill themselves rather than go celibate.

------
crdoconnor
Or perhaps shrink the size of the military industrial complex, which makes up
29% of the country's energy usage: [http://www.truth-
out.org/news/item/3181:the-military-assault...](http://www.truth-
out.org/news/item/3181:the-military-assault-on-global-climate)

That's probably not something the Washington Post is likely to advocate for
though. Their relationship to the military industrial complex is eerily close,
especially now that they're a big customer of Bezos:
[http://www.accuracy.org/release/cia-cloud-over-jeff-
bezoss-w...](http://www.accuracy.org/release/cia-cloud-over-jeff-bezoss-
washington-post/)

~~~
votepaunchy
“by the end of World War II, the military's share rose to 29 percent.”

------
Mz
I live without a car. I work remotely. I barely showered for nearly 6 years
(cough... while homeless).

No one wants me as a role model.

Note how the guy lecturing you to cancel your plane tickets went to Morocco
with his wife. He has a genius award. He is an award winning author. You
generally don't get there by keeping your butt at home.

This is so very "Do as I say, not as I do." If this is such a great thing, why
did you speak at the conference in Morocco? Why didn't you turn it down
instead of bringing your wife and then calculating the total damage?

Edit:

Ah, a downvote. How ironic. "We don't want you as a role model and also shut
up. No one wants to hear your opinion either. "

Weirdly validating.

~~~
Mz
_thesmallestcat said:

I downvoted your comment because the first two paragraphs are off topic, seems
like you just wanted to talk about yourself._

They deleted it before I could post the following reply:

Other people talk about themselves all the time on HN. That usually doesn't
make a thing downvote worthy. But I get a lot of flak for it, presumably
because people find something inherently disturbing about me.

I don't think it is off topic. If you really want a strong role model for how
to live light on the land, you could admire me and follow my advice. Instead,
my many websites get no traction and I get a lot of open hostility.

That is exactly my point. People only listen to and admire the type of people
who fly to Morocco. People who actually walk the talk have no influence and
never will.

------
nathancahill
I disagree, here's Mark Twain's quote on the matter:

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our
people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of
men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the
earth all one's lifetime."

― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

~~~
taway_1212
I think it's less applicable now that the world is getting more homogenous -
i.e. you can go to almost any country and spend most of your time in your
American hotel, drink coffee at Starbucks, shop in American-style mall and
even speak English to lots of locals. Of course, you can go out of comfort
zone and interact with local culture, but in the past it was a necessity and
now it's an effort you need to consciously make. Not to mention that a lot of
the local "authentic" "experiences" you can stumble upon are actually a show
for the tourists, so you need to make an extra effort to filter them out.

~~~
Analog24
The world is getting more homogenous but it has a long way to go, so I think
it is still extremely applicable. And the world is nowhere near as
Americanized as you think, I would argue that in most places it takes much
more effort to avoid the local culture and stay in a Westernized comfort zone
than what you suggest.

------
jacobr
I cringe a little when people on Twitter keep posting their FOO(plane->)BAR
statuses about their many trips, like it's something to be proud of.

Sometimes there is no reasonable alternative to flying for a very important
trip, but some people seem to not consider the problematic aspects at all.

------
Overtonwindow
[https://www.theonion.com/new-eco-friendly-cigarettes-kill-
de...](https://www.theonion.com/new-eco-friendly-cigarettes-kill-destructive-
human-bein-1819571560)

/sarcasm

------
maxharris
Instead of trying to reduce options for people, why not put your energy toward
something positive, like this?
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkpqA8yG9T4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkpqA8yG9T4)

------
Turing_Machine
"According to former U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres, we have only
three years left "

Oh, give it a rest. You've been playing the "only x years left" routine for at
least 25 years now.

As I recall, Manhattan was supposed to be under water by now.

~~~
Turing_Machine
According to James Hansen, we had only four years left in 2009.

[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/jan/18/obama-
cl...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/jan/18/obama-climate-
change)

According to Al Gore, we had only ten years left in 2006.

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2006/01...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2006/01/25/AR2006012502230.html)

According to the World Wildlife Fund we had only five years left in 2007.

[https://www.wwf.org.uk/updates/climate-change-five-years-
lef...](https://www.wwf.org.uk/updates/climate-change-five-years-left-save-
world)

More failed "only x years left" predictions can easily be found with a bit of
Googling.

