StarDestroyer.Net BBS

I was motivated to make this post after seeing a Twitter campaign (I'll be linking to that shortly).

I've decided to share a few things of interest regarding action on environmental protection.

First, [there's a post by Tim Ferriss on simple things to do](https://tim.blog/2008/04/06/the-unusual ... he-market/) which include some of the usual actions and lesser known things like green index funds.

Second, and non-furs can participate in this too, is a campaign by FursForForests. The featured art will be SFW, so you don't need to worry about seeing naughty stuff on work time. Here's their FAQ thread.

I'm going to try doing some of these things if/when I can. I'm also planning on participating in the September climate strike: https://globalclimatestrike.net/?source ... =actionkit

Basically, I'm going to stop fretting and start doing. Rather uncharacteristic of me, right?

I've already done the most impactful thing I can: I've elected not to reproduce. So I guess by not doing, I've done something?

Alferd Packer wrote: ↑2019-08-23 10:30am I've already done the most impactful thing I can: I've elected not to reproduce. So I guess by not doing, I've done something?

My wife and I are doing the same.

One of the best things you can do in the developed world is reduce and (preferably) eliminate your intake of meat and other animal products. The amount of carbon and methane output you can reduce by doing that is simply shocking.

Is this the common sense blowjob thread? Is the line here?

Pretty much.


Well, I've finally felt enough guilt that I've done something. I worked out an approximate for how much CO2 out family produced this year (due to lifestyle, not much), and bought carbon offsets for it.
I plan to keep track our carbon use and do that every year. Petrol and electricity will be easy, the power bill lists CO2, and by keeping track of mileage ('kilometreage' really just doesn't sound right) I can get a good approximate for that.
I can't be responsible for everyone else's mess, but I can do something about my own.

Honestly, petrol offsetting is so cheap. At the current offset price I took (for tree planting in Australia) of $15 a tonne, it costs 3.45c per litre. Three and a half cents is just weekly price fluctuation. I can afford that for some guilt-free riding.

I decided to have a look at my solar production, and since I installed solar panels around october 2010, I have produced 14,832 kilowatt hours of energy and used 13,475 kilowatt hours of energy. At the time of purchase, I get paid nicely for my solar energy. By october of 2020 this offer ends and I get the standard rate, by then I will expand my solar panels.

Straha wrote: ↑2019-08-23 10:35pm One of the best things you can do in the developed world is reduce and (preferably) eliminate your intake of meat and other animal products. The amount of carbon and methane output you can reduce by doing that is simply shocking.

Due to medical issues I can't entirely eliminate animal products in my diet, but I certainly eat less meat than most omnivores and that's been the case for decades now. I don't just reduce animal product intake, I try to waste as little food as possible. I buy local produce over more distantly produced when I can. I have local contacts to get local, backyard-produced eggs. I do my best to only purchase sustainable seafood. I also am now getting local honey. (Unfortunately, I no longer have a place to garden myself) I recycle as much as I can, even at some inconvenience to myself (municipal trash pick up here doesn't separate recyclables, but there is a local recycler in this town and I'm still tickled pink they'll pay me for what, to me, is garbage). I replaced the weather-stripping on the door to my apartment which made an immediate, noticeable reduction in my utility costs. Instead tossing out old electronics I have a stack to take to an e-waste processor. I plan out my chores/errands in my car to do them efficiently and thus reduce gas use. I been making household cleaning stuff out of things like vinegar, baking soda, and alcohol for some years now instead of using some of the nasty-chemical laden highly perfumed stuff at the store (occasionally I do have to resort to something heavy duty, but it's rare rather than weekly) which I started doing when I lived at a home supplied by a well - all of sudden you can get very concerned what goes down the drain when it really can affect the water you drink. I try to fix things rather than throwing stuff out and getting something new immediately.

Sure, some things have more impact than others, but I've been shaving off the extent of my impact for years and years.

I guess back in the hippy years I really absorbed the who "reduce, reuse, recycle" meme.

Flying and a consumption heavy lifestyle is worse than eating meat. If you need to prioritize, never fly, first and foremost. Second, stop buying stuff (try as hard as you can anyway, or buy 2nd hand).

My household footprint is 6.5 tons per year according to the carbon footprint calculator, that is 1.6 tons per person.

You know, flying is a small fraction of the species' carbon footprint compared to the much more common automobile and other ground vehicle output. Not to mention coal-fired power plants. I agree, flying is not cheap in any sense, but if you're traveling from one continent to another there aren't a lot of alternatives these days.

Also, things like medical flights and emergency relief, among other operations, are just too damn useful to give up.

If you reduce your footprint in a lot of other ways I'll forgive someone taking an occasional flight. Think of it as trading carbon output in one area for carbon output in another. That's another route to reduced impact that you might actually get people to buy into.

Day-to-day, reducing driving is going to do more than saying never fly ever. I'd certainly like to see fewer airplanes and more long distance trains, but there is a point where a large airplane transporting hundreds of people at once over a very long distance can in fact be less expensive to the environment than other means of transportation. It's the thousands short-distance flights that become a problem, where other means of transportation would be preferable. It's better to say if there's a more environmentally kinder method than flying you should opt for that, but sometimes there isn't.

Most flights taken are unneccessary. A single round trip to NY from me is 3.6 tons, that's 1.5 years of driving for me, and at least driving gets me to work or to the grocery store. 99% of people traveling do it for leisure. And airplane travel pollution is actually more potent too:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/22 ... e-thought/

Flying the most energy intensive and pointless activity for the richest people on the planet, and is the easiest to give up, nevermind all the pollution caused while at their travel destinations. This self-serving mass-marketed traveling lifestyle that everyone has been fed to think they need is something I like to see the back off.

What we need to do is deglobalize the economy, that will reduce transport.

Also an interesting study
https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... Lifestyles

Actually, it is 1.75 years when I actually did the math so almost two years of driving, which I do as little of as possible because fuel is not cheap here in Finland. So I will never fly again, I last flew in 2013 and have done fine without it.

P.S. Also note flying is an activity that is growing and growing faster than thought. It's actually one of the most important activities we ought to curb and decrease, certainly not in any way increase. We ought to go back to the 1960s level of flying.

His Divine Shadow wrote: ↑2019-10-14 10:02am Most flights taken are unneccessary.

Agreed, if you're speaking of "life or death" as a criteria. Even with less stringent criteria most of them are unnecessary.

On the other hand, I'm not sure that the benefits of banning any and all travel to other continents for 99.9% of the population won't have other negative effects.

His Divine Shadow wrote: ↑2019-10-14 10:02amThis self-serving mass-marketed traveling lifestyle that everyone has been fed to think they need is something I like to see the back off.

I agree that this is part of the problematic ever-increasing-expansion-and-consumption worldview that has got us into this fix, but, again, forbidding people to travel outside the place they are born is going to have consequences, too. Not born near a good university? Sucks to be you - you aren't allowed to travel for a better education. No jobs where you are? Sucks to be you - you aren't allowed to move to another location to seek work or accept a job.

That's the problem with a blanket ban - it's going to have other effects that will result in pushback and failure to get people to comply.

His Divine Shadow wrote: ↑2019-10-14 10:02amWhat we need to do is deglobalize the economy, that will reduce transport.

It will certainly reduce the insanity of shipping things around the world that could be produced locally, but transport of goods is a different problem than the transport of human beings.

Flying fresh fruit from one hemisphere to another to keep fresh strawberries available in grocery stores year round are arguably a much more harmful practice than a person taking one or two long airplane trips in a lifetime, because strawberries are being flown daily and those airplanes are just as polluting as the ones transporting people. Even less justifiable is flying fresh-cut flowers from, say, Africa to other places because while food is a necessity flowers are strictly luxury. Luxuries that could actually be grown anywhere in greenhouses at less environmental cost if people really insist on having them.

Focusing on people moving around ignores the much large issue of cargo - which is much bigger business and therefore producing far more pollution.

I don't have the time to look it up for myself, so out of curiosity: what's the carbon footprint of taking a ship across the ocean, versus a plane? (assuming standard diesel or bunker-fueled liner)

His Divine Shadow wrote: ↑2019-10-14 10:28am Actually, it is 1.75 years when I actually did the math so almost two years of driving, which I do as little of as possible because fuel is not cheap here in Finland. So I will never fly again, I last flew in 2013 and have done fine without it.

I haven't flown anything since 2007, actually, and nothing commercial since the 1990's so it's not like I'm arguing from the standpoint of someone flying frequently. Even when I was flying most of it was in small, pretty efficient aircraft that have fuel mileage better than a lot of ground vehicles in the US. When traveling in the US I much prefer trains or driving and, again, I prefer fuel efficient cars for long distance because even if fuel costs less over here that doesn't mean I enjoy paying more than I need to.

But, if for some reason I had a need to go to, say, Europe or Japan or Australia flying is pretty much my only option. I don't foresee a need to do that, but life is uncertain enough to never say never.

His Divine Shadow wrote: ↑2019-10-14 10:28amAlso note flying is an activity that is growing and growing faster than thought. It's actually one of the most important activities we ought to curb and decrease, certainly not in any way increase. We ought to go back to the 1960s level of flying.

I actually did fly a bit in the 1960's - one reason there was considerably less of it is because of price controls. Due to expense there was a lot less of it, people tended to seek alternatives whenever possible.

Then in the US (because I can't speak for elsewhere) deregulation occurred and it became a race to the bottom, because that's what pure free market gets you.

But, again, cargo is an even bigger problem than people. Too much stuff is being flown when it could go by boat or road. The rise of "guaranteed next day delivery" no matter the distance for any conceivable widget or do-dad is ludicrous. If you don't actually need something the next day and you have the option go for a slower means of transportation. We need to worry about not just people being transported but stuff being transported.

I'm in favor of imposing taxes on flight sufficient to reflect the true costs to the environment of air travel. That would quickly reduce the amount of flying. Low budget airlines are problematic not just from an environmental standpoint but also safety.

Elheru Aran wrote: ↑2019-10-14 10:57am I don't have the time to look it up for myself, so out of curiosity: what's the carbon footprint of taking a ship across the ocean, versus a plane? (assuming standard diesel or bunker-fueled liner)

That's complicated - there's a difference between a lavish cruise ship and something that's bare-bones transport. But, after a brief google, it looks like roughly a 3:1 ration of flying costs vs. boat costs traveling long distance. Keep in mind, though, a typical cruise ship might well have a LARGER negative impact than an airline flight between energy generation costs for all the amenities and the dumping of sewage and garbage at sea. Some cargo ships also come off worse than airplanes due to continuing to burn high-sulfur fuel.

Potentially boats are better but in practice the opposite may be true.

That's one reason I'm leery of suggestions to simply ban air travel - it may not have the desired effect. If no airplanes means more big boats generating more pollution than the airplanes did we have gained nothing at all.

Ferries tend to be pretty good in comparison to flights - if you have an option to cross water via ferry or via airplane then ferry is probably the more environmentally responsible option. Cruise ship from, say, Florida to a resort in, say, the Yucatan? Contrary to initial assumptions, a direct airplane flight might actually have a smaller carbon footprint than taking the ride in a fancy cruise ship. Of course, you can also ask whether that trip is "needed", or perhaps better said, "justifiable" in the first place.

Maybe people would have to save up "carbon coupons" - you get points (or whatever) for reducing driving, meat-eating, making your home more energy efficient, buying stuff second instead of first hand and after a decade or so they can trade them in for a plane trip or cruise from Florida to the Yucatan as a reward for reducing their carbon footprint. You could probably do it in such a manner that even after turning in the "carbon coupons" they still don't emit as much carbon as they would have without making changes.

While some folks (particularly those reading this thread) will make lifestyle changes out of a sense of responsibility or morality a lot of other people won't. So set up a system where normal human selfishness (I want X) results in them making choices that wind up benefiting the planet. You don't get very far telling people to spend money on weather-proofing their homes because some city on the other side of the planet is threatened by rising sea levels. You will get more buy in if you tell folks "hey, for an initial investment of X you will save Y on your fuel bills the first winter and continue to save going forward, which in Z amount of time will match X, after which you'll still continue to save money".

Anyhow, boats these days generally take 6-8 days to cross the Atlantic - call it a week on average. (The Pacific, of course, will take longer due to greater size.) Some ships have done it quicker - I believe the sailing record is less than four days at this point - but those are usually purpose-built ships with little carrying capacity, basically boats designed to race and not to carry cargo or passengers.

If we went back to sail (probably with an engine back-up) that would definitely be environmentally friendly method, but it requires more crew and more skills and it wouldn't be any faster and let's face it, time is a factor in travel. It's certainly possible, though, as centuries of sail-powered cargo proved before the steam engine became a viable means of propulsion.

There is also the problem of piracy, which is still a problem on the high seas. It's a lot harder to stop an airplane over the ocean and board it than to stop a ship on the ocean and board it.

For that matter, airships might also be more environmentally friendly - they, too, tended to take 4-7 days, slightly faster than ships BUT far, far more vulnerable to weather problems. Fixed wing aircraft eliminated trans-oceanic airship travel (actually, pretty much all airship travel) by being faster AND safer, even with early 20th Century technology. An additional wrinkle is the lifting gas requirement - helium is a very limited resource. Hydrogen is actually superior from the standpoint of lifting mass off the ground, but it's flammable and the Hindenburg disaster soured the public on it long-term. IF we could get the public to accept hydrogen as a lift gas then airships could be propelled by much less energy-intensive means, possibly even solar, but certainly since airships don't burn fuel to stay aloft, but just to push themselves through the air, they burn less fuel for the same mass transported the same distance.

Now I'm imagining a line of commercial sailing cruise ships, built of steel and looking rather like clippers (think the Coast Guard ship Eagle), going back and forth across the oceans. But the problem with that is similar to the Concorde-- only the wealthy would be able to afford it. Also most people wouldn't care to take so long travelling, though I should note that there are benefits to it, primarily much less jet-lag. But yeah, it's pretty unlikely. Unfortunately.

Re rail:

One major problem with the US versus Europe is that rail transport is simply not a thing for people here, outside the East Coast. You can thank wide-scale ganking of public transportation by the auto industry and the explosion of the interstate highway system for that (among other things), but if you want to go from East to West across the States via train, your options are extremely limited and rather slow. It takes five days to ride a train from Atlanta to Los Angeles; you could drive that distance in three, two if you're driving in shifts and sleeping as someone else drives.

Then the population is so spread out that even if you do have a quick rail trip, odds are good it'll end up leaving you with a decent distance to drive anyway, which means you need to have someone meet you or arrange a ride otherwise. Example: my wife and I planned out a train route to her family's annual reunion one time. It's in Arkansas. We would have had to take a train all the way up north to Chicago, then back down to Little Rock, which was still six hours away from the reunion, because there was no train route closer than that. And it would've taken two or three days, versus one day of steady driving, plus cost about three times as much.

Train travel in the US, frankly, is an inconvenience rather than convenient. Flying costs about the same and is far faster. If the nation undertook a major program of modernization, expanding routes, and incorporating high speed technology that they can borrow wholesale from the Japanese and Europeans rather than wasting time and money trying to come up with something new like the Hyperloop, then MAYBE it'd be better. As it is? That's a solid 'hell no' for most people. And we have enough trouble trying to just keep the highways working, forget spending money on the railroads...

I decided to have a look at my carbon footprint again since I love travelling. Its one of my great pleasures. And Jesus, the carbon for flying.

So in summary, using a carbon calculator, I have used 1661 kWh in one year, but my solar panels produce 1858 kWh. So negative 196 kWh, which for my state in Australia comes out to -1.4 tonness of carbon. I haven't put in driving yet, but I generally work close to home, and I take public transport more. However I have a trip planned for South America and entering that in the carbon calculator, that's like 5.7 tons (or 5.17 tonnes). WTF. Another calculator puts it a bit less at 4.7 tonnes.

Jesus. On the plus side, I am not planning to travel to South America again for a while. Maybe I should consider travelling closer to home, like Asia for the next trip. Australia is a nice place to live, but geographically we aren't that close to a lot of nice countries I want to visit. I thought I was pretty good with carbon emissions, producing more energy at home than I use.

That's partly because in the US a decision was made to NOT subsidize or support transportation outside constructing/maintaining the road network. There used to be more rail and even air routes to smaller communities because it was mandated by the government - as an example, if Pan Am wanted a particular lucrative air route they had to also support smaller, non-profitable routes in order to get the really profitable one. The era of "de-regulation" - which, by the way, started under Carter and not Reagan as usually assumed, although Reagan certainly accelerated it - ended that. Passenger rail was largely dropped because it wasn't profitable and railways were no longer obliged to support passengers in return for lucrative freight. Airlines either dropped routes to small airports or jacked up prices or both because they were no longer obliged to provide service to anyone but the most lucrative routes (that's why it's about $1200-1600 for one of my sisters to fly from Marquette, Michigan to Buffalo, New York but you can get flights from Chicago to Florida, a significantly greater distance, for under $200. Clearly, air travel costs are not logical, at least they're not related to actual distance traveled/fuel consumed.)

Europe, if I'm not mistaken, had a lot more public funding for rail travel. Also, made it harder for people to get driver's licenses which also increased support for means of travel other than the automobile, whether bus or rail.

Broomstick wrote: ↑2019-10-14 10:38amOn the other hand, I'm not sure that the benefits of banning any and all travel to other continents for 99.9% of the population won't have other negative effects.

Worse than climate change though? And I never said we had to ban it, all I said was you "should never fly", like I meant that you should on your own volition decide against it. But sure, we could institute a tax that reflects it's true environmental cost and that would be a big help.

Broomstick wrote: ↑2019-10-14 10:38amI agree that this is part of the problematic ever-increasing-expansion-and-consumption worldview that has got us into this fix, but, again, forbidding people to travel outside the place they are born is going to have consequences, too. Not born near a good university? Sucks to be you - you aren't allowed to travel for a better education. No jobs where you are? Sucks to be you - you aren't allowed to move to another location to seek work or accept a job.

I never said that though, and there are alternative modes of travel. But also, maybe society shouldn't be structured so that one place is a dead end and one place has all the advantages, all the status and all the money, forcing people to move and break up with their families and contributing to the atomization of society. Maybe the wealth should be spread out a little. Sure it would mean slower economic growth, good I say. Slow and steady wins the race....

Flights shaft me. We live simply, 75% vegetarian, without a car and on a pure renewables tariff but we are in uk with family in Vietnam.

Roll on biodiesel jet fuel. Klm is experimenting with it.

Otherwise i try and make up for it via career. In terms of adaptation im part way through raising loft insulation to 300+ mm. Need to do a thermal map of house come winter. 1940 cavity wall with no floor insulation...

Need to do the maths to see when the energy payback on switching to a new telly is. I suspect i should switch

His Divine Shadow wrote: ↑2019-10-15 02:07am

Broomstick wrote: ↑2019-10-14 10:38amOn the other hand, I'm not sure that the benefits of banning any and all travel to other continents for 99.9% of the population won't have other negative effects.

Worse than climate change though?

People have to give a damn about the planet as a whole, otherwise, why give a damn about what's happening elsewhere? If you say "no, you can't go places or travel" you're taking away an incentive to give that damn about the planet as a whole. At that point, people start (or resume) making wholly selfish decisions.

Where's the sweet spot between getting people to care and not promoting worse damage to the environment? Honestly, I'm not equipped to say.

His Divine Shadow wrote: ↑2019-10-15 02:07amAnd I never said we had to ban it, all I said was you "should never fly", like I meant that you should on your own volition decide against it.

Flying is very useful to many people, and frankly, thanks to promotion of aviation over other transport methods, those other methods are lacking in many parts of the world

As an example already given - traveling by train in Europe is very viable. It's not in the US. There are few options for crossing the north Atlantic as a passenger on a boat as opposed to vacation cruises. Even less so for the Pacific or between South America and Africa. As mentioned, Australians are sort of far away from everywhere else. I think sometimes Europeans take for granted the number of options they have that don't always exist in the rest of the world. Even so, grounding airplanes is highly disruptive even in Europe, as groundings from volcanic eruptions in Iceland have demonstrated.

His Divine Shadow wrote: ↑2019-10-15 02:07amBut sure, we could institute a tax that reflects it's true environmental cost and that would be a big help.

I think it's probably one of the more viable real-world options.

His Divine Shadow wrote: ↑2019-10-15 02:07am

Broomstick wrote: ↑2019-10-14 10:38amI agree that this is part of the problematic ever-increasing-expansion-and-consumption worldview that has got us into this fix, but, again, forbidding people to travel outside the place they are born is going to have consequences, too. Not born near a good university? Sucks to be you - you aren't allowed to travel for a better education. No jobs where you are? Sucks to be you - you aren't allowed to move to another location to seek work or accept a job.

I never said that though, and there are alternative modes of travel. But also, maybe society shouldn't be structured so that one place is a dead end and one place has all the advantages, all the status and all the money, forcing people to move and break up with their families and contributing to the atomization of society. Maybe the wealth should be spread out a little. Sure it would mean slower economic growth, good I say. Slow and steady wins the race....

That would be a great idea.... except that's not how history played out. England and France both have their political, economic, and cultural capitals all in the same city, as an example. Reversing centuries of development won't happen quickly, if at all. The US had a political capital in DC, financial in New York, and cultural... well, arguably there are a couple of them but people STILL concentrate in areas immediately around those cities because that's where the money and jobs are located.

And, again, people being able to move around and relocate is part of the reason someone in, say, New Jersey gives a damn about Texas or Oregon and vice versa.

In some ways, people relocating for a relatively long period of time - a student going to university for four years, or permanent relocation for career reasons - are less of a problem than tourists. If you're moving cross-country as a one-time thing you probably aren't flying your stuff via cargo plane, you're loading it on a truck and possibly taking days to get there so you might travel with your stuff rather than flying. It's the tourists who want to get in and out fast and are most likely to use airplanes. Likewise business travelers - back when arranging business travel was part of my job having people fly to another city and back the same day was definitely a thing. Sometimes more than once a week. The 9/11 attacks were a bad thing, but one positive that came out of grounding all airplanes was that businesses re-thought just how necessary all that flying actually was.

Another problem is that the world bought into aviation very quickly in the 20th Century. Because it IS so damn useful. It revolutionized travel and freight. Sure, there are alternatives in theory - in practice, a lot of the options have withered because people chose flight over train, boat, and road.

madd0ct0r wrote: ↑2019-10-15 02:42amRoll on biodiesel jet fuel. Klm is experimenting with it.

Biodiesel sure sounds great, although there are still details to be worked out in practice. Aviation tends to be reluctant to change fuels, just as it is reluctant to change other things because the penalties for being wrong about something can be so steep.

The first commercial flight on biodiesel took place in 2011 according to wikipedia. KLM has a contracted to be fueled with biodiesel in Los Angeles since 2016. If issues around quality control can be worked out that's a definite alternative.

There is the issue that biodiesel has slightly lower energy density than typical petrodiesel - about 9% less. That may not matter for boats, trains, and trucks but for airplanes that can be a problem, especially in regards to long-duration flights. It's not an insurmountable problem, but it is an obstacle to widespread adoption of the fuel.

Broomstick wrote: ↑2019-10-15 04:07amPeople have to give a damn about the planet as a whole, otherwise, why give a damn about what's happening elsewhere? If you say "no, you can't go places or travel" you're taking away an incentive to give that damn about the planet as a whole. At that point, people start (or resume) making wholly selfish decisions.

Where's the sweet spot between getting people to care and not promoting worse damage to the environment? Honestly, I'm not equipped to say.

My point was the effects of climate change are going to be worse than even a total ban on flying, from a societal and economic perspective, flying (and a lot of other things) is gonna stop, the question is just how apocalyptic will the transition be.

Flying is very useful to many people, and frankly, thanks to promotion of aviation over other transport methods, those other methods are lacking in many parts of the world

As an example already given - traveling by train in Europe is very viable. It's not in the US. There are few options for crossing the north Atlantic as a passenger on a boat as opposed to vacation cruises. Even less so for the Pacific or between South America and Africa. As mentioned, Australians are sort of far away from everywhere else. I think sometimes Europeans take for granted the number of options they have that don't always exist in the rest of the world. Even so, grounding airplanes is highly disruptive even in Europe, as groundings from volcanic eruptions in Iceland have demonstrated.

Yes, the world needs to get bigger again so we travel less and spend more time in one place. That means it has to be longer, costlier, more cumbersome.

That would be a great idea.... except that's not how history played out. England and France both have their political, economic, and cultural capitals all in the same city, as an example. Reversing centuries of development won't happen quickly, if at all. The US had a political capital in DC, financial in New York, and cultural... well, arguably there are a couple of them but people STILL concentrate in areas immediately around those cities because that's where the money and jobs are located.

And, again, people being able to move around and relocate is part of the reason someone in, say, New Jersey gives a damn about Texas or Oregon and vice versa.

People would just be happy with jobs, basic infrastructure and a working local economy. I don't think it's that far fetched, no more far fetched than socialism making a comeback.

His Divine Shadow wrote: ↑2019-10-15 04:47am

Broomstick wrote: ↑2019-10-15 04:07amPeople have to give a damn about the planet as a whole, otherwise, why give a damn about what's happening elsewhere? If you say "no, you can't go places or travel" you're taking away an incentive to give that damn about the planet as a whole. At that point, people start (or resume) making wholly selfish decisions.

Where's the sweet spot between getting people to care and not promoting worse damage to the environment? Honestly, I'm not equipped to say.

My point was the effects of climate change are going to be worse than even a total ban on flying, from a societal and economic perspective, flying (and a lot of other things) is gonna stop, the question is just how apocalyptic will the transition be.

It seem likely to me that some places will be completely destroyed. I recall reading about at least one South Pacific nation on low-lying coral atolls that already has an agreement in place to move its population to Australia, although I don't recall the details.

Other places will be "winners", for certain degrees of the term. Some places may get more rain, or milder winters, or both, as examples. I could see some locations/governments/societies retaining high tech and high energy infrastructure like aircraft even as other places are wiped off the map. It's highly unlikely everywhere is going to go Mad Max.

But yeah, things will probably get ugly. Unless something wipes out 1/2 to 3/4 of the population which would cut resource consumption down drastically and solve quite a few problems... although who would want to live through that sort of catastrophe?