Big Surprise

[andrewducker]

I post saying that the government should make the decisions that individuals find hard, but are in our own best interests, and I get multiple comments from people saying "But I don't want things made hard for me."

Not a single week has gone past in the last few months, and not a month in the last 10 years when I haven't read more about the climate of the whole fucking planet going horribly wrong, because we're polluting it.  A large part of that pollution comes from flying machines inefficiently burning up hydrocarbons and releasing great wodges of Carbon Dioxide and Nitrogen Oxides at high altitude.

Imagine if every time you took a flight you had to grind up a couple of people and put them in the fuel tank.  You can bet that people would still be saying "But I want to see my family a lot."  At the _very_ least, airline fuel should be taxed enough to pay for the planting of trees to soak up the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide - at the moment there's no tax on aircraft fuel at all, making it effectively heavily subsidised compared to all other means of transport.

I'm sorry, but when the whole bloody planet is at stake, maybe we'll all have to make a few sacrifices.

Comments

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Yep. Given that portions of the Greenland icecap are now moving at 100x their previous rate, climate change could happen shockingly fast. Of course, it the result might not be global warming. The Atlantic conveyor is down by 30% because of the introduction of large amounts of fresh water from melting glaciers, and one of the leading theories for the cause of the little ice age (I love wikipedia) is that melting ice shut it off. Another minor cooling like this would produce massive famines.

I'm against long-term solutions being limiting actions, but until we have planes (or at least some form of air travel, perhaps airships) that are fuel efficient and low-pollution, then air travel needs to be reduced.

[andrewducker]

I linked to a site detailing the problems, I mentioned the fact that currently it's taxed _less_ than cars, buses, trains, etc.

I've been completely unable to find _any_ technology that will help more than a couple of percentage points, and you statign that "there are alternate ways to reduce pollution" without giving examples is just handwaving.

Making the world socially a better place is not nearly as important as not causing the deaths of large amounts of the population by stopping the Atlantic Conveyor and causing major temperature rises.

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

Just about whatever we do the *planet* will survive just fine. Life will survive just fine (there will be a bit less of it for a while, but it'sll bounce back). Humans may even survive.

What *is* at stake is our current set of societies - human civilisations, constructs, cities, ways of life... There being so damn many of us...

Personally, I say 'speed the day'. Get out there and help push the climate over the edge and make it happen as quickly as possible...

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Why in the name of all the gods would you want to do that? It's almost certainly possible to solve this problem and prevent a massive death-toll (or at least a massive first world death-toll, I'm fairly convinced that most of the poorest and most overcrowded parts of the 3rd world are doomed) and the collapse of civilization.

I happen to really like living with electricity, adequate food and similar things that would all vanish if we manage to mess up sufficiently (which would take significant effort given how resilient modern industrial civilization is, but is also possible) to collapse civilization in most of the first world.

I've run into a number of people who are allegedly (or in some cases actually) pro-apocalypse, and in all cases that I know of, they either dream of a "simpler, better world" being rebuilt from the ruins of the old world (which IMHO is utterly foolish nonsense that works in fantasy novels but not in real-life) or hate their lives sufficiently that they want civilization to collapse so they can stop working at a job they loathe. Needless to say, I am not pro-apocalypse.

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

I personally really don't care because I'll be dead by then - in all likelihood.

I'm not after a dream of "a simpler better world" - I really just don't give 2 f**ks about people as a concept, as a mass. They can all die off in any manner that happens along for all I care. Including me (cos it has to happen sometime).

Or not, as the case may be.

Maybe I'm not actually pro-apocalypse - I don't suppose I care either way. If I live to see it all go tits-up then I do, if I don't I dont' and if it happens and that's what kills me then so what?

Just (as someone else said) pointing out that it's not accurate to say 'saving the planet' - it's 'Saving most of our lifestyle' that people actually mean...

[pickwick.livejournal.com]

Heh, yeah. "We're destroying the planet!" No, we're not. The planet will be fine.

If we were more honest about the fact that we're trying to save ourselves, save humanity, rather than pretending it's all altruistic "save the planet" stuff, then we might get around to doing more about it, I think.

[missedith01.livejournal.com]

Life will survive just fine (there will be a bit less of it for a while, but it'sll bounce back

I think it's impossible to know this. We can't seem to act to prevent species becoming extinct now, who's to say how may will be lost if there is radical human-influenced environmental change? Will a only few thousand species be lost and the rest soldier on, or will we end up with just the ant and microbes? I personally prefer the planet with higher forms of life, even if one of them is us. ;-)

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

Ref: all prevoius massive climate upheavals

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

How good are governments at figuring out what needs to be done? How much damage do they when (not if) "but this is screwing up my life" isn't allowed as a defense?

[communicator.livejournal.com]

I completely agree with you about fiinding a way. But the problem with air fuel tax is that if we tried to levy it the big airlines would just go and refuel in the Cayman Islands or Liberia or somewhere like that. I don't know what the answer is.

[andrewducker]

Tricky to do for internal UK flights going back and forth between Edinburgh and London... And large detours would also deter people, so it wouldn't be an entirely bad thing.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

The large airlines have sufficient routes to get around that. A plane would do a couple of trips from say London to Glasgow, then it's next flight would be to Amsterdam and back. The result would be to place a heavy burden on smaller airlines.

Rather than a direct tax on airline fuel, if you wanted to implement a scheme such as this, the solution would be to put a tax on airline tickets. You could have a variable rate depending on distance travelled or some such criteria.

[greenfieldsite.livejournal.com]

Exactly - there is not only one solution.

For example, for security reasons airlines keep track of exactly who is flying. It shouldn't be too hard (I'd have thought) to give everyone one tax-free return flight each year and then have a tax charge on all subsequent tickets.

[missedith01.livejournal.com]

Put a tax on airline fuel as its imported?

Hard for me

[wordofblake.livejournal.com]

But the link you posted says the environmental cost of air travel "per passenger and per mile, is almost as heavy as driving alone". However, I am willing to bet there are thousands more superflous car journeys made per day than superflous plane journeys.

It is not that I dont want to be taxed more, it is that I cannot afford it.

Like I said, the tax is already more than the cost of the flight. That is ridiculous.

Get people using their cars sensibly first

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

no tax on aircraft fuel at all, making it effectively heavily subsidised compared to all other means of transport.

It's not just the fuel. There's the whole VAT-exempt thing (tickets, meals and all sorts of bits and pieces to do with the airline industry are VAT exempt or zero-rated), and the whole Duty Free thing, which work out to be about the same again on top of the fuel subsidy. The Duty Free thing isn't a lot of direct tax subsidy (<£1bn IIRC) but it's a highly geared subsidy in that it generates far more income than that for the airports (they don't make it easy to do the sums for obvious reasons, but with a bit of work you can see that the discount on Duty Free stuff is way less than 17.5%; and next to nobody would buy stuff there if it wasn't discounted at all).

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

Is this some kind of personal vendetta against me being in Florida??!!

[andrewducker]

Yes.
Everything is about you.
All the time.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

So true. Ask V :@-P

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

So true. Ask V :@-P

[cx650.livejournal.com]

Bearing in mind that a large proportion of the 'doomsday' research is based on climate information from merely the last 30 years or so, and that if the same prognostications were based on all the available data from when such records began, I understand this to have been around 1820, the planet is approximately one degree COOLER. Either we are asking the wrong questions, or we are asking the right questions but in the wrong way, or (imho the far more likely proposition) mankind is being totally arrogant again and assuming a far higher level of importance for ourselves than we merit. Geological research has shown us that Ice Ages come and go with monotonous regularity and that there have been intervening periods when the mean temperature has been even hotter than that predicted in the 'we our killing our world' scenario.

As for "grinding-up a couple of people" I'm sure we can all think of candidates, LOL.

[andrewducker]

Bearing in mind that a large proportion of the 'doomsday' research is based on climate information from merely the last 30 years or so

Except for the ice core data we have that goes back arund 160,000 years?

mankind is being totally arrogant again and assuming a far higher level of importance for ourselves than we merit

Levels of CO2 and Methane are both higher than they've been at any point in that time, and CO2 for millions of years.

[cx650.livejournal.com]

Pardon the delay, I'm retrieving my reference material.

[avatar.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, but when the whole bloody planet is at stake, maybe we'll all have to make a few sacrifices.

There's just no argument really, is there.