Ibon wrote:I just flew up to the USA from Panama yesterday..... forsake [trips] for the good of the planet.
Yes, I totally agree. Everyone should forsake trips for the sake of the planet, including you.
And everyone should stop buying flash clothes and new cars and dining out at over-priced restaurants and staying in remote eco-lodges in places like Panama or in posh hotels in Europe and Asia and New York.
And auto-racing should be banned. So should cruising for burgers.
Fracking should be banned because it emits methane.
Coal and natural gas power plants should be banned.
And everyone should stop hooking up to the electrical grid because the buildout of renewable energy, like solar and wind, is contributing the rapid growth of SF6 in the atmosphere, the strongest greenhouse gas known to man.
And no one should post on the internet because the internet uses a lot of power and produces a lot of CO2.
But none of that seems to be happening. Everyone is more then willing to point the finger at someone else, but people en masse are unwilling to take responsibility for their own carbon emissions. Its just isn't happening, as your own story indicates.
Even someone as eco-conscious as yourself just did a long plane flight and released a lot of CO2. Sure there was some guilt, but the bottom line is you did the long plane trip. And so did 2.8 million other people that day, because thats the number of people who fly in the US every day...and thats just in the US alone. Altogether there are over a billion separate flights per year around the world, and the number is growing rapidly.
air_traffic/by_the_numbers/Thats why a single person who is guilty about flying but then flies anyway as you did doesn't make a farthings worth of difference to CO2 emissions. And if you run the math, your plane flight had an utterly insignificant impact on global climate change. It is only the aggregate of millions and billions of flights that is significant in impacting the climate.
Logically, the only thing that will make a difference on a global basis is a binding global climate treaty that mandates CO2 reductions on everyone and everything.....and thats why Greta will be at the UN tomorrow trying to get the world's leaders to amend the Paris Accords or draft a new global climate treaty that will actually do some good.
Cheers!