A shorter version of my latest column
-Hayes Brown, Bluesky
Transcription / Alt Text:
Panel one:
[off-screen] Fox News: Taylor Swift's plane is emitting soo much carbon
Angry Goose: Why are carbon emissions bad?
Panel 2:
[Man labeled Fox News being chased]
Goose: Explain why carbon emissions are bad, coward!!!
Greta Thunberg made the trip to the US for some climate summin via sailboat. Not to show that it can be done - but to show how absolutely impractical it is. Climate action cannot be about individual responsibility - sometimes we need private jets.
So the rational action would be to start a massive development effort to develop jets that are slower and run on hydrogen fuel cells or something. And find ways to generate hydrogen fuel without carbon. And then distribute and regulate jets.
But that's basically a planned economy, a taboo word to think or say in mainstream. Instead any small advancement is patented which raises the cost of it to maximize profit.
So no, pointing out Taylor's swift as hypocrite is not a good point, it is indeed propaganda to avoid sensible action on climate change. Of course it's way to late now so it doesn't really matter any more.
*It is definitely not too late to mitigate a ton of suffering. *
I've said it elsewhere: environmental nihilism is deeply unethical. There is a ton we can do to minimize damage and restore the environment.
It's such a simple comment, but this resonated in a way that hit me. I feel like I'm an environmental nihilist, and looking at it as unethical rather than just being a result of hopelessness is a totally different way to reframe this. It's motivating to keep trying to make a difference!
We have to keep trying of course, but we also have to hedge our bets and plan for the worst. There is a lot we can do on a community level or city level or sometimes on a small nation level.
But globally it's dangerous to think that what has been happening isn't going to continue to happen. The political and media situation today is actually worse than it was 20 or 30 years ago. Economic power has further consolidated. Media is worse than ever. The climate protest are being managed all over the world with improved science for propaganda. AI is going to make it worse still, by being able to generate localized just in time strategies for every community.
In the end it didn't matter if climate change is anthropogenic or not, we are apparently not an intelligent civilization. Meaning on a global scale we simply cannot act intelligent, but more like a slime mold, always moving towards where food or energy (money) is.
We should try to minimize damage locally and create resilient communities or societies or nations. But the catastrophes, billions of refugees, climate wars and genocides are something we have to plan for. Nobody knows where and how bad it's going to be. Regional nuclear war isn't unlikely. We have to try to anticipate the chaos and plan for it - and if you can, get out of the way sooner than later. Great Britain is an example of an island that can sustain itself and maintain a civilized society. Or Ireland or Island. While Russia has so many borders to problematic areas it will almost certainly be complete chaos. Europe is going to be a shitshow too, while the USA of course is the big winner: A huge country with only two boarders.
As for environmental concerns, we should try to "terraform" or transplant ecosystems as temperatures change. Because the change is far too fast for nature to migrate (plus artificial barriers today). So that is an important strategy for preservation. The other thing we should do is collect seeds and genetic samples and digitize data and create long lasting archives to preserve them for the future.
Hopefully we survive and eventually learn not to do it again. See, I'm not a nihilist ;) Or maybe it won't be that bad and we somehow muddle through.
Do we need private jets for individuals to take on a whim? Maybe we need private jets for government officials specifically traveling to do work on behalf of the government.
Depending on the level of fame, yeah actually. I wouldn't want to be on a plane with Taylor Swift. Even with her in first class and me in the cheap seats. Imagine all the Swifties trying to get on your plane to see Taylor or just say they were on the same plane, it would be a nightmare. Not to mention the security threats there would be, how many extremists do you think have made a death threat at Taylor Swift? How would you feel getting on a plane someone threatened to blow up because Taylor Swift was abourd?
Like it or not the obsession with celebrity status necessitates things like private jets. No one needs to be as popular as Taylor Swift. That leaves the question of 'is it ethical to become so popular?' on the table but I am not interested in getting into that.
There are commercial flights....? What the fuck does a single person need a whole airplane for?
For some reason I don’t think that Taylor has a whole Airbus A380 to herself.
I was able to find she has a Dassault Falcon, a 12-seater. I doubt she travels alone in it…ever. Most of those seats are full, and I’m sure she’s flying direct and on her schedule.
Now, I get the absurdity of a single person needing a plane. But I also get the absurdity of a single person driving an F-250 crew cab to their office job 60 miles away.
After all, the guy in the pickup could have just as well taken public transit and shared. Except in order to take the train, he’d have to leave 3 hours earlier to arrive at the same time, and he’d get home two hours later. And there are several transfers along the way. Also there’s a store off the highway that he needs to go to, and he cant get there on the bus.
Private transport will always be needed. We will never meet 100% of personal transportation needs with just public transit and bikes. It’s an absurd goal.
The more important thing is that private-transport be right-sized for the individual need. In that lens, a 12-seat jet for a pop star, her pilot, body guard, and entourage, makes way more sense to me than a desk-jockey in a monster truck.
If you want to be mad at something, be mad at the fact that society is demanding that she actually fly all over the world so she can sing and dance in front of them, beholden to schedules that could never be possible on commercial flights. Commercial may not have the appropriate routes, or times, or may have unexpected route changes or delays or cancellations.
And the thing about planes is you kind of need to have them with you when you take off. You can’t exactly fly commercial and then take your private-jet for a specific hop and then go right back to commercial, either your jet stays with you or it dead-heads across the world without you.
Not to mention, this is Taylor Fucking Swift we are talking about. She is probably the single most famous person in the world. I would not be surprised if more people could pick her out of a crowd than they could Olaf Scholz. The amount of harassment she’d be subject to on commercial would be unbearable. She needs to fly private just to preserve a shred of sanity.
Add to this I read somewhere that she actually purchased more carbon credits than she would need for her tour to cover for unplanned travel - like to football games. Regardless of how some feel about the carbon credits, it’s more than nothing.
Yeah, you're not wrong but the point is that there are no simple solutions that any individual can do within an existing society with how it actually works today. We can't just change a few things and then continue with the same level of comfort or speed. Much of how we live and work would have to be redesigned, then already existing technological solutions could work very well. Basically the objection is just a diversion from e.g. drastically reducing meat consumption that would have an actual impact.
BTW there are single person electric VTOL vehicles like the "opener blackfly" that use less energy per mile than a tesla car. Not less than a (electrified) velomobile of course.
But that's not the rational action - we need to build faster trains and fly less.
Trains don't cross oceans.
not yet
not until we turn the kremlin into a pile of dust and bones. after that we can have all the transcontinental rail we want. except for to antarctica and oceania but fuck those guys
Yeah, but there are some speeds at which airplanes are quite efficient. One thing would also be to make large airplanes slower, to reduce energy costs. In general trains though yeah. China is building a lot of high speed rail.
And private jets ain't one of them
State sponsored research is not a planned economy thing. Neither is climate regulation.
We could design and plan a zero emissions civilization with a circular economy with today's technology. Practically it's absolutely impossible because it would be near 100% wealth redistribution.
Urban density would need to be increased, every home would need to be well insulated, homes would need to become smaller, home / work would need to be smaller meaning companies and living communities would have to be planned and forced to move, many small towns completely abandoned. Public transport, no more meat production, cars replaced with bicycles, smaller cars or 1 or 2 person robo taxies. Passenger airplanes would have to fly slower to save fuel. Massive amount of trains build. Hundreds of thousands of industrial processes would have to be redesigned, factories torn down and new ones build, patents would have to be abolished, no more large scale warships or bombers or jets, industrial production would need to be localized and moved from overseas to multiple smaller producers all around the world. Any of this goes far beyond regulations, and not even regulations are politically possible.
No 'sometimes anybody needs private jets'. Fly commercial en masse to at least make it one flight instead of 300 separate ones. In this age of very good remote video calling there is no situation where somebody needs to be somewhere else within 2 hours to the point it is worth taking a private jet for all of the relevant reasons we're concerned with. There were commercial empires spanning the globe long before the internet or manned flight existed and they arguably did far better than today's 'nimble' corporations do. BS rhetoric for people to suggest they 'need' to fly private at all.
She’s the most famous performer in the world.
If she needs to fly private (which she does, her itineraries would never be possible on commercial, aside from the harassment she’d receive from the general public), it’s because her fans actually demand it.
Thats the problem. It’s not the jets, it’s that she’s expected, by millions of people, to stick to an itinerary that’s unattainable without them.
If you have enough fans to be the most famous performer in the world, and they demand you do things that are unattainable without a private jet, then you either need a private jet, or saner fans.
Stop looking at the immediate problem. Look upstream. Don’t build a dam at a delta.
No nobody NEEDS to have their own flight that could fly many more if they just shared
Yeah, but Greta's boat crew had to be flown over the pond or something IIRC.
Edit: https://apnews.com/general-news-be12be49011743daaa3646edb0de0b61
I don't think you read the post.
Right.
You didn't though.
Right.
Literally, the second sentence of the post says that she wasnt teying to show it was better for the environment. She was showing how impractical it was.
Then you step in and say "but her team was flown over the atlantic".
Greta: im not trying to make a point about private jets being bad for the environment and boats being a good alternative by sailing instead of flying
You: but you didn't prove that sailing is a good alternative to private jets by sailing instead of flying.
Right.
Right.
Pathetic