Go sit on a high speed train in Japan for 4 hours an then tell me you'd want to do that for 24 hours to travel coast to coast. It would suck. I'd rather fly and have it over with same day. It'd also be expensive as shit. Rail in Japan is not cheap.
14% of greenhouse gases come from transportation: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data
Something like half of that 14% is cargo ships. The majority of the remaining 7% is cars and trucks. Airline travel is such a tiny tiny piece of greenhouse gas emissions and even if it was dropped to 0 permanently tomorrow, it would make virtually no difference.
The trillions of dollars it would cost to set up high speed rail in the image in the OP would be much better spent stopping deforestation and building clean energy for household use.
The "there are bigger fish to fry" argument is always good to keep in mind when discussing climate change (especially when we're talking about consumer-level changes vs. more structural changes), but ultimately there's no one silver bullet here. We're going to have to change a lot of things, big and small, to address the issue.
The trillions of dollars it would cost to set up high speed rail in the image in the OP would be much better spent stopping deforestation and building clean energy for household use.
This assumes there is no "all of the above" option.
Here's a Citations Needed episode that discusses MMT in depth. Here's a book by the professor from that episode, although I haven't read it yet so I can't speak more directly to it.
Also check out this request thread for /c/mmt -- it already has another suggested reading in it, and will hopefully fill up with more.
Absolutely. I'm just highlighting that "if we do X, we have to give up Y" is often false. The U.S. is an astronomically wealthy nation; we can do a lot of things if we have the political will.
How is that a silver bullet? If you want to vastly reduce their activities that's an enormous undertaking that would fundamentally remake society, and you have to figure out how to do so without (further) fucking over developing countries. If you want to tax the hell out of them and use that money to fight climate change, again, that's an enormous undertaking, and now we're not talking about reducing emissions so much as we're talking about semi-speculative projects to offset or recapture those emissions.
The "100 companies are responsible for 70% of emissions" figure is a great way to direct the conversation at the major culprits, but that's just describing the problem more clearly -- it's not a solution, much less a silver bullet.
Go sit on a high speed train in Japan for 4 hours an then tell me you'd want to do that for 24 hours to travel coast to coast. It would suck. I'd rather fly and have it over with same day. It'd also be expensive as shit. Rail in Japan is not cheap.
Air travel is unsustainable if we want to prevent climate change
14% of greenhouse gases come from transportation: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data
Something like half of that 14% is cargo ships. The majority of the remaining 7% is cars and trucks. Airline travel is such a tiny tiny piece of greenhouse gas emissions and even if it was dropped to 0 permanently tomorrow, it would make virtually no difference.
The trillions of dollars it would cost to set up high speed rail in the image in the OP would be much better spent stopping deforestation and building clean energy for household use.
The "there are bigger fish to fry" argument is always good to keep in mind when discussing climate change (especially when we're talking about consumer-level changes vs. more structural changes), but ultimately there's no one silver bullet here. We're going to have to change a lot of things, big and small, to address the issue.
This assumes there is no "all of the above" option.
oh noooo we took all the funding from the military and put it all into infrastructure revitalization and green development oh nooooooo
And that's before we start talking about Modern Monetary Theory, AKA "where the fun begins."
Any good books on this stuff? I would love to read about how it's all a racket
Here's a Citations Needed episode that discusses MMT in depth. Here's a book by the professor from that episode, although I haven't read it yet so I can't speak more directly to it.
Also check out this request thread for /c/mmt -- it already has another suggested reading in it, and will hopefully fill up with more.
I mean even if there is an "all of the above" option in terms of funding there will always be a limited pool of workers to build things.
Absolutely. I'm just highlighting that "if we do X, we have to give up Y" is often false. The U.S. is an astronomically wealthy nation; we can do a lot of things if we have the political will.
100 companies are responsible for 70% of all carbon emissions so uh
How is that a silver bullet? If you want to vastly reduce their activities that's an enormous undertaking that would fundamentally remake society, and you have to figure out how to do so without (further) fucking over developing countries. If you want to tax the hell out of them and use that money to fight climate change, again, that's an enormous undertaking, and now we're not talking about reducing emissions so much as we're talking about semi-speculative projects to offset or recapture those emissions.
The "100 companies are responsible for 70% of emissions" figure is a great way to direct the conversation at the major culprits, but that's just describing the problem more clearly -- it's not a solution, much less a silver bullet.