• Vayeate [they/them]
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      4 years ago

      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.

      • hogposting [he/him,comrade/them]
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        4 years ago

        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.

        • egirl_lenin [she/her]
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          4 years ago

          oh noooo we took all the funding from the military and put it all into infrastructure revitalization and green development oh nooooooo

        • CanYouFeelItMrKrabs [any, he/him]
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          4 years ago

          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.

          • hogposting [he/him,comrade/them]
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            4 years ago

            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.

        • gayhobbes [he/him]
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          4 years ago

          no one silver bullet here

          100 companies are responsible for 70% of all carbon emissions so uh

          • hogposting [he/him,comrade/them]
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            4 years ago

            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.