(Yes, yes, proof-of-stake, claimed to finally be launching later this year. That's been "coming soon" for so many years that I'll believe it when it actually happens.)
He's brilliant and still manages to be very approachable and down to earth. rare combo nowadays, especially in crypto.
Except his Anker brick. I love Anker.
So I wouldn't worry much about the climate impact of flying.
Safe 20€ a month, which is possible for a huge chunk of the population (easily > 80%), and you can do four to eight of those flights a year and that's just the lower end of the estimation, most still just don't flight that much here, and it's IMO really not an income question.
It's more like an ecological footprint and also time question as flying adds an ineligible overhead one can often outrun by using the good train networks, well maybe apart from Germany where privatization really killed a lot of networks and quality during the last decades, plus I can get to a nice nature area within an hour easily, so why bother travelling as long to the airport to only then endure their security theater.
I hate flying, but trains are rarely a convincing option. They ought to be.
Air travel is much harder to do without fossil fuels than ground transport or electrical generation, and is essential to civilization on the basis of cargo alone. It's simply not an efficient target for change right now.
I favor carbon taxes that dig an industries grave for it: such as taxing coal to build nuclear, wind, solar. That's not feasible with air travel yet, which leaves a consumption tax, those are regressive.
Taxing dirty electricity generation is regressive taxation, too; like I said, it's an original issue. A first step would be to pay out all the generated carbon taxes on a per capita basis.
This would never happen in America because it would require Americans addressing their views on transit and addressing their pitiful consumer rail or even consumer bus industries.
An extreme example would be organs.
It is probably wiser to judge based on emissions per user.
https://www.easa.europa.eu/eaer/system/files/usr_uploaded/21... section 7.3 for the citation on aviation (gah, is the europa.eu website slow).
Quite a bubble. But I also think it's very performative which is why it doesn't show up in day to day convo. For example, even the HNer wanted to see a feel-good aside about saving the environment or at least some sort of atonement for their sins.
It's one of those things where we don't have any central entity to blame, so we look for small payoffs by holding random individuals to the flame.
Many people in my social circle do the same. The environment became part of their decision-making process.
In practice, it's a bit like dieting or budgeting: we cheat. We have lives to live. We care about the environment, but not enough to become ascetics.
In fact, becoming an ascetic would probably be counter-productive. I think a large benefit of publicly caring about the environment is the signaling. You show that (a) it matters (b) it's doable (c) it doesn't ruin your life. Then other people start to believe they can also do it. If you do let it ruin your life, that will serve to dissuade rather than persuade.
I don't feel bad about cheating. I was always aiming for a reduction. If we all managed a 20-30% reduction, it would help.
It would also become a lot easier as businesses would have to cater to these concerns. This is how Germany got so vegetarian-friendly.
Buying toiletries locally can mean paying 2-3x the price in your home country. You actually save money by bringing more. For example, in the US the last time I checked I could buy a pack of floss for $0.99. In LATAM it's at least $3. The solution is to bring ~20 packs of floss.
Industry makes stuff that consumers demand, either directly or indirectly. It’s a bit of a meme to suggest that global warming is all down to companies emitting co2 just for lols. Of course, industry is sometime dirty because it’s cheaper, but it’s putting one’s head in the sand to pretend that consumers have no bearing on what companies do.
This is not to say that the blame lays solely with consumers. People are acting rationally — they want to go on holiday and can afford it; what’s stopping them? The issue is one of regulation. If emitting actually had a cost (well, a cost now, to the emitter, rather than to the whole planet at some later date) people would make better decisions.
But the onus to change is on the companies, and since they won't change themselves, it falls on the government. However, taxing the emitter will lead to companies passing on the cost to the consumer, which, while lowering the emissions, would end up locking away a large number of luxuries (air travel, different kinds of food like meat, etc.) from lower-middle class people. It is very easy to say "increase taxes!" when you have enough disposable income to be able to afford these luxuries anyway. I personally do not want to go back a hundred years where meat is rare luxury and the farthest one travels is to the nearest country, once a decade.
His air travel is the least of our worries.
As for carbon footprint, I'm not going to comment on the moral quality of his choices, but the dude founded a cryptocurrency. Once you've done that, I don't think much else you can do short of also founding an oil company is going to make your carbon footprint worse than it already is.
Your math does not quite check out.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe
> Area 10,180,000 km2
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada
> Total land area 9,093,507 km2
https://www.amtrakvacations.com/trips
I’d love to hear from someone who’s tried an Amtrak tour. I’d love to see the National Parks.
Amtrak is a federal monopoly, created to take the failing passenger railroads off the hands of the freight carriers. It has succeeded in doing little more than that.
I say this as a person who loves trains, especially French ones. But, as a pragmatist, I admit that our interstate road system and omnipresent airlines (crossing states which are themselves larger than European countries) make a lot of train travel less desirable in America than it is overseas.
What would you expect him to say? Apologise in some way? Spin a tale of "carbon compensation", the indulgence [1] of this non-theistic religion?
I find it refreshing to hear people speak without constantly genuflecting towards The Current Issue. That does not mean I always (or even usually) agree but I prefer for people to be honest instead of hypocrites when it comes to their 'sins'.
I live in Madrid and I can travel to any major city in the country by train in less than 3 hours. I don't have to show up early. I depart from the city centre. I arrive at the city centre. 500% more convenient and (mostly) cheaper.
However, I’m surprised at how casually he mentionned how much he has travelled, by flight almost exclusively. I’m assuming from the lack of other plug than Type A, he stayed in America where trains are not a great option — but still. I’d expect that to come with some comment about carbon footprint.
Am I out of sync with the times?