Ultimately it's a game theoretic problem though, isn't it? Your own personal impact on energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions is negligible, even if you are jetting around in your private jet. Therefore it only matters what all the people 'similar to you' are doing in aggregate, and your decision should be based on that: 'What impact would my decision here have, if the people in similar situations all acted the way I'm acting now.'

Since there is presumably billions of people with wifi routers, but only like 25k private jets in the world, it's actually not immediately clear which has a bigger impact: the rich abstaining from flying to Napoli for an afternoon, or them turning off their router while they are gone.

I have no numbers to back this up, but intuitively I'd put my money on 30m Wifi-Routers in France running a third of the year while nobody is home not having a larger impact than the 270 private jets being used.

And you have just lost a bunch of money! Assuming your router uses about 10 watts, that's 86kWh per router, per year. 30m routers makes this 2 580 000 000 kWh. At a current, extremely awful 116g CO2/kWh in France, that's 299 280 tonnes of CO2 per year. A single private jet is 2 tons of CO2 per hour, so your 270 private jets only need to fly 554 hours per year to be just as bad. The current average is 448 hours per year. So, yeah, private jets currently emit 80% as much CO2 per year as 30m routers running 24/7. Unless you recommend we only use wifi for 3 hours a day, getting rid of these private jets will be more productive.

Additionally, those routers actually serve a use, unlike private jets. Between universal access to the Internet to millions, and a few thousands doing lines of cocaine at 30000 feet to go to their villa in Corsica, I think I know which one is more useful.

And finally, it's a matter of perceived justice. And believe me, being told to turn off your wifi while a rich dickwad can fly to Acapulco for three hours tends to make people slightly angry, not willing to make sacrifices and with a tendency to commit extremely unlawful acts against such jets.

Private jets only average 448 hours a year? I'm surprised, I had imagined many of them to be either used a lot or rented out and not be grounded 95% of the year. Does that include "empty flights" to get the jet to the location of the passenger?

I guess we should also consider private turbo props (not really jets? but "private jets" is probably just short for "private plane" for all intents and purposes").

Actually 448 hours a year is pretty high in my opinion.

I guess it depends on what you consider "private jets". One that's exclusively used by some CEO or their family, 448 hours feels like a lot, but I don't know their typical travel schedule.

But for "private rentals" that you rent for a trip or something, I'd assume they get a lot more action than only being used 5% of the year.

Where's flueber, the app to book private jets? It sounds incredibly wasteful to only rent something out 5% of the year. Is maintenance a large issue?

Take the private jets of 6 french billionaires. It is registered to their company.

https://twitter.com/i_fly_Bernard/status/1565102112731693061

Francois Pinault flied it 26 hours in a single month, or 318 hours per year. And that's the jets from a billionaire who couldn't give a damn whether or not they're making money on this plane. It's just their personal taxi. Now, consider that private jet operators _have_ to rent to make money, and the average goes way up.

Good thing your opinions don't really matter when it comes to fighting climate change then! Jets that are registered to companies fly regularly (yes, Bernard Arnault doesn't have a Bernard Arnault jet, he has 3 LVMH jets). It's currently doing at the very least 2 hours of flying per day. A regular, commercial airplane flies over 3 000 hours per year.

I have no numbers to back this up, but intuitively I'd put my money on less than 448 hours per year average, do you have any source on this?

First half of 2022 sees over 700 000 hours of flight from Part 135 jets (read: private jets). https://privatejetcardcomparisons.com/2022/08/03/argus-expec...

My 448 hours comes from the Top 20 of private charter operators, with a relatively old source. The average went up as the amount of private jetting went way up (more than doubled) (https://privatejetcardcomparisons.com/2017/07/11/how-many-ho...). Sure, take the 21 000 private jets in the world and say the average is only 60 if you'd like. The average isn't what matters. And hell, even with 60 average, that's 120 tons of CO2 per jet, per year. 25 people worth of yearly emissions, for a single plane. I promise you, there is nothing these planes do that it worth that.

I think there is a huge difference between 60 and 448. We are not discussing it is worth or not. We are discussing "30m Wifi-Routers in France running a third of the year while nobody is home not having a larger impact than the 270 private jets being used." or not.

No. A single day from one of LVMH's private jets is equivalent to the yearly CO2 emissions of 1500 people. Nothing, absolutely nothing justifies this. There is no reasonable world where this should be acceptable, much less one where we are in a climate crisis.

Game theoretic thinking brings "stable" but disastarous results. Perhaps now that humanity knows about game theory we should try and find ways to encompass humanism and other values into the pure rationalist model.

Unfortunately "stable" means that they cannot be destroyed by a single actor. So unless you're prepared to use violence against anyone in the world, and "someone" might be Putin or Xi, meaning you'd have to be prepared to fight WW3 ... you'll need a stable solution.

> therefore _extremely_ vulnerable to physical violence. Because this is going to be the only outcome if they keep this up

This is an immature reaction. We’re talking about Europe, not sub-Saharan Africa. Those same planes would have the wealthy safely out of harm’s way, likely with a good portion of their capital, while the idiots who threw away their peace are left to squabble over remains.

You’re taking this as a threat, rather than a warning. History has shown that Europe is not above revolution or violence, let’s not pretend otherwise.

Good. Let them bring their wealth to whatever place will tolerate their climate-destroying behavior. Wealth is not created by a handful of rich children, but by the work of millions. Let's see them use their capital when they can't blow it anymore on luxury handbags.

> We’re talking about Europe, not sub-Saharan Africa.

Well, it's not like Europe is homogenous in this regard.

France specifically has a history of taking care of such matters.

I'd say the rich getting away with what they're doing is more likely in sub-Saharan Africa.

As was seen recently in Sri Lanka when the corrupt ex-president tried to run away by plane, you can't if the people hate you because the plane doesn't fly itself from nowhere - it needs mechanics, air traffic control, passport control, pilots, etc. He managed to escape with a military plane, but that's unlikely to be an option for your random rich person not ex-military chief.

And Europe, especially France, has a rich history of getting rid of upper classes on occasion.

"The Ministry for the Future" (book) covers this quite well. It only seems more prescient by the day.

> The extremely wealthy would do well to remember that they are human, and therefore _extremely_ vulnerable to physical violence. Because this is going to be the only outcome if they keep this up.

I don't think that's likely. The dominant ideology of the world, propped up by education, entertainment and other media is that the rich deserve whatever they have, because they are better people than the poor. Going against this dogma is heresy to most people of the world, they would gladly hurt themselves to help the rich.

Yup, "you're stupid because you're poor, yadda yadda". While an (economical) immigrant to developed EU countries when one starts their life from the scratch from opening bank account and applying for an apartment, it's being deeply engraved into one's consciousness. I bet OP is posting revolutionary comments, then wouldn't bat an eye to crush a coworker into burnout or depression, while the executive board folks are on Balearic, Canaries, or Costa del Sol.

If it gets to that point they will start bankrolling far right militias. They'll bring them into the mainstream with slick propaganda, decent salaries and support from the middle-of-the-road media (which they own).

Think Proud Boys, but made respectable, the backing of a few senators and armed with top of the line hardware.

This is essentially what happened in Ukraine.

> If it gets to that point they will start bankrolling far right militias

They already are, kind of. The far-righest presidential candidate who was bordering on fascist in France was bankrolled to absurd amounts by one of the richest assholes in France, Vincent Bolloré. Bankrolling a militia isn't a far stretch from bankrolling someone advocating for banning non-French names and expelling everyone of foreign descent.

>They will start

They already have. US Billionaires are bankrolling white supremacists (https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2022/05/24/right-wing-families-...), Ukrainian billionaire Igor Kolomoisky started their own PMCs to get their oil (while fighting against Russia, sure, but it's still a PMC at the whim of a single man), Thiel and a whole bunch of SV rich kids are building post-apocalyptic shelters with their own, private security forces.

Anyone downvoting you is a fool. Billionaires are ready for war.