That being said, if you're reading this comment, you very likely in the top 20% of carbon emitters globally, so don't get all smug about it.
Yes and no.
These are almost never recycled and in a lot of places they are burned, not buried so they do emit CO2.
Unfortunately in Europe they replaced them with pfas coated paper which is worse for health and pollution (forever plastic)
In actuality, consumers have little to no choice in the products they use. I couldn't live a plastic-free life even if I tried, and I'm somewhat well off. When you have to shop at Walmart to make it, your influence is even less.
It's a strategy in responsibility shifting. Rationally, the source of pollution does not lie in the single mother eating with her family at Waffle House and using a plastic straw.
The Pacific garbage patch is mostly from fishing nets, and the other sources of plastic pollution are mainly from riverside cities too poor to have good waste management.
The whole plastic straw scare is so obviously attacking a minor non-issue at significant personal inconvenience, that I wouldn't be surprised if it was planted by climate deniers to make people angry at or cynical about actual environmentalism.
I agree with the latter, and I suppose I indirectly contribute to it as a society.
Source?
Do you think the "greater share" he "earned" is really 10,000x the average tech worker? Or 640,000x the minimum wage?
If someone had 10,000 tons of gold, they would have made a similar “hourly wage” this last year.
This has nothing to do with earning anything. It’s about value appreciation of an already held asset.
He was clearly worth the money for those people.
Yes. It doesn't seem unreasonable to the point of dismissal to consider that he's changed the world to within many orders of magnitude of that which the avererage person, particularly the average minimum-wage earner, does. That doesn't mean he has. But the number being four or five orders of magnitude doesn't strike me as damning.
Golly.
He changed the world, so now he gets to burn it?
Non sequitur. A college student having a pet can be reasonable. That doesn't mean they can do whatever they like with it.
Yes. That is my point
Destroy the world = unreasonable
Nobody is saying the second but you. They are unrelated, hence the non sequitur.
Burning tonnes of carbon in your private jet
Zero for your private jet
> Do you think it matters if they offset it?
What does that even mean, if not crooked lies and imaginary foolishness?
For example, consider the Tobacco industry. While yes they did, and somewhat still do, make a lot of money, they did not create any value. They siphoned it - they exchanged the purchase of tobacco for the cost of healthcare. I'm speculating, but if you were calculating the communal cost, that is the profits of tobacco minus the healthcare costs, I'm positive it would be negative.
Therefore, tobacco has a negative value onto the world, but it is profitable. The profit is a facade, that money is really stolen. This demostrates one of the core flaws with current economic systems - you can create profit without creating value. You can simply move money around and get some profit, and you can even destroy money and yet make money.
Keep in mind Facebook gets it's profit via advertising. The money they make is due to manipulating people to spend their money on things they wouldn't otherwise buy. The analysis is difficult, and I'm not saying what they're doing is bad per se, but the actual value they create is certainly debatable.
All that is to say, simply changing the world is a meaningless metric. Certainly, I can change the world for the worse, if I want, and profit in-between. In such a scenario not only am I not equivalent to a janitor, I actually create less value. While making orders of magnitude more money.
The problem with carbon tax is the opposite. It would disproportionately tax poor higher. The carbon usage doesn't go up by 100x if the income increases by 100x.
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgA0UgSEDjI (2m22s)
IIRC carbon tax would be at point of use? So biggest "hard to transition" polluters like metal, concrete, electricity would pay most?
IIRC 2, most carbon tax advocates are also huge into investing in public transit, EVs, weatherization, heat pumps. In fact, BIL and IRA stipulate 40% apportionment. So doesn't that mitigate the regressiveness of a carbon tax?
No, the people using metal, concrete, electricity would pay it. It's not like the profitability of industry goes down over tax.
Really?
> the rich have earned their greater share of the national wealth/output (including CO2 emission budget),
Do you think so?
The future of our organised society is threatened by this. Is that OK if you are rich and have "earned [sic] their greater share"
Think about it....
The methodology used for that headline is questionable. Most of that comes from their investments rather than flying private jets or whatever. That's questionable because it's not entirely obvious who the emissions of a company should be allocated to. Why should BP's shareholders be on the hook for the emissions from the oil it sells, rather than its customers who are actually burning the oil?
Both drug users and drug dealers are considered complicit in the social impacts of that business.
The company who made the breakfast of a rapist should be charged with the crime?
It is what a person does with that breakfast cereal not the cereal itself.
The company is not literally investing in the endeavor of the rapist, the teacher is not literally investing in the outcome of the killer, investors/funders literally expect the outcome of the thing they invest in to continue without ambiguity. These are much less fitting than the drug-dealer analogy.
I literally own tobacco company stock and accept that I am complicit in the sale of cigarettes, it's not much of a leap.
Either they consume the oil, or they can't drive, and therefore can't get a job, and will therefore die. So, they must consume the oil. Some have enough money to buy electric or hybrid - them, I would say, you can attribute SOME of the effects of the oil they use.
Context matters.
I would be the opposite of angry if Zuck grounded his private jets, and walked
I'll take this one. Honestly, environmental impact is a lower priority reason for it.
Oh, come on. Counting the carbon emissions of the companies in their stock portfolio is completely absurd.
So what you are saying is that billionairs are a million times more climate friendly per-capita than us plebs. /s
https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/billionaire-emits-mi...
Think about this next time your paper straw falls apart and Zuck is talking about climate change.
>Zuckerberg, a very vocal advocate for climate change action, has added a $300 million mega-yacht to his collection, which includes a Gulfstream G650 jet.