this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2023
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Ban private jets to address climate crisis, says Thomas Piketty (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 11 months ago by GreyShuck@feddit.uk to c/climate
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Questions of social and economic class must be at the centre of our response to the climate crisis, to address the huge inequalities between the carbon footprints of the rich and poor and prevent a backlash against climate policies, the economist Thomas Piketty has said.

Regulations will be needed to outlaw goods and services that have unnecessarily high greenhouse gas emissions, such as private jets, outsized vehicles, and flights over short distances, he said in an interview with the Guardian.

Rich countries must also put in place progressive carbon taxes that take into account people’s incomes and how well they are able to reduce their emissions, as current policies usually fail to adjust for people’s real needs.

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[–] Paragone 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I've got an instinctive aversion to category-bans with political motivation...

Then I remembered helicopters.

Sure, ban private jets, which burn fuel fast, but not private helicopters, which burn more fuel per minute than you would believe...

Why stop at jets?

Why not ban private piston-planes?

Why not ban private vehicles, all of them?

Surely that'd cut down waaay more than just private jets would?

Shouldn't farmers use the bus to get their produce to the city??

Politically motivated sledgehammer-to-crack-a-walnut stuff just doesn't work right, for me.

Enforcing prison-time for corporate executives who lie in court, on their taxes, in their broadcasts, that would probably do significantly more than banning private jets.

Enforcing objective factuality in corporate communications would, if it had teeth, put a fair number of corporate disinformation-pushers in prison, and would possibly remove much propaganda from our world.

I can definitely see the advantage in being able to get from workplace to workplace quickly, without hassle...

There was a "Yes Minister" episode, where a newly-elected minister was shamed for using a driver & driven-car, so he began driving himself, iirc, and he lost the ability to work while commuting, significantly damaging his productivity...

... as intended.

Keep in mind that different categories of work have categorically-different boundaries:

Welders have to move their gear, have to get to the work, have to do the work, have to get away from the work, but you can't do welding without welding-gear, right?

& not that much changes between jobs, re welding ( that Japanese company who made MIG titanium wire, through a powder-metal process, .. they never made it available, so .. nice news, but it didn't change anything, right? )...

Whereas, if you're ears-deep in specialized knowledge, and the more hours per day you spend studying your domain's specialized stuff, either job-specific, or advances earned by others, you are working.

Therefore, working-while-commuting is nonsensical for welders, pipefitters, masons, etc, but it is normal for knowledge-workers.

Tax the rich: that'd do more good than this, and if you won't tax the rich, but continue taxing the working-poor, then it's just political bullshit/grandstanding.

[–] Paragone 1 points 11 months ago

I realized part of what was unconsciously-bugging-me about it...

A commercial-pilot, who owns their own bushplane,

who serves the North,

who is self-employed,

would be banned, by this kind of law.

It's their private jet ( turboprop ),

therefore it would be banned.

That would gut the communities they serve.

Beware of how the authority-over-others-drug "makes" people create sloppy legislation, how it "makes" people create sloppy interpretations of legislation, & enforce sloppy/abusive renditions of legislation.