this post was submitted on 23 May 2024
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If you think me writing a few comments on the Fediverse is even comparable to the emissions of even a single plane flight, then you're having some serious struggles in understanding the scope of how much planes pollute. Hell, my entire footprint is probably about 1/20th of that of your average person in the West. I don't even have warm water, or a fridge, my phone is years old and my hardware old midrange at best. I literally slept on the freaking floor for years. Welcome to the poverty line. But please, educate me more about how much me arguing with you is going to destroy the planet.
And yes, we can remove a good majority of the planes in the sky very easily, because most of it is just for people's comfort, laziness and entitlement.
I don't compare your footprint to anything. Also I am not arguing that our debate here is a risk to the planet.
I am just saying that without airplanes, many things would be not possible. And that includes solar and Wind energy btw.
I am well aware how large the co2 footprint of an airplane is. But if I have the choice between banning all airplanes and green energy, my choice is clear.
And here is the core of the issue, and this is btw a very generell issue:
We are such dependent on things like airplanes, trucks and cars, thar we can not force a complete ban without risking other important stuff.
I work in IT. I am fighting constantly to reduce power consumption, for self sufficient data centers and advocate against large scale AI, because the power consumption is massiv and the raw resources for GPU damage the environment from gathering through production.
And one of the most paradox things I encountered is a customer that does climate change research and tries to find more ways to combat it. And they asked for an offer with over 200 GPU's.
And based on this experience, my rough calculations for an average lemmy instance gives me about 2 metric tons co2/year. But is this bad? We are using this to discuss topics like these, organize protest, and if course for fun.
I know the following is a stupid argument, but stick with me for a second.
Based on your criteria we could shut down 90% of all instances. That would save us around 40 tons co2 per year.
So, if we isolate this it looks good, right?
But: a flight from Frankfurt to Heathrow wit a 747 alone produces around 70 tons of co2.
So, it is all a question of perspective. And I am completely with you >70% of all flights should be just forbidden. Nobody, I repeat, nobody needs to fly from Germany to Italy. Use the fucking train.
But how about USA? There is no train in this direction. So, while I am all for reducing flights as much as we can, we still have to keep some passenger planes.
And for fright, we may be dependent for stuff that must be delivered quickly and is sensible to environmental conditions. Like parts for solar panels.
You're clearly arguing in bad faith. No one wants to ban actually necessary planes, or trucks, because your argument is the same bad faith one that people make when it comes to getting rid of cars. Just because you're saying you allegedly fight for the cause does not mean you actually do, especially when you keep making excuses and make up arguments that haven't been made in order to push this nonsense agenda, to frame people in some ridiculous light.
Dude. Read the thread please "the planes should never be flying in the first place " was an argument I initially responded to. And please read my comments on this post. I am tired of repeating my self.
Thanks for proving my point. Climate troll.