When you need to ship a cargo
No cargo. Planego. Shipgo. Only peasants cargo.
Ah Blane we meet again
Oh totally. billionaires carbon footprint is many orders of magnitude larger than multiple lifetimes and generations of us normies. Abolish billionaires. Redistribute that wealth. The environmental future we want - NOW.
And yet, there aren’t very many of them but there are billions of us.
Even if their lifestyles result in 1000x as much pollution, they only represent 0.00004% of the worldwide population, which is not enough to move the needle.
To put that in perspective, metro Tokyo has a population of approximately 38 million. If the fraction of billionaires in Tokyo matches the global ratio, there would be about 15 billionaires in Tokyo. Anything 15 people do in Tokyo will be just noise compared to what the other 37,999,985 people do.
Let’s just pretend that all 3000 of the world’s billionaires lived in the USA. They’d still only make up 0.001% of the entire US population. Even if they were flying around in personal jets, being followed by Airbus Beluga jets carrying their yachts, it would still pale in comparison to the sheer number of people currently suffering in economy class right now.
I still think billionaires should be squashed by a hydraulic press, but I’m not kidding myself into thinking that doing that will have any impact on the environment at all. I support it more because they’re greedy assholes who are taking far more than their share, and who are using their immense wealth to distort the well functioning governing of the world.
I gotta be honest, I would personally insert a straw into the nose of every baby seal on earth for a flying cruise ship.
That’s sad as hell tbh
Baby seals know what they’ve done
I don’t know, there’s a lot of baby seals
I’m curious as to why you’re using a straw at all.
is it that because you’re at a restaurant?
You should know that by giving most restaurants your patronage, you are contributing to a lifestyle that we all cannot participate in.
What does this even mean?
It means that anyone who does anything totally sucks.
Metal straws are nice
Wheat stalk straws are surprisingly good. Don’t need to wash them like metal and silicone ones.
I love my metal straws. Great for smoothies and milkshakes. They don’t collapse!
Just don’t trip
Might get expensive to give one away with every drink
Yeah the last time I drank a can of coke it was crazy expensive. Like an entire dollar or some shit.
Metal straws are annoying to clean. You can’t just put them in the dishwasher, but have to use more water washing by hand and need to buy a specific tool just for that.
But why are we using straws at all? Just say no
some people’s necks don’t bend right. straws are a medical device
That’s where you’re going? Out of the billions of straws used every day, you’re concerned about the edge case where it’s medically useful? By all means go for the plastic single use. Medicine is a huge user of that and there’s no realistic alternative. Hospitals and nursing homes get universal exemptions. It’s also a tiny fraction of single use plastic straw waste.
can i interrupt your whine to remind you i answered your question
Thank you for interrupting our discussion of zebras where everything is striped black or white, by reminding us they’re striped light gray and dark gray
you wanted to know why people use them and “PFFF THATS AN EDGE CASE” do you feel this way about all disadvantaged groups or just the disabled?
it’s literally the edge case, and insignificant to the actual point being made. you excused like a few thousand uses of the straw, maybe. don’t excuse the thousands of metric tons thrown out every year
Because my teeth are going bad and straws help
Thats something I wasn’t aware of, but clearly there are medical needs. I’m still confident that’s a small minority.
You’re right that we need to stop trying to make things binary, like a blanket prohibition. But we should be able to just say no to casual use of single use plastic straws and the remaining exceptions are probably no big deal. It’s not the hundreds of thousands of medically useful single use plastic straws every day that are the problem. But the hundreds of millions, or billions, of casual use
Yeah, but I’m terrible about carrying them with me
Start a cocaine or ketamine habit and you will always remember to have it on hand.
Do they have to be 3 feet long novelty straws?
Eco-friendly straws don’t have to be mushy paper.
There are several other “vegetable plastics” that last long enough to serve as a fully functional straw, but months later degrade naturally. The reason you don’t see them being used is because McDonald’s doesn’t want to spend an extra $0.10 on every order, because that would totally bankrupt the billionaire company you know.
In the last week I had the opportunity to use metal straws and bamboo straws. Much better than paper straws.
I still propose that we just stop with the single use straws and if people want straws for their drinks that badly they can bring their own reusable one, and if it isn’t takeout the restaurant can provide a reusable one.
Like seriously why does everything need a straw?
I carry metal straws for this reason. I also bring my own cup, and most places I visit let me use both.
Man, I’m lucky if I remember to bring my bags to the grocery store…
I visited a Chinese monastery in 2018 and spent 4 months learning the discipline and art of tipfu -the study of tipping a cup at the right angle to sip liquid without the use of a straw. I’m currently yellow belt.
Flex!!
The best I’ve found is sugarcane straws. They cost 15cad for a 100 pack compared to 10dollars for 100 plastic straws, which is small enough to not matter to me.
I know for a fact they dissolve as I throw them into my own compost, and also they dissolve to nothing if added to hot water (side note, you should never drink hot drinks out of straws).
Yep, sugarcane polymers are amazing. They can be made to dissolve quickly or last a little longer, depending on your needs. Technically they could be used as full packaging for chips and bread and similar foods.
There is a hollow grass based solution used in asia which requires zero processing beyond cutting, drying and packaging. But I’ll keep the paper straws if the billionaires have to travel in paper planes and boats.
if we reduced wealth inequality to the point noone could afford that kind of shit i bet we could ride the plastic straw wave for a few centuries before it really came back to bite us.
Fuck the billionaires that do that, but that doesn’t mean that me using a straw isnt still making the shit worse. At least I can sleep at night knowing I am not making the situation worse, and I will still try to vote for politicians that are fighting against the billionaires
The non mushy straws aren’t terrible, but all rubberized tires are, whether on cars or bikes. The car ones are much worse.
And air travel is even worse still
But not close to industrial pollution which is exponentially greater.
The billionaires could care more and put some R&D into it. They just dont.
The normalization of needless single use products, like straws, by making them non plastic DOES make things worse. It delays real action, like removing straws altogether.
It’s greenwashing inherently unsustainable practices, just like introducing carbon capture technology on oil rigs or hyping electric cars as a way to keep the auto industry going (while suppressing more efficient means of transportation).
If we’re not going to fix shit, then why the fuck bother with mushy straws.
Agree with this take. It’s like yeah electric cars are technically better, but any advantage they have over combustion engines is blown away by things like public transportation, or designing walkable/cyclable cities.
Our solutions can’t just rely on swapping out for “greener” tech. We need radical changes to how we are currently living in order to ensure a livable future.
There is no future that is not radical. This gradualist, neolib (let’s make sure all the investors get a chance to divest from dirty tech before switching!) fantasy will fuck us. It’s been fucking us for a hundred years. It’s time to try literally anything else.
Our (Germany) cities are pretty much “walkable”, yet the public transportation sucks big sweaty monkey balls. Wherever you wanna go, plan a lot of additional time. And then it’s either
A) pay first class and enjoy SOME comfort (while still have to get TO the train in a horrible way)
Or
B) use the “normal” way and stay the whole time pressed against stinky other humans that breathe in your neck.
One way is far too expensive and the other even more.
And There’s not much to do about (except prices). How many trams, busses and trains and their tracks can you build. Yet our population gets bigger and bigger.
So fuck public transportation and fuck walkable. I wanna get to places quickly and comfortably. And that is a car. But at least we only have one, as we don’t need to work.
With adequate public transportation, it becomes much more comfortable and convenient.
My city installed a few additional bike paths, and added some more buses, and the difference is huge.
I don’t even need a car except when traveling longer distances.
But there is no adequate transportation. And we just have no space for more tracks and more trams and busses. Quite the contrary, we even canceled many routes. Public transport is a nightmare here and I wouldn’t use it if I’d be paid to do it. Well and bike-paths is the same problem. No space. Biking is bad here, the absolute opposite to our neighbors the dutch. But I wouldn’t wanna use a bike anyway. I wanna get to point B quickly.
You’ve got to invest in it before it gets good. You’ve got decades of car centric infrastructure inertia making cars the more convenient choice. All you’ve got to do is invest just enough to make alternatives actually possible.
I don’t know the challenges of your specific infrastructure, but there are certainly improvements that could be made
Sure you could tweak here and there, but you’d need to turn it completely around to make it attractive to me. And then, a car is still more appealing to me. But as said, we have limited space and growing numbers of people. It’s room to live or more trains. And trains are only used by the lower classes, so nobody actually cares…
Sorry, but I am confiscating your moral license if the straw you use is justification.
The straw you use does nothing but make you feel better, which I would argue is harmful. You shouldn’t feel better for doing nothing when such large problems exist.
Your use of the right straw is akin to you killing a single invasive ant in a rain forest, and saying you did your part to remove the invasive colony. You then spend every opportunity talking about how you killed that single ant, all while the ants have already multiplied and utterly nullified your non-effort contribution.
Shipping barges, data centers, meat production, gas and coal burning are all many orders of magnitudes greater problems than what straw you use. Gas, coal, and fossil fuel use is over 70% of all emissions, so that should be the primary conversation. In addition, these are all growing in use. Talk about that. Put your attention and action towards that.
The straw is a metaphor for doing what you can in your own world no matter how small, not the absolute culmination of all the good that we’ve done.
We can all do much more than straws.
Do you know what a metaphor is?
It’s replacing real action in place of a good feeling. It’s THE plan to not do anything effective.
Look, if living in a densified treeless hellscape of concrete towers that all look the same, filled with 350 sq. ft. windowless suites furnished with sawdust furniture, that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make for the ruling class to continue living well.
This fat cat gets 350 sq ft!!
Oh no. The Fats will be rounded up and rendered for cruise ship airplane fuel.
Sure but it’s a 5 foot ceiling. Like Alfred Jarry.
The billionaires aren’t the ones teaching you about how the planet works. In fact how rich as person is has nothing to do with it.
If you want to understand how the planet works, learn it from planet experts.
But they got those cruise ship private jets and that’s bad
I guess they didn’t see the photo
Ok I’m genuinely curious, what are you talking about? Where did you get “teaching how the planet works?”
i guess that means since billionaires fly on planes everyone else is free to:
Would you recommend a better solution? A high speed railway over the Bering Strait, perhaps?
Real hyperloop, not the Musk bullshit. Scaled up pneumatic tube systems operating at orbital speeds (7 km/s).
Apply a worldwide carbon tax to all emissions, which gradually increases year by year. Knowing that flying will become a less and less viable business model over time, governments and investors will begin on alternative investments in infrastructure and novel technologies.
For overland travel: trains.
For across oceans: probably also trains, possibly in tunnels.
Benefits to this approach:
- Actually reduces carbon emissions instead of moving them around.
- Doesn’t tell the individual to stop flying or eating steak. Leaves it up to them to decide which carbon emissions they value most.
- Doesn’t pretend to be omniscient and perscribe solutions. Instead lets everyone in the world solve the problem creatively.
- Creates a market incentive to accellerate the production of alternative technologies.
Most likely what would happen is that high speed rail would see a big boom immediately as governments looked for ways to reduce intra-country transit costs. Overseas flights, which are quite a bit rarer, would probably stay stable for several years (though with a fair amount of griping about the increased cost of flying). However, as time went on we would also expect to see overseas flights drop significantly. Businesses would prefer teleconferencing to sending delegates overseas for small matters. People would vacation overseas less frequently, instead staying on their own continents. Possibly there is a new industry - high speed sailing cruise ships - which would transport people across oceans at slower speeds for their vacations. Someone might invent better forms of carbon-neutral energy storage to make air travel more feasible again. Otherwise, nations start building undersea tunnels to connect rail lines across oceans.
I’m pretty sure most flights are regional, not long distance, unless that’s only the us where we don’t believe in trains. There was an article a year or so back, where France started to actually ban regional flights for a few routes with good rail service. That’s where we need to be going.
Between high speed rail, and Zoom, we ought to be able to cut the number of flights in half while making travel better, and we can cut the least efficient flights since they spend proportionally more time climbing to altitude vs cruising
Even in the US, we have Acela and it’s arguably the best way to travel a few routes like BOS—>NYC, for the last two decades. Aside from connections, why do we still have hourly shuttles flying that route? Looking at the entire Acela service area, you probably have hundreds of daily regional flights. Most of those need to go
Edit: and this is part of my argument that California High Speed Rail is worth much higher funding to complete at pretty much any cost
the bering strait is no where near the oberpopulated east coast
Here’s a short version:
I’m pretty sure most flights are regional, not long distance ….ban regional flights ….we ought to be able to cut the number of flights in half
Imagine if there were half the number of flights, so the remaining ones weren’t as hard on our environment. Instead of going to fantasies like railroad over the Bering strait, let’s just only use flying for long distance routes.
how is anyone on the baring strait thats not in a major city supposed to get fresh food without regional flights? and I thought most flights were on 737 and bigger aircraft anyways?
Regional flights are not the same as like bush pilots, and obviously there will always be edge cases. Leave the Bering Strait alone: there’s not enough population or cities for modern trains to help, it’s mostly boats. There is the Siberian railroad, but it will never be fast or modern. Is there even regularly scheduled flights? Even if you look at Alaska, most of the population is along the coast but even a simple highway is tough. Sometimes there are disadvantages to living in more challenging parts of the world
Let’s focus on the 75% of the worlds population living in more hospitable regions
The rule of thumb used to be 500 miles. Any time you have two cities within 500 miles of each other, high speed rail is potentially the most convenient, efficient, useful way to travel. If we built it. Farther than that, flying has a strong advantage. That’s what’s generally meant by regional travel.
Most of the planes in that screenshot were over land.
And if the infrastructure existed, we’d be golden!
Man, it sure is lucky highways and airports existed before we got here since we’re clearly incapable of building infrastructure.
I mean usually airports aren’t on top of land, not to mention how much more difficult airtravel would be if you had to reach the airport or plane by boat first hah
By far most planes in that screenshot are over land. You’re right, when you have to cross an ocean to get somewhere there isn’t really any alternative, but for all those over land they could’ve constructed and rode high speed railways instead. Countries like China and Japan show they can be proper alternatives, and there is no reason to use anything else for those distances.
Yeah, I know. I was hoping for an actual answer, looks like I got a few. I’d like more efficient travel, but the megacorporations that be have purposefully decided not to build it. Wonder why.
“You have fuel efficiency improvements on the order of 1% per year, and flights are increasing 6%,” says Rutherford, “It’s not even close.”
straight up we need to fly less overall, so think of all the things that help reduce people flying and we need to do that
but you’re right, i need to head back to see the family at christmas, look at my options
You can get a good deal if you ride-share, in this case. If you have too much luggage, the flight won’t be viable either, so it seems like a doable comparison.
If I am reading the map correctly, mountains would come in the way, for a straight line path, but that is not a good enough excuse for not having high speed rail from Yelarbon to Burra, when there is a rail along the coastlines.
And since I don’t know better, I am going to assume that train cost is dues to coastal maintenance costs.
If the train was the cheapest option then that might be a relaxing travel. But it also uses holiday days you could be using for something else
yep I’m only staying for 3 days so the train ride would 4-5 days and my stay would be 3 days :|
i do want to take the train up to cairns though, that seems nice
I never had any issues with paper straws. Is it a skill issue?
Same.
The people I’ve noticed complain seem to buy giant drinks and let them sit around for a while.
Never been a fan of flat warm soft drinks myself.
I’ve definitely noticed paper straws come in different qualities, and are affected differently depending on what you’re drinking. But the ones that turn mushy were largely phased out of use because I’m sure a lot of people complained. I haven’t had a mushy straw in years.
I haven’t had a mushy straw in years.
Same and the great irony is that people use paper straws as an example of a minor change to stop climate change when billionaires fly around on jets outputting a ton of co2… but paper straws have nothing to do with co2 output or climate change… they are to reduce single use plastics polluting the environment…
Be the change you want to see in the world.
throws a Molotov at the next flying cruiser
BORTLES!
Bruh if you so much as spit on said cruiser you’ll be wanted by the police for terrorism, despite the definition of terrorism being to threaten harm to civilians…
Before I submit, I want to clarify that I have read the UK Government’s definition of terrorism, and as it’s a stupid ass definition, I elected to ignore it.
“…as the use or threat of… …serious damage to property… …designed to influence the government… …for the purpose of advancing [an]… …ideological cause.”
As we know, taking the only route that ensures results and damaging property belonging to anyone, regardless of how many people will be saved, is against the legal law and punishable. HOWEVER, going back to their own law…
“…as the use or threat of… …serious violence against a person [OR] endangering a person’s life (other than that of the person committing the action) [OR] creating a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public… …which involves the use of firearms or explosives is terrorism regardless of whether or not the action is designed to… …intimidate the public… …for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause.”
By their own law, any organisation intending to assist in the wilful and unprovoked violence against people, with explosives or firearms, is by their definition a terrorist. The disclaimer “other than that of the person committing the action” absolves anyone of the definition if they are doing so to stop the attacker. This defines the UK government and many companies as terrorists but the only reason this is not the case is because the government a) choose which laws to uphold and when, and b) defend their decision by lying that the Palestinian people were the instigators of their own eradication by the various countries of the world.
Sorry, I know this is just a meme
That’s why the billionaires have decided to hoard all the wealth among a smaller and smaller proportion of the population. They’re trying to save the planet! When 10 people have everything and the rest are all dead - boom, planet saved.
It’s not like ”they” held a meeting to decide they were going to get everything for themselves. Rather they’re embracing this inevitable ”feature” of the ongoing collapse of market economics.
Increasing the concentration of financial capital in the hands of a few people changes the value of that capital. For normal people, the dollar value is measured in the cost of food and living space. Billionaires, who despite evidence to the contrary, are human beings, don’t need or demand more of those real resources – say potatoes or tenancy in small rental apartments – than anyone else. In fact, they can in many cases make do with less! They prefer to subside on lobster, filet mignon or whatever fad diet their longevity coach prescribes, and live in lavish palaces and/or bunkers.
Billionaires, and even down to the measly top 10 percent of earners, are the ultimate hedge when things go sideways in the real economy. They allow governments to keep printing money by diverting a tidy sum of it from potatoes and apartment leases to the lobster, filet mignon, yacht and private jet economy – and more importantly, their investment portfolios.
My point being, that malevolence isn’t the main driver here, but a widespread failure of people to acknowledge that the fantasy of limitless growth inevitably must be realized within the confines of the fantasy world of the financial economy by insulating it from the real economy. Because in the latter we eventually have to accept that we have reached the highest amount of potatoes and apartments possible. This failure is on everyone, not just billionaires.
At this point, though, I guess ”they” (Peter Thiel et al) have pretty much decided to help this collapse along with the help of every major government. So I guess you’re right.
But who will clean the cruise ship jets for them?!
Robots, probably. ChatGPT will figure it out, probably.
