• Rodeo@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    Holy shit, somebody is actually pointing their finger at the right people!

    I can’t believe he’s not talking about drinking straws or plastic bags or some other laughable distraction.

    • BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      I don’t think anyone has ever talked about drinking straws or plastic bags as having a meaningful effect on carbon emissions. Reducing their use does reduce the amount of plastic that winds up in landfills and the wilderness, which is the actual point of those proposals.

      From some quick data I found, aviation is responsible for 2.5% of carbon emissions. In the US, about 17% of flights are private. Probably a fair number of those are hobbiests, but even if you take that number at face value, you could summarily execute all people who take private jets, and you’d reduce carbon emissions by about 0.425 percent. I’m skeptical that that is going to really make a massive difference in the grand scheme of things.

  • rusticus@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Carbon tax. We needed it 20 years ago but even more now. Ironically a Republican idea that has been ignored for years.

    • mintyfrog@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Right. There’s no reason why private jets shouldn’t be paying to offset 100% of their emissions. For cars it’s a different story because it’s a tax on the poor for something they need. Private jets are purely luxuries, only used by the wealthy, and have a viable alternative.

      • Eggyhead@artemis.camp
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        1 year ago

        Maybe a dumb question, but how does providing money actually offset emissions? Are there emission vacuums somewhere that require payment to operate?

        • threegnomes@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          not real ones, most of them are scams where countries accept money in order to not deforest areas they werent going to anyway, double dip, or just deforest regardless

        • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          Well, trees are one of them. More money means more trees planted.

          Or that money could be invested in renewable energy, which will reduce emissions in other areas.

          And when you increase the cost of something, you get less of it, so taxing emissions should mean fewer emissions.

          And so on.

        • Takumidesh@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          The closest bus to me is about a 1.5 hour walk, with the path options either being, the side of a 70 mph highway, or the side of 45 mph side roads (no sidewalks).

          The bus pass would just take up space in my wallet and nothing more.

          I work from home to reduce my car usage dramatically, and already pay annual taxes on the car itself as well as every gallon of gas (in top of standard sales tax) that goes into it. The car is 15 years old and gets over 30mpg.

          Your ‘easy’ solution requires uprooting people’s lives dramatically and is, dare I say it, an incredibly naive take on the real problems that the planet, nations, and individual people actually have.

          And before you say ‘move somewhere with people’ I do live where people are, I live in between two of the biggest cities in my state, moving closer to those cities requires a) a huge sum of liquid cash, and b) a huge increase in my cost of living.

          Think critically about the world you are in, have perspective about other people’s living situations, and have respect for your peers. Blanket solutions are historically ineffective.

          • mintyfrog@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            They’re totally forgetting that people need to live where other people don’t. Farming. Solar fields. Forestry. Mining. Wind farms.

          • library_napper@monyet.cc
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            1 year ago

            Thbk realistically about the world you’re in. Ban cars and buses will be everywhere.

            This isn’t a problem in poor countries.

            • mintyfrog@lemmy.ml
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              1 year ago

              In what poor country are cars banned?

              Funny how you respond to just this comment but not the others.

              What bus is going to run to bring farmers to massive farms, miles apart?

                • mintyfrog@lemmy.ml
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                  1 year ago

                  And what about the places that aren’t between cities? Rural areas are larger than you think. You’re expecting people to walk 4 miles and wait 2 hours for a bus on a regular basis.

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      I’m 100% in favor.

      My preferred solution is to tax carbon, and redistribute it as a tax credit/stimulus evenly to the population. I like that better than treating it as normal income so it stays focused on being a Piguovian Tax and not repurposed as a general revenue source.

      But honestly, I’m in favor of pretty much any carbon tax initiative.

    • bitsplease@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      her response is insanely tone-deaf too lol

      “Well, no one can be perfect”. 100% true, but everyone can choose to not fly in a private plane lol

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    At the moment, billionaires and the ultra-wealthy are getting a bargain, paying less in taxes each year to fly private and contribute more pollution than millions of drivers combined on the roads below.

    For the sake of our environment, it is time to ground these fat cats and make them pay their fair share, so that we can invest in building the energy-efficient and clean public transportation that our economy and communities across the country desperately need.

    We cannot continue to ask frontline communities – disproportionately low-income, rural, immigrant, Black and brown Americans who are bearing the weight of the climate crisis – to subsidize billionaires jet-setting the globe.

    The revenue generated by the Fatcat Act would be transferred to the Airport and Airway Trust Fund and a newly created federal Clean Communities Trust Fund to support air monitoring for environmental justice communities and long-term investments in clean, affordable public transportation across the country – including passenger rail and bus routes near commercial airports.

    If Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and countless Wall Street hedge fund managers want to fly private jets, the least they can do is pay their fair share in taxes to compensate for the damage to our environment and the wear on our infrastructure.

    It’s unconscionable that they be allowed to continue to pay pennies on the dollar to pollute our environment as Americans suffer through the hottest days in an estimated 125,000 years.


    I’m a bot and I’m open source!

    • silence7@slrpnk.netOP
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      1 year ago

      There’s a chunk of the Democrats, notably ‘progressives,’ who are willing to do just that. Markey is one.

        • silence7@slrpnk.netOP
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          1 year ago

          The major issue blocking their action is that every Republican votes against it, and a handful of Democrats are bought off, so they vote with the Republicans. The Republicans hold a majority in the House of Representatives, so this means that no new climate legislation is going to pass before the 2024 election.

  • Overzeetop@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Did someone say that my million dollar plane will cost another million dollars to operate? Oh noes, I can’t…LOL - it’s just money; I found 2 millions by raising the price of my apartments by $100 a month. Enjoy your new rent, proles!

  • TheMage@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    No…taxing them doesnt get rid of them. Rich people have plenty of money to pay fees/fines/penalties. That being said, there is no reason for overly draconian measures either. This climate thing is a tad oversold. Sensible, affordable solutions that dont wreck our way of life can work. Nothing more than that.