(06-24-2024, 05:30 PM)ironyak Wrote: HiloJulie - So what would be your answer to that? Cut air travel 25% - 50% - 75%? That is not a feasible answer.
Why is that not a feasible answer? You make quite a bold assertion without any given support that goes directly against what has been shown to be needed by the IPCC - "It is still possible to limit future warming with strong, rapid and sustained cuts to greenhouse gas emissions."
It does not matter to the physics of climate change whether you read An Inconvenient Truth, or The Art of the Deal, or Liberty Defined on your KOA to LAX flight, nor if you paid someone that promised you (and 100 other people), nor how were created, nor that your flight is 50% more efficient than 30 years ago (even as there are 400% more of them). All that matters is the tons of greenhouse gases dumped into the atmosphere by that activity. Rapid, sustained greenhouse gas emissions means cutting activities that add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, not just paying lip service to the concept.
HiloJulie - I personally think spraying plumes of colored corn dust at golfing tournaments, or at Stonehenge, or throwing cans of tomato soup at the Mona Lisa in protest are just as equally ignorant as the ones denying climate change and climate science altogether
I don't know, while these actions may be small potatoes, more Tyre Extinguishers than How to Blow Up a Pipeline, you can be sure they are not ignorant of the issue and are at least doing something? Seems far better than being entirely aware of the problem but still defending massive polluting industries and frivolous consumption? (Won't someone please think of the professional golf tournaments?
Admittedly so, curbing greenhouse gas emissions is paramount. Going about it in illogical ways and means does not solve ANYTHING, it pisses people off, and fuels the anti climate change science deniers even more.
Flattening tires of Range Rovers in NYC accomplishes nothing. Further, according to your link, these “eco saviors” flattened the tires of over 50 SUV’s. 50 times 4 tires each = 200 tires. Surprisingly enough, not ONE NYC Range Rover owner came out of their house when the “eco saviors” where placing their lentil beans in the air valves of each tire and just blew their brains out with a 9MM glock or heck, even an AR-15, but what these “eco saviors” did manage to do is require 50 plus Range Rover owners to call auto service companies who dispatch huge fossil fuel guzzling service trucks, equipped with huge fossil fuel burning air compressors to air up their tires! That sure showed them “MFers” not to drive those huge gas guzzling SUV’s!
I can’t even speak to the insanity of suggesting that blowing up fossil fuel pipelines as a means of protest. Let’s save that type of sheer ignorance to the dictators of the Middle East when faced with losing a war they started and their leader being deposed. They are really great at that!
Is that what’s next to curb aviation? Blow a few jets out of the air?
Aviation has been estimated to contribute about 4% to overall climate change. And while aviation efficiency has doubled of the last 30 years, the number of people flying has quadrupled.
But let’s look at this a different way.
Back in early 1990, Boeing, then run by engineering and quality disciplines, developed the 777. At a cost of 5 billion. In today’s dollars – 12 billion.
Then Boeing got rid of senior management who knew engineering and how to design and make planes, with Wall Street darlings who knew nothing about making quality jets, but knew how to slash costs horrendously, make the balance sheet and profit and loss look stellar, make the shareholders giddy with 15% - 20% - 25% returns which allowed those new senior management teams to be paid salaries of 20 to 50 million a year plus multi-million dollar bonus plus stock grants that as long as the stock grew and grew and grew, they got even more richer and richer.
The cost of that was when the 787 was developed, all those cost cuts employed earlier resulted in massive cost overruns which the led to the 787 costing 35 billion to develop. And shortly after launch, had to be grounded due to battery fires.
Then the entire 737 MAX debacle. The 2 crashes alone directly cost Boeing 20 billion, plus another 60 billion in indirect costs.
Now – what if – just what if – Boeing after they rolled out the 777 had taken a few hundred highly skilled engineers and gave them say 10 billion to redesign the jet engine to be 50% - 75% - 95% more efficient? Develop fuels that burn with significantly less CO2 emissions? What if Boeing had committed say another 20 billion to first admit and recognize climate change, but to do something effective and state of the art?
But no, in the sole name of greed, a stalwart American company shit all over itself, possibly eventually destroying itself and for what? So a few thousand mega rich people could become uber rich. And didn’t really do a damn thing to curtail climate change.
Then, what if a few hundred huge major industrialized American companies had done the same thing?
As for fossil fuel power, which is responsible for about 40% of greenhouse gas emission, what if HECO, instead of ignoring fallow grasslands and instead of now being responsible for billions of dollars of costs to rebuild Maui, had spent say maybe a few hundred million and cleared those lands? Invested another few hundred million and turned some into huge solar panel fields? Potentially adding wind power as well?
And then there is the whole issue with – in the short term – converting HECO’s oil fired boilers to LNG as your other post discusses. Now that’s a change – for the better – until another even better change can be developed and/or implemented, but no, for political and other issues of just pure ignorance, that idea was shut down by people with their heads up their ass really far. And now – 10 plus years have elapsed and NOTING WAS DONE.
What if Range Rover invested a few hundred million into developing and making their monstrous beasts hydrogen powered, thus eliminating any greenhouse gas emission instead of making them with gasoline powered engines STILL in the 12 to 15 MPG range and selling them to – get this – those uber rich Boeing stockholders that allows Range Rover to reap huge profits to pay its senior management team tens of millions of dollars in salary and bonus?
As far as golf courses are concerned, imagine if someone suggested turning Pebble Beach into a massive “off grid” solar/wind powered mecca of affordable housing for low income people? Yeh – good luck trying that, we could probably see TMT built first!
Climate change only gets corrected when it’s done intelligently and methodically where it makes real sense.
Right down that dead center middle of the denying far right wing and the blow up pipelines far left wing.
And while the consumer will most definitely have to sacrifice for all of this – but the ones who need to really sacrifice a bit and belly up to the bar – just aren’t. They are too busy looking for the next CEO role that allows them to be paid tens of millions in salary while destroying the company and doing nothing to solve climate change. Maybe even drive a few whistleblowers to kill themselves.
(06-24-2024, 08:27 PM)Punatang Wrote: If anyone here on PW can share what you have personally sacrificed to reduce CO2 or climate change, and make suggestions on how others can emulate your example, that might be a positive and worthy direction for this thread.
For both my husband and myself, I’d have to say the “sacrifice” was purely money.
We have gone solar and have a plug-in hybrid car. (Yes, we still have older gas-powered vehicles as well)
At the time we bought our 2020 Ford Fusion Energi, it had a sticker price of about $3,000 over that of its identically equipped gasoline counterpart. However, with the incentives from Ford, as well as Federal and State tax breaks, the overall cost of that car was in total $17,600 less than its gasoline counterpart. It’s 4 years old and has just under 8,000 miles and has only been to Ford for routine maintenance.
As for the solar power for the house – (actually we have our main house and a small 1-bedroom guest house) we “over” sized it – and it’s very very rare we have to have HE power to supplement. That includes us having an electric stove, hot water and dryer.
But all of this required a lot of money up front. Our solar costs – if amortized over 8 years, would have us saving around $5,000.00 to $10,000.00 over the 8 years versus just HE power.
With the hybrid – I can go to Kona and back – with 3 other people, air conditioned all the way and use less than 3 gallons of gas. And even less if I plug it in when in Kona somewhere.