Comment on YSK that apart from not having a car, the single greatest thing you can do for the climate is simply eating less red meat

• Ksin@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  You’re gonna need to come up with a better example, when covid hit a and fewer people where buying plane tickets there where a lot fewer planes in the air. Companies usually want to be as cost effective as possible, meaning they will do the least amount of work needed to still get their customers money.

  One big problem that regulation can tackle is that corporations seek to externalize as much of their costs as they can, which means the corporation won’t have to pay for the externalized cost, so they can sell their good/service cheaper, so consumption of the product increases, leading to an outsized environmental/societal cost compared to the cost of the product.

  source

  • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    when covid hit a and fewer people where buying plane tickets there where a lot fewer planes in the air

    Thousands of Planes Are Flying Empty and No One Can Stop Them

    In January, climate activist Greta Thunberg tweeted her disbelief over the scale of the issue. Unusually, she was joined by voices within the industry. One of them was Lufthansa’s own chief executive, Carsten Spohr, who said the journeys were “empty, unnecessary flights just to secure our landing and takeoff rights.” But the company argues that it can’t change its approach: Those ghost flights are happening because airlines are required to conduct a certain proportion of their planned flights in order to keep slots at high-trafficked airports.

    source

    • LaLuzDelSol@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      That’s a bit of a gimmick related to airlines betting (correctly) that flight demand would rebound after covid ended and wanting to keep their spot in line. If there was a true societal shift and people flew less, airlines wouldn’t keep flying empty planes around for the fun of it. Also, there WERE a lot fewer flights during covid, ghost planes notwithstanding. The narrative of “we are powerless to stop climate change because corporations are evil” is lazy. Corporations aren’t evil they are just amoral-they answer to market demand, whatever that is.

      source

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        That’s a bit of a gimmick related to airlines betting (correctly) that flight demand would rebound after covid ended and wanting to keep their spot in line.

        It’s an illustration of a market incentive that doesn’t reflect consumer demand. It was also a prelude to a bunch of federal and state bailouts for the industry (much like after the crashes in '08 and '01), intended to keep businesses that can’t stay profitable in the black.

        If there was a true societal shift and people flew less

        The societal shift would need to be a reduced demand for travel not a reduced desire to fly on a plane. That’s what COVID created (temporarily) but it still didn’t drop plane flights to the point of consumer demand, because of these private contractual arrangements intended to keep airports profitable.

        I fucking hate flying. I know lots of other people who hate flying. It’s stressful, it’s expensive, it’s obnoxiously bureaucratic (especially as we switch to Real ID / tighten security at borders / etc). But it is also the only practical way to get between big states in less than a day.

        If you want a True Societal Shift, you need to present alternatives to air transport. HSR was supposed to be that alternative, but it never got delivered. For some mysterious reason, passenger railroad companies that had crisscrossed the country a century ago just evaporated. Cities grew increasingly hostile towards municipal bus depots. Highway expansion and airline construction dominated the priority of municipal and state governments.

        Also, there WERE a lot fewer flights during covid, ghost planes notwithstanding.

        There was a floor below which the number of flights could not drop due to - what are functionally - political reasons. Similarly, there were restrictions on travel that were lifted far too soon, and reignited the rapid spread of the virus, for political reasons. And there was further M&A of smaller airlines intended to monopolize the supply of travel, because finance capital demanded air travel receive priority over other civilian alternatives.

        These are not personal consumer choices. These are corporate and state policies.

        Corporations aren’t evil

        At least from the perspective of “evil” as an all-consuming selfishness that comes at the detriment of your neighbors, Corporations are explicitly designed to be evil.

        The airline industry as it exists today - a poisonous, clumsy, alarmingly fragile, wasteful, gluttonous dinosaur of a mass transit system - is the consequence of a few cartelized industrial leaders bribing and strong arming key public sector bureaucrats into subsidizing itself, as the senior executives and investors plunder the cash flow on the back end.

        Announcing that you will be bicycling from LA to NY in protest does not change any of their economic calculus.

        source

        • -> View More Comments