[HN Gopher] Academics say flying to meetings harms the climate -...
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Academics say flying to meetings harms the climate - but they carry
on
Author : gnabgib
Score : 31 points
Date : 2024-09-13 20:24 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| elashri wrote:
| TLDR: Researchers in one big university survey in UK tend to
| prefer taking air travel (mostly juniors) than taking train or
| other alternative methods. The article is discussing from
| European perceptive where there is actually other options.
|
| I hope that no would think of similarity with the US because it
| lack sane alternatives. Driving for i.e two days wouldn't be less
| harm and wouldn't be possible because you will waste couple of
| days in traveling and will cost more of the limited money for
| travel in grants. And I really hope that one day the US will have
| a good train system.
| n8cpdx wrote:
| Train system in the US is almost always slower (except for
| northeast corridor), and frustratingly not much greener per
| Amtrak's own numbers.
|
| If I'm going to take days instead of hours, I want better than
| 34% more efficient.
|
| https://www.amtrak.com/travel-green
|
| I'm actually posting this with the ulterior motive of having
| someone respond with better carbon numbers for Amtrak, because
| I have not been able to find any.
| geysersam wrote:
| It says 34% more energy efficient. But that's not as relevant
| as carbon emission efficiency. It's certainly more carbon
| emission efficient than that.
|
| The page you linked says up to 73% less carbon emissions, but
| it's hard to know what that means. I don't believe they
| actually mean that an Amtrak train emits 27% of the emissions
| of the worst commerical air travel option in the US, that
| sounds too high.
| Cheer2171 wrote:
| From London St Pancras International, you're still looking at
| 8+ hours via train to Zurich, Munich, Berlin, Milan, Barcelona.
| Americans talk about Europe's rail network like it is a city
| metro or something. It is 100% unfeasible to do a business trip
| via train from Rome to Amsterdam, Madrid to Berlin, Vienna to
| Paris.
|
| https://www.chronotrains.com/en/station/2643743-London/8
| Alupis wrote:
| > TLDR: Researchers in one big university survey in UK tend to
| prefer taking air travel (mostly juniors) than taking train or
| other alternative methods
|
| Perhaps they realized one fewer booking doesn't prevent the
| flight from happening - or change anything except inconvenience
| themselves?
|
| Even if 100% of academics committed to taking the train or
| heck, walking to conferences, nothing is different other than a
| lot of wasted time. Time that might be spent much more
| productively doing something else.
|
| The hypocrisy is the only real problem. But, we (both the US
| and UK) tolerate celebrities and politicians that fly on
| private jets to events just to scold us about the climate.
| Cheer2171 wrote:
| > Perhaps they realized one fewer booking doesn't prevent the
| flight from happening
|
| Ah, the good old "collective action by individuals is useless
| because individual action by individuals is useless" canard.
| Alupis wrote:
| I think you missed the part where even if 100% of academics
| committed to not flying, still _not one thing changes_.
|
| The "do something, anything!" crowd needs reality checks
| from time to time. Consider yourself checked...
| etrautmann wrote:
| This is useless and lazy nihilism
| timr wrote:
| Arguing that travel _you don 't like_ is unnecessary
| because it harms the environment?
|
| Yes, that is useless and lazy nihilism.
|
| OP is arguing that _observed preferences_ are far more
| reliable indicators of what people actually value than
| what people say to surveyors /the press/reddit/HN. That's
| not "nilhilism", it's just a fact. Presumably, academics
| travel to conferences because they're getting value out
| of it, and they deem that value worth whatever costs they
| believe it incurs.
| matsemann wrote:
| This reminds a bit of the "it's useless to do anything
| here, China should cut their emissions, not us, we're a
| mere drop in the ocean!"
|
| Which of course means that we can solve climate change by
| dividing the earth into smaller countries, all too small
| to have any positive effect by cleaning up their act :)
| Alupis wrote:
| It's really unfortunate people cannot fathom how
| insignificant your butt in an airplane seat, that will
| take off with or without you, really is.
|
| This climate change thing really has become people's new
| religion. Deny anything that doesn't align with the
| religion. Commit to meaningless gestures. Say your three
| hail marys. Who can suffer the most in the name of our
| lord? It makes you a better person, don't you know?
| quantified wrote:
| It's the sufficient collection of butts absent that gets
| the plane not to even be scheduled. Funny how the
| pandemic quieted things down. (Though perversely,
| airlines flew plenty of empty planes to keep their gates,
| just the way our economic incentives are structured.) So
| academics on their own, no, maybe just a couple of
| charter flights here and there. Broad-based reduction
| would be required, for example reducing the sizes of the
| planes on some routes.
|
| These aspects are more meaningless because of the way
| other humans behave, but it's all a question of degree.
| It's insignificant whether you urinate into someone's
| locker at the gym, so we can all do that every day,
| right?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Well the world isn't divided like that, so since there
| _are_ groups big enough to have an impact that we can
| influence, why don 't we focus on them?
| Cheer2171 wrote:
| Thanks for the reality check, buddy. You're right that
| nothing any of us does ever really matters in the grand
| scheme of things. There is no way we could ever try to
| get others to change their behavior by first changing our
| own. Collective action has never, ever worked.
|
| I'd been keeping my used batteries and motor oil for a
| special trip to the recycling center, but I just threw
| them in the river behind my house, because it turns out
| nothing we do matters because climate change actually
| can't be fixed unless we fix corrupt multinational
| corporations or governments or China, or maybe climate
| change is all a hoax, or whatever lets you sleep at night
| and feel morally superior to all the other sheep. Thanks
| for the inspiration, friend.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > Collective action has never, ever worked.
|
| This is a gross misreading of what they said. They said
| that _one particular collective_ isn 't big enough.
| Cheer2171 wrote:
| No, they said that one fewer butt in one particular seat
| won't make a difference. That's true about everything any
| one particular individual can do about climate change.
| You could commit euthanasia and never be responsible for
| another gram of carbon emitted, and that would not have a
| measurable effect on CO2 levels.
|
| OP is trying to force a very narrow utilitarian framework
| in which actions are evaluated based only on their
| immediate consequences. By that logic, nothing any
| ordinary, median individual does will directly have a
| measurable impact on climate change.
|
| The fallacy is that these kinds of boycotts and self-
| restrictions, which are part of the "religion" OP is
| objecting to in other replies, is the way to get large
| numbers of individuals to change their behavior
| collectively in ways that do measurably impact the bottom
| line. If demand for air travel drops, fewer planes will
| burn carbon.
|
| The other fallacy is that utilitarianism is only one way
| of considering how to act ethically in the world.
| Alupis wrote:
| So if the UK banned all airplanes - what changes for the
| world?
|
| Oh, that's right. _Still nothing._
|
| You are hyper-focused on a meaningless gesture that you
| were told to believe by people who continue to fly
| private jets around the world - like the academics this
| very thread is about. Seriously... let that sink in for a
| few moments. _You_ should suffer, while they enjoy the
| lavishes of life. Kind of like a tv megachurch
| evangelist.
|
| If you want to be principled and refuse to ever fly again
| - fine. It doesn't harm anyone but yourself. The world
| won't even thank you for this meaningless gesture and
| countless wasted hours. Just don't stand on a busy street
| corner shouting "repent" into your megaphone.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the UK banning all airplanes would make a
| measurable difference. Especially since other countries
| would be reducing air travel along with them if this
| scenario is supposed to be at least semi-plausible.
| Alupis wrote:
| It would not. Those people would still travel - just by
| far less efficient means.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| You think long distance travel demand is completely
| inelastic? It's not.
|
| Also what's "far less efficient means", please be
| specific. Most of these people are not going to take solo
| car trips super long distances.
| Alupis wrote:
| Unless the UK is going to totally isolate themselves from
| the entire world - people and goods will still travel in
| and out. Only by vastly less efficient means.
|
| The UK is not isolated, and will never be. In this
| implausible scenario, people fly into France, drive to a
| ferry, cross the channel by boat, drive to the train
| station, etc. Increased traffic, idling, etc all adds up.
|
| People still have business that needs to be done and they
| will do it. Evidenced by this hypocritical academics.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Boats and trucks are not "vastly less efficient" than
| planes.
|
| And when travel is harder, people travel less.
| Alupis wrote:
| Yes they are. Look at these fuel economy numbers (broken
| down by number of butts in seats)[1]. 60-100+ mpg
| equivalent per seat. What car or truck is getting 80+mpg
| while hauling a 40,000lbs payload, for example? Not to
| mention how wildly efficient modern turbofan combustion
| is.
|
| This fiction that air travel is so awful is really
| counter productive.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft
| quantified wrote:
| Lots of holiday travel would disappear, because the
| holiday would be swallowed by inconvenience.
| quantified wrote:
| You're right that no one (essentially) will thank you for
| this. Everyone is too caught up in their own worlds. So
| eat the last tuna, hunt the last buffalo, shred your
| polyester clothes into the wind via your clother dryer,
| no one cares enough. This is where religion might have
| played a role in saying "God cares" but gods sort of
| stopped talking over a thousand years ago.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| We have mechanisms for solving collective action problems. If
| air travel is bad and we want people to take trains, just tax
| airplanes and subsidize high speed rail.
|
| I don't know how you expect people to pay twice the price and
| take twice the time to travel somewhere.
|
| Prices are information. Tax externalities.
| jltsiren wrote:
| Do you vote in elections? You must realize it's a waste of
| time, at least outside local elections. It's very unlikely
| that your vote will affect the outcome of any election in
| your lifetime. And it's even more unlikely that the effect
| will actually matter.
|
| It's good to realize that you are almost certainly a nobody.
| Your life will probably have no measurable effect on the
| world. And that's good, because the world would be a terrible
| place if many people could change it individually. But when a
| million nobodies make a choice, the world may change.
|
| You should act in ways that would be good for the society if
| everyone did the same. That's a pretty universal idea in
| moral philosophy. You can find it in most philosophical
| traditions and most religions. Utilitarianism fails on a
| large scale, because individual choices have a major effect
| on the individual but a negligible effect on the society. But
| if everyone makes choices that are individually good,
| everyone may come off worse. Civilized societies depend on
| people occasionally choosing the right thing over the thing
| that benefits them.
|
| To be a human, you need moral agency. It's not enough to be a
| utilitarian automaton reacting to incentives.
| etrautmann wrote:
| The travel isn't always necessary
| etrautmann wrote:
| Yes, when I was in academic neuroscience as of last year this was
| 100% true, through truthfully a disappointingly small number even
| thought about it. It's seen as necessary for career advancement
| and that is true. Remote conferences eliminate the most important
| part of networking
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| I keep hoping that additional features in videochat will help
| regain some of the networking options.
|
| For instance, a feature where you queue up for 30-60 second
| 1:1s with the speaker after a talk would be cool.
|
| And then basically chat roulette for the hallway sessions.
| Would be cool.
| gradstudent wrote:
| We tried various forms of this during the pandemic; systems
| like gather.town and so on. They were universally awful. I
| think travel is simply the price of good Science.
| exabrial wrote:
| Just wait until you hear about the G20 summit and all of the
| other idiots lecturing us about it.
| abeppu wrote:
| How important is this, though? Apparently though it's a growing
| contributor, air travel contributes roughly 2.5% of overall
| emissions. Even for academics who "need" to attend conferences in
| person, how many conferences does the average academic fly to per
| year?
|
| I tried one of those online carbon calculators which spat out 1.4
| tons CO2 for a round trip west coast to east coast trip (SF /
| NYC). The average American emissions are at like 10x that, so
| while it's significant, depending on how many long-haul flights
| you have per year, it may still matter less than your day-to-day
| transportation, what you eat, heating your home, etc.
| ImJamal wrote:
| Regardless of how much impact it has, it makes them look like
| hypocrites. If climate change is truly an issue that threatens
| millions of lives then maybe don't contribute to it unless you
| absolutely have to.
| viraptor wrote:
| > then maybe don't contribute to it unless you absolutely
| have to.
|
| We don't "absolutely have to" do anything. Our comments
| contributed to climate change, but we did it anyway. Living
| contributes to climate change, but we don't stop. All of us
| are choosing some acceptable threshold for our lives.
| geysersam wrote:
| Don't you find it interesting that when looking up the overall
| CO2 emissions of flying you found the number 2.5%, barely
| relevant, but when you looked up the emissions from a single
| long haul flight that ended up being ~10% of the average
| American emissions (already much larger than the global
| average).
|
| How can those two numbers be combined? Most of the worlds
| population never fly, and that's why it's a relatively small
| fraction of global emissions. But it's still a very sizeable
| portion of the emissions of people who do fly, and that makes
| it relevant.
|
| It's the same as saying: is it really important that people in
| Belgium cause large CO2 emissions? It's such a small country,
| barely 1 % of global emissions, there's no point to them
| reducing their emissions. But that's a fallacy (obviously). All
| emissions can be decomposed into small sets and dismissed as
| irrelevant.
|
| The important question is: how much benefit does these
| emissions cause compared to alternatives? And, would these
| emissions fit in the global co2 budget?
| motohagiography wrote:
| hypocricy is status signalling, complaining affirms it, a lot
| should fall into place when that clicks.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| The old "if you live in society you can't try to improve it
| without being a hypocrite" argument.
|
| "We Should Improve Society Somewhat refers to a panel from a
| comic by Matt Bors in which a medieval peasant says "We should
| improve society somewhat" while a modern man, emerging from a
| well, replies, "Yet you participate in society! Curious! I am
| very intelligent." "
|
| https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-should-improve-society-som...
| naming_the_user wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft
|
| Modern airliners approach 100mpg per seat.
|
| About the same as four people in the average American car (25mpg
| at four people is 100mpg per seat). Compared to say, your average
| truck driver (like, 10? 15?), it's absolutely spectacular.
|
| A good European train can technically do 400-500mpg per seat, so
| 4-5x, but load factors tend to be much lower, I believe around
| 80-85% for planes vs 40-50% for intercity trains.
|
| Given that then, in the real world conventional trains are about
| 2-3x more efficient than planes. High speed trains lose a
| significant amount of that advantage - can't beat physics (air
| resistance).
|
| At the end of the day, long distance travel is simply expensive
| however you cut the cookie. There's nothing particularly special
| about air travel.
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