One of the most decadent human endavours. As if there were no real problems to fight on this planet. Ironically, the burning of fossile fuels causes one of the biggest...
I highly recommend to everyone who is concerned about this. The knee-jerk reaction needs to be toned down a little bit, we need to look at the data first.
You might argue it is insignificant on the world stage but these things are symbolic. It's going to be hard trying to convince people to lower their footprint when they see the rich and famous behaving as if there isn't problem.
Austerity will not get us out of this hole.
I mostly agree in the long term, but in some ways analogously to the pandemic strategy of short term mitigation whilst long term solutions are put in place, I see few downsides to trying to stem the flow now by altering behaviour, in order to give us more time to fix the issue properly.
There's also a sliding scale - not all things people can do to reduce their footprint are really "austerity" but rather alternatives with a different set of tradeoffs. A sideways move that requires a culture shift.
I don't mean this to come across as an attack - I don't know your motivations and I'm guilty of this personally - but IMO most people I talk to who argue your position tend to be doing it as much as a rationalisation of their own behaviour than as a position they've come to from first principles.
On the practical side, because austerity cuts economic growth, and growth is necessary in order to have both the industrial capacity and discretionary funds necessary to take on and complete such a massive project.
And I’m sorry, but it did come off as an attack. Let’s leave the ad hominems out of it and engage in good faith discussion.
All things we have never done at scale. Techno-optimism will not get us out of this hole.
This is the equivalent of “you need to spend money to make money.”