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Comment by azakai | Hacker News Reader

Fair point that as a society there may be more urgent things to focus on.

However, counterpoints:

1. The carbon footprint of flying is expected to triple by 2050. It will still not be the worst sector, but it is getting worse quickly, and it makes sense to avoid that.

https://www.npr.org/2021/10/06/1043803529/google-flights-car...

2. Flying less is one of the easiest ways for an individual to reduce their carbon footprint. Just taking one less flight a year makes a dent in your total footprint. There aren't many other actions an individual can take that, if all individuals took them, would make an impact.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/27/climate/airplane-pollutio...

We should fly less.

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I do not understand this argument of using less of something so beneficial to society instead of focusing on improving the technology to reduce the carbon footprint.

Which relies on investment and users to fund its growth.

It’s not just flying but also meat, cars, plastic, etc. I get that useless consumption is bad, but abstinence is hardly a solution for most problems.

If you were diagnosed clinically obese and at risk of heart disease would you carry on eating pork pies until you died, or abstain until there is a suitable pork pie alternative?

A bad example maybe, but the market isn't the solution to everything.

If your comment consists of a bad example, as you say, and a trite cliche with no content, why would you post it?

Without letting my jimmies be rustled, my post contained about as much content as GP's. It also contained two usages of "pork pies". And this comment contains one. Happy holidays, and good luck.

Nope, Musk and Bezos should fly less recreational rockets first. After they stop and abandon their scale up plans, then I will stop visiting my overseas family.

That's literally among the least useful or relevant things we could do to stop climate change.

"We should all stop flying only if Steve puts out the campfire in his back yard" - ok, but that one of these things dwarfs the other. There will always be people doing things they shouldn't - or that you think they shouldn't - but that cannot stop you from making good decisions.

I'm not saying stop visiting your family, just that this line of thinking is completely counterproductive.

> "We should all stop flying only if Steve puts out the campfire in his back yard" - ok, but that one of these things dwarfs the other.

The carbon footprint of a single commercial space flight is orders of magnitude higher - in fact, it's higher than the entire lifetime carbon footprint of the median human being, and approximately equivalent to the lifetime carbon footprint of the average American.

One doesn't have to depend on the other, but this comparison is wrong because it ignores the fact that commercial space travel is, in fact, one of the single most environmentally-damaging activities imaginable.

I just looked it up. [edit](An average rocket)[1] emits 300T of CO2 on the round-trip. That's the same as a 777 flying from NYC to LHR round-trip. Except there have been 18 Blue Origin launches and there's 85,000 annual round trips from NYC to LHR alone.

It's certainly inefficient and not individually good for the planet, but it's a pricy luxury few can afford, and one that can be easily managed via carbon tax.

Refusing to address the 85,000 annual round-trips on just the NYC-LHR corridor because one rich guy ran 18 launches with the same carbon footprint, I mean, I'm sure he's flown his private jet over the Atlantic more than 18 times.

Remember, per person, the Blue Origin launch produces as much CO2 as 85 Bitcoin transactions.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jul/19/billionaires...

I think the poster above didn't try to say that commercial space travel is good. Just that the attitude of "I won't change if someone else doesn't" is not productive. Sure a single space flight can't compare to a single normal flight but if enough people restrict them self a bit it would make a big dent.

You make all of this effort so that Musk can burn it in 20’?

That's not the point neither I nor the poster above was making at all.

It's not their individual flights that are the problem, it's starting a business unit that burns an average lifetime's worth of carbon for a couple day recreational trip that's the problem.

It's not a "campfire".

> it's starting a business unit that burns an average lifetime's worth of carbon for a couple day recreational trip that's the problem

Can’t think of many better ways to kill political support for real climate change legislation than advocating ceding our technological leadership in space technology like this.

I'm not sure how "look at stopping recreational flights if we're getting to the point of asking average people to take less airliner flights", is "ceding our technological leadership in space technology".

Sorry, I was responding to advocating against e.g. SpaceX and Blue Origin. Strongly believe we need a carbon tax, which would reduce air travel organically.

So you just presented the priorities of the US. Military and space domination.

Climate is way down the in list of priorities.

Should we just stop pretending?

> Should we just stop pretending?

Who claims climate change is the greatest policy concern to the U.S. or any of the world's regional powers?

It's plain as day that isn't the case. That's the problem. That's why nipping at small fry, like plane travel and rockets, is stupid. It deploys limited political capital to a small problem. That distracts from the bigger stuff we need to accomplish, e.g. carbon taxes, electrifying transportation and greening primary production.

A lot of people claim that.

https://www.un.org/en/chronicle/article/greatest-threat-glob...

The ride up emitted 82.5T of CO2 per person.

A single Bitcoin transaction emits 1T of CO2.

An average American home emits 5T of CO2 per year.

One round-trip flight from New York to London emits 1T of CO2 per person, and seats about 300 people.

So for perspective, it produces about as much CO2 to fly 4 people to space as a 777 from New York to London round-trip. Now there are 233 daily flights from New York to London - or 85,000 per year. And that's just New York to London.

There have been 18 Blue Origin launches.

It's a campfire. A pricy luxury that a few folks take advantage of. Should everyone do it? No. Can everyone do it? No. A carbon tax will sort all this out.

But saying we shouldn't address the 85,000 flights from NYC to LHR per year because Bezos blasted off a few times is a really poor way of framing the conversation.

I question your numbers because New Shepard doesn't use carbon based fuel at all.

It's replacement, New Glenn, is the problem here.

I see, I was using this [1] although you are of course right that it's a liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen rocket. While it's not carbon free to obtain those, but the numbers are probably quite a bit lower for New Shepard.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jul/19/billionaires...

Hydrogen today is coming mostly as a by product of extraction & refining fossil fuels.

https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/hydrogen-resources

Policy needs to be consistent to work. You cannot on one hand legislate to cut pennies worth of emissions from individuals making them poorer and more miserable and then on the other hand allow for an orders of magnitude more waste for a handful of selected ones, specially when their mission is to scale up the waste for recreation.

Just as a matter of interest: the CO2 equivalent contributions to total greenhouse gas production from air travel and wood-fires for cooking are about the same (about 2%).

Bezos' spaceship is zero-carbon (as long as they use green hydrogen rather hydrogen steam reformed from natural gas) and Musk has promised to make his zero-carbon as well.

Blue Origin's new engine is liquid methane.

The OP was talking about passenger flights, which means the hydrogen New Shepard, not the methane New Glenn.

New Glenn is aiming to be human rated.

https://twitter.com/erdayastronaut/status/112658698305114112...

When Starship goes zero carbon, hopefully New Glenn feels the pressure and followed.

I'll believe Musk's plans when they happen.

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