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Comment by rocgf | Hacker News Reader

To me, this type of argument is so hard to understand that I'm not sure if you're serious or not.

Private jets are bad and wasteful & the people attending that are pricks anyway etc. etc. Everybody agrees.

But I actually see no issue with the attendees flying in on private jets in and of itself. The impact of all that travel is basically just a drop in the ocean and could easily be made up for with a stroke of a pen if those people would actually convene to do some good. Do you really want your PM/president wasting 2 days getting there? I personally wouldn't.

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Well, I try to reuse my grocery bags even though I know that most of the plastic in the ocean is from China.

I find it hard to have faith in hypocrites who believe that their damage is somehow less damaging then other people's damage.

As for your direct question, I would prefer they do a zoom call. They may not be able to do as much backroom dealing over wine and scotch, but I'm okay with that as well.

I generally believe anyone participating in such activities should live by setting example. That is fulfil those goals to absolute extreme. Anything else is just pure hypocrisy that invalidates their whole existence.

And yes, PM, president should spend all their waking time traveling there as they are not hourly paid. So their time is free for constituents.

It would be worth it if they achieved anything. Even the smallest international action would more than offset those flights etc. But they have taken no actual action. They know before they board the plane that nothing will come of the meeting. And most go with the specific intent of stopping anything being done if it somehow did start to occur.

Your hypercynical attitude is dangerous and wholly disconnected from reality.

It’s true that the 1.5°C goal is seeming to get more and more unrealistic. That’s endlessly frustrating, as is the slow progress overall. However, it’s also completely untrue to act as though nothing was done. That’s just hypercynical bullshit that doesn’t have anything to do with reality.

Just like talk about private jets is just not at all constructive because it doesn’t matter at all. It’s incredibly irrelevant.

You can call it hyper cynical, I don't necessarily disagree. But my attitude is completely rooted in reality. It's people who think we're making progress that aren't living in reality. That's sort of my whole point.

Do you really, honestly, think that cop27 will make progress where the previous 26 completely failed? Or all the accords before Paris?

We've known there was a massive issue for 40 years. We've spent that time making it worse. Those are not attitudes, they're just facts... I know I'm a downer, but that doesn't make me wrong and we really need LESS hope because 40 years of hope has actually made everything worse.

I agree with your pessimistic outlook in the sense that I expect very little.

However, we are making (too slow) progress, so not meeting is not an alternative.

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