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Comment by dig1 | Hacker News Reader

Sadly, it's true. In my opinion, this is the hypocrisy of the modern 'green' agenda - we endlessly discuss pollution, yet we cling to the comforts of modern life, many of which cause even greater harm.

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Personally I'd love to take more trains instead of planes, and bike more instead of driving, but the system (at least in the US) just isn't set up for that.

Train travel is expensive and sparse and slow, biking most places is uncomfortable and unsafe due to crappy infrastructure.

I agree. Trains are often a more efficient, more comfortable, and greener way to travel. I would love to be able to take them more often on weekends here in the UK, but they are expensive to the point of costing more than air travel, which makes no sense.

Planes are cheaper as a function of the infrastructure needed to allow their use (? Feel free to correct me). As long as we allow airplanes companies to not pay for the long term externalities that they are creating planes will stay cheaper.

In the EU, jet fuel isn't taxed at all, quite the contrast with gasoline prices.

Isn't clinging to the comforts of modern life worth heating the planet a bit? It doesn't seem like an unreasonable tradeoff to me.

Yes it is, but we've already heated the planet a bit. What we're trying to do now is prevent heating the planet a lot, which will come with much greater consequences (mass migration to escape heat and rising seas, droughts, famines, "natural" disasters, etc.).

Modern comforts like electricity, cars, heating, and cooling. Those are most of the CO2 that people produce.

It is dumb to give up modern comforts when we know how to make them green by making electricity renewable and electrifying everything. Changing habits like reducing driving and increasing transit would help. Some things will be hard, like airplanes and concrete.

I agree somewhat that there is lots of distractions. There is a lot of talk about plastic and recycling that really has little to do with climate change.

We can have it both ways. In ~50 years in the US, 99% of cars will be electric and 99% of electricity generation will be carbon negative. We can keep our comforts of modern life, like cars, while not damaging the planet.

I accept there is not a story for air travel, yet.

Air travel industry is investing into a biofuel future

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