Holy shit, somebody is actually pointing their finger at the right people!
I can't believe he's not talking about drinking straws or plastic bags or some other laughable distraction.
this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2023
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I don't think anyone has ever talked about drinking straws or plastic bags as having a meaningful effect on carbon emissions. Reducing their use does reduce the amount of plastic that winds up in landfills and the wilderness, which is the actual point of those proposals.
From some quick data I found, aviation is responsible for 2.5% of carbon emissions. In the US, about 17% of flights are private. Probably a fair number of those are hobbiests, but even if you take that number at face value, you could summarily execute all people who take private jets, and you'd reduce carbon emissions by about 0.425 percent. I'm skeptical that that is going to really make a massive difference in the grand scheme of things.
That's Markey for you.
Carbon tax. We needed it 20 years ago but even more now. Ironically a Republican idea that has been ignored for years.
Right. There's no reason why private jets shouldn't be paying to offset 100% of their emissions. For cars it's a different story because it's a tax on the poor for something they need. Private jets are purely luxuries, only used by the wealthy, and have a viable alternative.
Maybe a dumb question, but how does providing money actually offset emissions? Are there emission vacuums somewhere that require payment to operate?
not real ones, most of them are scams where countries accept money in order to not deforest areas they werent going to anyway, double dip, or just deforest regardless
Nope, fuck cars. Tax carbon, give free public bus passes. Easy.
Not everyone lives in cities, @fuckcars@lemmy.world
Yeah, but tell me how I need to drive my Prius to the grocery store less.
her response is insanely tone-deaf too lol
"Well, no one can be perfect". 100% true, but everyone can choose to not fly in a private plane lol
This is the best summary I could come up with:
At the moment, billionaires and the ultra-wealthy are getting a bargain, paying less in taxes each year to fly private and contribute more pollution than millions of drivers combined on the roads below.
For the sake of our environment, it is time to ground these fat cats and make them pay their fair share, so that we can invest in building the energy-efficient and clean public transportation that our economy and communities across the country desperately need.
We cannot continue to ask frontline communities – disproportionately low-income, rural, immigrant, Black and brown Americans who are bearing the weight of the climate crisis – to subsidize billionaires jet-setting the globe.
The revenue generated by the Fatcat Act would be transferred to the Airport and Airway Trust Fund and a newly created federal Clean Communities Trust Fund to support air monitoring for environmental justice communities and long-term investments in clean, affordable public transportation across the country – including passenger rail and bus routes near commercial airports.
If Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and countless Wall Street hedge fund managers want to fly private jets, the least they can do is pay their fair share in taxes to compensate for the damage to our environment and the wear on our infrastructure.
It’s unconscionable that they be allowed to continue to pay pennies on the dollar to pollute our environment as Americans suffer through the hottest days in an estimated 125,000 years.
I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Did someone say that my million dollar plane will cost another million dollars to operate? Oh noes, I can't...LOL - it's just money; I found 2 millions by raising the price of my apartments by $100 a month. Enjoy your new rent, proles!
Guess we should just do nothing then.
Skip the tax go straight to execution
Frequent flyer tax plz
Yes, tax them to the bone.
tax the living shit out of them
But but.. politicians taxing their wealthy donors? I'll believe it when I see it.
There's a chunk of the Democrats, notably 'progressives,' who are willing to do just that. Markey is one.
Yup I'd like to see it, but Dems tend to do a lot of virtue signaling without follow through
The major issue blocking their action is that every Republican votes against it, and a handful of Democrats are bought off, so they vote with the Republicans. The Republicans hold a majority in the House of Representatives, so this means that no new climate legislation is going to pass before the 2024 election.
I get it, but isn't it strange that we're always chasing the dragon, it's always just within reach.
I wouldn't say that.
- In 1959, Teller spoke, but nothing happened
- In 1988, we got congressional testimony from Hansen, but no legislation to speak of
- In 2008 we had cap-and-trade legislation, but it didn't get a vote in the Senate because supporters counting votes saw it couldn't get even 40 votes
- in 2022 the Inflation Reduction act passed, getting 50 + 1 votes in the Senate, after being converted in to an almost-all-carrots-no-stick type bill to appease the few Democrats who were being paid off by the fossil fuels industry.
We're on the right trajectory here, just not nearly fast enough
No....taxing them doesnt get rid of them. Rich people have plenty of money to pay fees/fines/penalties. That being said, there is no reason for overly draconian measures either. This climate thing is a tad oversold. Sensible, affordable solutions that dont wreck our way of life can work. Nothing more than that.