You are part of the aggregate like it or not and this is aggregated demand that gets this plane flying.
You are free to do what you want but you can’t deny your impact. Given your post you probably have by yourself the carbon footprint of two to three families.
So how many people do you assume in the US are throwing away everything they own to fly as much as we do?
And you’re also assuming airplanes are flying at 100% capacity. I can tell you out of the 12 flights I was on between business and personal the last two months of last year [1] none of them were at capacity.
1) it's not just you, it's your partner too. So that's two seats x # flights/yr.
2) with the extra seat miles you are occupying, airlines can sustain their existing routes/itineraries or expand them if they're at capacity.
At a larger scope it can be viewed as: will the airline fly more flights with its existing fleet? Will the airline buy more aircraft to fly more flights? If yes to either, then your argument breaks down.
Unless you have your own private plane, the airplane would just as much take off without you as Google would still be running servers whether you used it or not.
Are you alone going to make a difference by not flying? Like that neocon anti-environmental Obama said “we aren’t going to save the planet by throwing a bottle in the recycling bin”
The airplane takes off if, on average, the sum of dollars that all ticketed passengers are willing to pay for the benefit of being on it is larger than the operational and capital cost of the airline for operating that one flight.
Your contribution (in a purely causal sense, regardless of what moral statement you might read into it) to all of this is very indirect and diluted, but that does not make it zero.
Note that you're the one bringing the "carbon footprint" concept into this conversation, not me.
> How much could you reduce your carbon footprint if you didn’t use HN? Google?
Again, I don't really subscribe to the idea of carbon footprints, but for the sake of the argument: Insignificantly little, compared to the emissions caused by the flights I take.
Yes, but I‘m not the same person that mentioned your carbon footprint.
My point is, carbon footprint or not, that buying flight tickets and airplanes flying are in a causal relationship, which you seem to be denying, which in turn I find absurd.
You are responsible (again, no moral judgement or carbon footprint shaming implied; again, I fly too, and not too infrequently) for the consequences your actions, and dilution of responsibility seems like an extremely immature way of dealing with that.
Buying a flight ticket isn‘t the same thing as chartering a private jet, but it‘s also not the same thing as riding a bike around the block in terms of energy and resource expenditure. What we do about all of these things is a question completely secondary to the discussion at hand.
And if you didn’t ride a bike and walked everywhere you would save the resources required to make the bike.
Are you not also “diluting” the responsibility by not taking into account all of the energy you use by being on your computer? By being on the internet?
At what point does it become silly? Or do you set the bar right above “the things I don’t do”?
> Are you not also “diluting” the responsibility by not taking into account all of the energy you use by being on your computer? By being on the internet?
No, I am accepting the responsibility for all of these actions (at least insofar as I am aware of their consequences) – which are not nearly in the same ballpark as flying in terms of energy expenditure, but again, you're the one counting/comparing, not me.
> Or do you set the bar right above “the things I don’t do”?
Like what, taking airplanes? You seem to be intentionally ignoring the fact that I have repeatedly stated that I do. I just don't engage in ridiculous logical acrobatics in trying to rationalize away the consequences of doing so.
You know, if there are enough people like you then you can generate a lot of additional demand for flights, and an airline will actually add flights to their schedule to accommodate that. The law of supply and demand still works here.
Yes, I’m sure there are lots of people like me who are willing to throw away everything they own that won’t fit in three suitcases and travel around the US for half the year.
"I am a beautiful and unique snowflake, there aren't really any people like me" is a wrong answer here :) We are not talking about people exactly like you, we're talking about people taking a lot of unnecessary trips just for fun. Some will do that constantly, like you, some will try this for a month or two. Still those travels add up.
Again, I'll take having fun over saving the planet every time, let's just stop pretending that your travels add no carbon emissions.
Do my personally taking a plane that was already flying “add to the carbon emissions” of the plane was going to fly anyway?
Or should I also start a collective action to keep others from flying to reduce the number of flights overall? My refusing to ever fly is not going to stop one plane from flying.
