Virtually no-one owns a private jet because it just doesn't make sense to do so unless you basically live in one. A lot more people timeshare/charter one. Which I am perfectly fine with. People need to go places, and public air travel has been made consistently unpleasant, regardless of the flight class.
Inequality breaks capitalism. Spending so much money as the 0.1% spends in luxury makes no sense. To let millions die of preventable diseases, or even hunger makes no sense. The fact that as a society we let them do that is a failure that needs to be corrected.
It is not their money. It is our resources that they are wasting. We need to better provide for our fellow humans even if that costs the rich a percentage of their luxuries.
And let's not forget about the top 0.01%. The smaller the percentage, the more depraved the rich are, and the more they use their money to influence politics and increase poverty and suffering.
Their methodology is extremely suspect in my opinion, as they attribute "shareholder emissions" to anyone that owns 10% or more of a company. Direct quote from their doc:
> a person with a 20% share in a company has 20% of its emissions allocated to their shareholder emissions
While shareholders obviously hold a greater degree of control over a company's emissions than a random consumer, assigning 100% of the blame for oil company emissions to the owners and 0% to people buying oil seems insane.
Also, filtering only for owners that control a 10% or higher stake masively skews the results as large portions of companies are held by the general public in much smaller quantities via 401ks, pensions, etc.
If they take both supply chains of consumption and ownership into account, they are straight-up double-counting, unless they are separating opex and capex or something.
> large portions of companies are held by the general public in much smaller quantities via 401ks, pensions, etc.
Considering everyone is in index (or mutual) funds these days, do they actually own any shares in the underlying companies? I’m not sure they do? The fund surely owns shares of various companies, but the holders of the fund aren’t shareholders in the underlying companies.
Perhaps this is a silly point to make, but the fund providers will show up as 10% owners if the general public has any significant stake in these companies.
I haven't done a super deep dive but from what I can tell, they only considered individual people that own a 10% stake, not other holders like index funds.
There is little utility in blaming consumers for the crimes of capital. Consumers are going to consume. Capital is the entity with directable responsibility (if only via state violence). Why not just shake your fist at the tide coming in for all the good this "blame" does?
> But if you drive a gas vehicle yes it's your fault.
Ok well people are obviously going to keep doing it, so what is the point of caring about fault to begin with if you can't do anything about it? We at least have legal control over capital.
Anyway you can blame basically anything on the masses of people; it's just a fucking stupid train of thought with (again) zero utility. It's the nonreligious liberal version of praying to stop school shootings.
It matters because to actually improve things in society we need to identify the true root causes.
Blaming the owners of oil companies doesn't help fix emissions problems, becuse oil companies are going to pollute a ton essentially regardless of who owns them. The real solution to that problem is to reduce the global consumption and demand for oil.
> While shareholders obviously hold a greater degree of control over a company's emissions than a random consumer, assigning 100% of the blame for oil company emissions to the owners and 0% to people buying oil seems insane.
But what’s the appropriate allocation? I don’t think it’s zero. It shouldn’t be a larger percentage than their shareholding.
There are other examples. Eg someone who manufactures or sells dangerous items. Drugs, alcohol, guns.
They have some degree of liability in many jurisdictions. They aren't entirely responsible for what their products do. But are they zero percent responsible?
The comparison to the poorest 3.5b is also not as useful as comparing the top 0.1% to the top 10%, which I would imagine pollute orders of magnitude more than the top 0.1%. I'm sure they're both shocking numbers compared to humans living sedentary agrarian lifestyles.
Nitpick, the top 10% are probably not 100x worse than the 0.1% (they are only 100x more numerous). But yeah it's rage bait to ignore basically 99% of the people in 1st world countries.
This is mostly a distraction because so much Carbon pollution is within supply chains, and therefore not wise to ascribe to individual consumers.
The exceptions are driving and flying. 8M is more than the private jet users, I assume. Getting rid of ICE driving is going very well (outside fossil-Luddite America).
Getting rid of flying is harder, but I fully support a rail bridge across the Bearing Strait. I'll take long sleeper trains working remote before I get to my old world vacation proper. This is good for circadian rhythm too.
Unhinged to think the bulk of the population can work remote on train rides with 0 demand. Dropping you from one frozen wasteland to another is not desirable.
Have you been to Siberia or Alaska? If you're not flying you're going to have a LONG drive once you get to either side.
They didn’t say replacing 100% of flights or drives with trains, but the vast majority of trips people take would be popular enough to sustain regular service for those people.
You don’t have to ban a thing for 100% of cases, there will always be outliers. My wife and I love driving deep into the wilderness. But still the vast majority of our travel is routes with heavy traffic, let’s replace those trips
atleastoptimal | an hour ago
praxulus | an hour ago
You "only" need ~$7 million to crack the global 0.1%. By income it's around $600k/year. That's nowhere close to private jet money.
DocTomoe | an hour ago
praxulus | 52 minutes ago
Frieren | an hour ago
It is not their money. It is our resources that they are wasting. We need to better provide for our fellow humans even if that costs the rich a percentage of their luxuries.
And let's not forget about the top 0.01%. The smaller the percentage, the more depraved the rich are, and the more they use their money to influence politics and increase poverty and suffering.
Ericson2314 | an hour ago
CircuitSeuss | 28 minutes ago
thenewnewguy | an hour ago
> a person with a 20% share in a company has 20% of its emissions allocated to their shareholder emissions
While shareholders obviously hold a greater degree of control over a company's emissions than a random consumer, assigning 100% of the blame for oil company emissions to the owners and 0% to people buying oil seems insane.
Also, filtering only for owners that control a 10% or higher stake masively skews the results as large portions of companies are held by the general public in much smaller quantities via 401ks, pensions, etc.
Ericson2314 | an hour ago
what | an hour ago
Considering everyone is in index (or mutual) funds these days, do they actually own any shares in the underlying companies? I’m not sure they do? The fund surely owns shares of various companies, but the holders of the fund aren’t shareholders in the underlying companies.
Perhaps this is a silly point to make, but the fund providers will show up as 10% owners if the general public has any significant stake in these companies.
thenewnewguy | 20 minutes ago
throwaway27448 | 58 minutes ago
Ericson2314 | 49 minutes ago
throwaway27448 | 48 minutes ago
Ok well people are obviously going to keep doing it, so what is the point of caring about fault to begin with if you can't do anything about it? We at least have legal control over capital.
Anyway you can blame basically anything on the masses of people; it's just a fucking stupid train of thought with (again) zero utility. It's the nonreligious liberal version of praying to stop school shootings.
thenewnewguy | 16 minutes ago
Blaming the owners of oil companies doesn't help fix emissions problems, becuse oil companies are going to pollute a ton essentially regardless of who owns them. The real solution to that problem is to reduce the global consumption and demand for oil.
lostlogin | 55 minutes ago
But what’s the appropriate allocation? I don’t think it’s zero. It shouldn’t be a larger percentage than their shareholding.
There are other examples. Eg someone who manufactures or sells dangerous items. Drugs, alcohol, guns.
They have some degree of liability in many jurisdictions. They aren't entirely responsible for what their products do. But are they zero percent responsible?
Ericson2314 | 50 minutes ago
slopinthebag | 50 minutes ago
that answer might be a more accurate number than the percentage of their shareholding.
lostlogin | 7 minutes ago
Eg should the responsibility be on tobacco smokers to look after themselves, or governments to regulate/restrict/ban.
ecocentrik | 51 minutes ago
wisty | 42 minutes ago
Ericson2314 | an hour ago
The exceptions are driving and flying. 8M is more than the private jet users, I assume. Getting rid of ICE driving is going very well (outside fossil-Luddite America).
Getting rid of flying is harder, but I fully support a rail bridge across the Bearing Strait. I'll take long sleeper trains working remote before I get to my old world vacation proper. This is good for circadian rhythm too.
saintfire | an hour ago
Have you been to Siberia or Alaska? If you're not flying you're going to have a LONG drive once you get to either side.
californical | 59 minutes ago
You don’t have to ban a thing for 100% of cases, there will always be outliers. My wife and I love driving deep into the wilderness. But still the vast majority of our travel is routes with heavy traffic, let’s replace those trips
Ericson2314 | 53 minutes ago
Yes, this is a very, very, very large Capital project :)
xnx | 25 minutes ago
Large capital project = extremely high carbon cost
Producing cement, moving aggregate, and pouring concrete takes an immense amount of fuel.