Remember when all those politicians, actors, and activists went to that global climate change meeting on private planes?
Rich ppl will do nothing if it even inconveniences them a smidgen.
Most people won’t. But rich people especially won’t.
unlike rich people, most people can be incentivized or compelled to behave
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People like to point at rich people on planes but really it’s actually the car dependency and carnism that are destroying the planet.
Interesting article. Newer numbers (2023) are 37.200 Mt CO2 yearly human civilisation output. “Private” cars count around 10% of that (which to my knowledge includes vans driven by tradesmen and “independent” delivery drivers among other uses, vastly distorting the impact of individual car ownership), aviation between 2 and 20% depending on which “emissions factor” the counting organization attaches to it. The IEA numbers vary between 2-4%.
rich people decide whether we can make the changes necessary
They don’t care about serving good coffee at affordable prices either. I drink black coffee and their Pike Roast tastes like burnt flavor crystals.
It’s an apartheid.
Their wealth can protect them from climate change, so they have no good reason to change their behavior.
Increasingly I think it actually might protect them. Not in a postapocalyptic bunker or a libertarian private island but rather in the upper echelons of a less climate-striken authoritarian country. One where there’s still a functioning society, enough labor to sustain an economy and a compliant political and law enforcement classes happy to maintain some form of apartheid. The Arabian peninsula countries could be a model.
Oh, definitely. In most countries the wealthy can simply buy citizenship.
The thing why I am not 100% sure this will work is that the wealthy especially today increasingly hold abstract wealth. It’s in the form of money and other financial instruments. All of those are IOUs owed to them in labor. In other words it’s only meaningful because someone will accept these IOUs in order to do some work in exchange. This is even true for natural resources and more automated services because all of them require some amount of labor to extract or maintain. With that in mind, say the source countries where these IOUs commanded labor fall apart (mass death, political upheaval, etc) then they go with these IOUs to Qatar to Uncle Putin to purchase a citizenship. Putin could accept those IOUs in exange for a citizenship. However he wouldn’t be able to buy anything with them from because they are no longer accepted. So why would he take the wealthy person? Surely he isn’t so naive to believe every wealthy person is actually as valuable in their ability as their wealth. So I’m thinking, and I’m not confident in this thought, but I feel like its possible that the first wave might be able to buy its way into Traditional Values Federation, while the global economy isn’t dead yet. As things start to crumble, it’ll get harder and harder to do so. Perhaps in the later rounds of the lottery, only people who have some other type of capital, not financial, would qualify. E.g. a guy from ASML with all the blueprints to build 1nm lithography machines. In fact, even if financial capital is accepted in exchange for citizenships it will probably not be accepted in the landing country in order to prevent it from being deployed against the existing political class. Adding a lot of billionaires in Russia and letting them spend domestically can dismantle the regime that let them in.
It could be you’re right.
I don’t think anyone can really say how it will work out in the end, but I am comfortable in saying I’m sure the wealthy will survive it unscathed.
Yes that’s probably the safer bet. Plus no tears here for the ones that don’t.
Agreed.
Money can only buy people if people still value the money. In a world where their money means less and less, they will have less power/ value and may not survive unscathed.
Wow this is completely detached from reality in an Econ101 kind of way.
The problem is that these are not “IOUs” but paper printed by the most violent empire(s) in history. The choice is to serve or starve. Their “other kind of capital” is literally guns, not blueprints ffs.
People will be violently forced to serve just like they are and always have been.
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Yep. Why do you think these creeps are so exciting about building walls and murdering refugees? Fortress europe and fortress canada must be defended against the desperate masses.
You can’t eat money. They might live comfortably for longer but eventually they’ll be just as turbo fucked as we are.
Not soon enough, they won’t, unfortunately.
I would say I would boycott Starbucks, but that would imply they have a product I desire.
I’ve never been in a Starbucks.The thought of drinking coffee that isn’t does not appeal to me.
You could go into a Starbucks while it’s busy, and when it’s your turn to order go. “I want a … thing. One of those … cylindrical” Basically, try to waste as much of the workers time as possible, without actually ordering anything. An important thing is that there’s people waiting behind you, so that you waste their time as well.
Or just order water? It’s free for you, but costs the company money, while not making it difficult for the employees. Doing what you suggested is all around shitty for the workers who are just trying to get through their day and earn a wage, as well as the people in line wanting a drink. The company will not be affected in any way with your suggestion.
I’ve been boycotting the company for years now, even the items you can get in grocery stores (since at least some of them are made by Nestle, so double boycott points). Anytime anyone suggests we grab starbucks, I offer an alternative and we end up trying a local coffee shop or other non-terrible franchise.
I thought the employees get paid by the hour?
Yes, but dealing with frustrations is frustrating.
My take is that the super wealthy already know there’s no saving this mess, and they won’t survive much longer either, so they’re just squeezing the lemon for whatever juice is left before it all blows sky high.
This has been their mentality since late 70s
🧑🚀🔫👨🚀
It has always been their mentality.
In Ministry for the Future, one of the major plot points partway through the book is that eco-terrorists (eco-partisans, really, considering the subject matter and general gist of the book) start blasting planes out of the sky. They hit a few civilian airliners, but the vast majority of their targets are private jets.
Do with that what you will.
we could very reasonably get rid of CEOs
edit: i didn’t mean murder 😭
And private jets. And mega yachts.
LOL I feel you. Had my fare share of run-ins with CEOs and today I’m convinced 90% of them plus all of middle management could be replaced by an LLM.
I mean, if leaders would start getting mass executed they’d start caring.
Remove one. Another CEO will take their place.
So we start beating them in the street in front of their families until they stop ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
how much carbon dioxide does this supercommute produce, expressed in cars/day?
edit: i guess it’s just cars
I want to know in paper straws per day.
How many bananas for miles travelled.
The commute itself? Hard to say. But according to the article, a billionaire produces emissions equivalent to a million average people.
There are 3,311 billionaires.
Once they are eliminated, that’s the emissions of 3.3 billion people taken care of.
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Hope it’s a boeing
If it’s a boeing, he ain’t going…to reach his destination.
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how do they all do it? It’s like going over a certain threshold of wealth makes ones face take one some subtle traits that increase the desire of others to punch.
“And, for an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human.” ― William Gibson, Count Zero
People don’t achieve ultimate privilege by caring about other people.
Jesus, if I remember correctly, usually travelled by donkey or by foot
If Jesus had access to it, he’d totally be a fixed gear bicycle cat zooming through the alleyways of Jerusalem.
BMX Jesus FTW
But would he take it off sweet jumps?
Reminded me of that music video: https://youtu.be/VQSbIzfcURs
I bet every one of his corporate employees has to commute to work though. Hypocrites.
Starbucks just can’t stop shooting itself in the foot. Just when it had given some concessions to the union. Fuck Starbucks.
This CEO is getting paid $113 millions a year while their workers live on tips. I hope they face bigger boycotts and bigger losses
so does Taylor Swift
