Anyways, Gates is always preaching about “policy” (The Gates Foundation is about power and getting governments to fund their objectives, ultimately) but never actually sets a good individual example of how to live, like normal citizens.
I mean, it is not coincidental that he is preaching about global warming right after the Nord Stream pipeline was blown, which released an unprecedented amount of methane in to the atmosphere.
I always feel the talks of private jets are missing the point. (Besides, it's always the private jets of Al Gore and Bill Gates that are in question. People never ask about the private jets of BP execs.)
To simplify, let's assume that Bill Gates has a Boeing 747, which burns about 38 pounds of fuel per mile [1]. Distance between New York (JFK) and London (LHR) is 3,440 mile. For a round trip, double that, so we have about 261k pounds, or 118 ton of fuel. Applying jet fuel to CO2 conversion ratio of 3.16 [2], we get about 374 ton of CO2.
If Bill Gates takes this trip every day for a year, we get about 137,000 tons of CO2. Okay, that's a lot! However,
Mankind emitted about 35 billion ton of CO2 in 2020. That's about 66,000 tons per minute. So Bill Gates would have contributed about two minute's worth of global warming in a year.
That's still an extremely large amount for a single person, but the question we should ask is, did Bill Gates's action (such as advocating nuclear power) result in delaying global warming by two minutes? Not one year, not even a day, but just two minutes?
Alternatively, did he speed up mankind's preparation, again, by two minutes?
If the answer to either question is Yes, then I'd argue that it's worth the CO2 spent on it.
Now let's invert the question. What's the justification for people who say "Fuck global warming!" and hop on a trip to Hawaii? Collectively they sustain many more flights per year, and it's not like most of them are doing anything substantial to mitigate AGW.
I deeply believe in leading by example. Anyone demanding others change should be fully committed to those actions and demonstrate them in all aspects of their life. Anything else is absolutely purely hypocritical and person doesn't deserve to be heard and should be mocked out from any polite and non-polite conversation.
I have to disagree. Proposing social change and living the change is better than just proposing social change, but (in many cases) the latter is still better than not proposing the change or actively working against it.
When you use "leading by example" as an absolute stick, what happens is that you end up being more lenient to the more corrupt and greedy. These people propose that everybody should just take whatever they can buy with their money, consequences be damned, and they live the exact same life - no hypocrisy at all! (It's just a coincidence that they have so much money and power that they can fuck over the less fortunate, while others can't.)
I have seen it play out many times in my country (Korea), which is hardly unique in that regard. Once in a while a politician would propose, say, an election reform to cut down illegal funding, and others would attack him "Look at the hypocrite! He says he's against illegal funding of elections, but he used more than one tenth of the illegal funding we did!" True story.
You have to think of the counterfactual. If 1x emissions are required for, say, government advocacy, that reduces emissions by 100x, you would lose 99x of emissions reductions by avoiding the advocacy. It’s not hypocrisy so much as pragmatism
Can't they just send letter or call on phone? You know minimise the emissions from their own actions. I always wondered why are people flying of all things to these climate conferences, instead of biking or just having them fully remote standing outside in a field...
Telepresence (at least by today's standard) is not the same as being there, and being literally present with decision makers. Overhearing conversations, hallway encounters, inspecting physical infrastructure, having individual agency to move in a space (see things for yourself), being able to 'read the room', and communicating, by your extra commitment, that you are serious not just the decision makers but even the wider public (photo ops), are just the few intangible benefits missing from a zoom call straight off the top of my dome, and that's just scratching the surface. Telepresence is getting better by the day, but let's not pretend it's as effective, particularly in global politics, finance, etc.
So maybe we should permanently lock them in single island and throw some gruel and water at them so they don't starve? They could have all the time with each other they need with minimal emissions.
I'll concede that the square footage seems an extravagance, and it ought not to be a thing, but once again, this is probably table stakes to rub shoulders with people who have power to change things. You don't invite investors to dinner at your down-town hovel
Bill Gates is one of a small group of people I feel should be taking private jets. He and his wife are the world's biggest philanthropists and they do much more good for the world quickly meeting the necessary people to effect change than wasting hours at the airport.
For the vast majority of other ultra rich, they should be suffering through awful airports and airlines like everyone else. Partly just so there's a chance their collective frustration of flying actually results in somehow working to improve the broken industry.
Bill Gates has also built a carbon capture plant. I believe it's still mostly prototype tech, but I have to assume it can capture enough to offset his private plane flight. I feel like if we taxed everyone who buys a private jet 1 carbon capture plant, that would be a good tradeoff.
The above poster is just suggesting that Bill Gates not be a hypocrite with respect to consuming less.
He consumes way way way more than the average citizen.
I don’t even know why people listen to him.
Shouldn’t we be listening to actual climate scientists in the US government? And not some software CEO who has conflicts of interest? Why are we even platforming this dude and giving him any legitimacy?
If I were Bill Gates it would probably be miserable to take normal flights, can't walk two steps before someone gawks. If anything just reinforces that being famous sucks.
