5d ago

The world's most expensive wank

https://mstdn.ca/@zazzoo/114337956516794746

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You're intentionally missing the point entirely.
- We've always been mobile but we've never been that mobile. Traveling thousands of km was a commitment that would take people's months if not years and, again, only an extremely small minority would travel that much in their lifetime, most people never traveled more than tens of km away from home.
  
  Most people lost several children in infancy as well. Appealing to how things were to justify how they should be falls flat.
  Why should we return to a world where the people you know as a child are the only ones you ever meet? Why is that better?
  We were once less mobile. We also decided that was awful and have consistently found ways to be more mobile. If we're looking to history, we'd be forgiven for taking the lesson as "always find a way to go further, faster". Hell, we invented water vessels so we could travel more than a few hours from drinking water. It used to be that people didn't rip apart the earth to get metal and lay pipes, they just never went more than a few hours from a water source.
  The concept of moving water to the people was then an unimaginable luxury and privilege available only to a small minority.
  
  The difference is that tourism is not an essential need, healthcare is. Tourism via air travel is extremely wasteful, in a week of vacation people have the environmental impact equivalent to months of their regular lives.
  But hey, guess visiting the world is more important than saving the world!
  
  You're clearly not even interested in reading what's being said.
  
  I'm not interested in people who can't admit that they're defending the destruction of the environment.
  "We can do it with more environmentally friendly alternatives!"
  Alright, so in the meantime it's still not environmentally friendly so we should stop until it is instead of increasing the demand for air travel (which is what is currently happening).
  It sucks that people aren't able to travel wherever they want without crazy emissions, it doesn't mean they get to dodge their responsibilities, they need to make a choice, either they assume the fact that they're part of the environmental problem and stop blaming others or they stop taking airplanes and spend their time closer to home... You know... Just like the vast majority of the world's population!
  
  When did I defend the destruction of the environment?
  You're reading a lot of "pro-airplane" sentiment in "we should have more trains" and "I'm more upset with the destruction of American passenger rail than I am with people who want to enjoy our world".
  Do you maybe see the difference between "travel at all costs" and "differently directed anger"?
  
  You're defending people's mobility and saying we need more alternative means to do it, no problem with that, the alternatives don't exist at the moment so unless you're against mobility as it's done now until we find better solutions then you're in favor of the destruction of the environment in order to not disrupt the status quo.
  People don't get to "enjoy the world" without a thought about the environmental impact that comes with it at the moment. For there to be a world to enjoy, people need to stop taking planes and as long as they take planes then alternatives won't be developed.
  
  I mean, trains exist, they're just not the best in the US.
  You also seemed to be okay with driving, which startled me but is definitively a viable alternative in almost all cases.
  Given some of your other comments, I think I'm gonna take it as a "no" on the "telling the difference between travel at any cost and being more mad at systems and those who control them than individuals" question.
  
  When you look at fuel economy per passenger a small car with two passengers and a huge truck with four passengers both beat air travel in a plane full of passengers (about 4L/100km/passenger for the plane, which is easy to beat in a car). Add to that the fact that planes don't have the equivalent of a catalytic converter and that emissions at altitude are about twice as damaging... Well, traveling by car is the environmental decision when the alternative is taking a plane, especially for shorter trips as planes waste a ton of fuel for takeoff and landing.
  Some people want to travel at any cost, I'm saying they should learn to travel close to home because traveling around the world has a huge environmental impact.
  
  That is not accurate.
  
  Oh really? So back then you could leave your house in France and be in China less than 24h later?
  
  Lmao. Go ahead and sidestep my points entirely, I am not going to waste time on hyperbolic comparisons.
  
  Your disagreed with me saying that people didn't have the mobility we have today, I don't see how I'm sidestepping.
  
  People moved extreme distances in the past and often, there is a lot of evidence for groups and individuals travelling 100s to 1000s of kms. We followed long distance game. We evolved to travel. It was slower but we did it. We can do it now with more sustainable options as I said. There is nothing inherently wrong with doing it faster now. Instead of attacking individuals who want to see the world and experience something different, please for the love of god just attack the oil barrons who we know are holding us all back. They buy up patents for green tech and shelve them. Attacking people like you are doing with hyperbolic false dilemmas does not harm the people who are causing the issue. You are only empowering them, seperating yourself from potential allies and perpetuating ignorance which favours the capitalists. The less you move, the more borders they create.
  “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” ― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad / Roughing It
  
  You don't see a difference between moving long distances because of a nomadic lifestyle and visiting a beach 5000km away from where you live and coming back a week later?
  My allies here are the people intelligent enough to realize that tourism as we do it now will never be sustainable, not people trying to justify it any way they can.
  The day you make it have zero environmental impact then go ahead, in the meantime you have no leg to stand on because that's not what's happening.

99 comments