We are at a point where if we don’t reduce emissions humanity is doomed. A fleet of private mega yachts is a smack in the face to everyone trying to change for good and so is a smack spending billions on “toys” when the average person is struggling to pay rent.
You seem to have lost track of the plot and of reality, look around yourself there’s a disaster or a tragedy happening every single day.
Mega yachts aren’t causing our issues. 3rd world countries with no regulations for environmental impact and consumerism is. Most of these yachts just sit in a port doing nothing but collecting dust 99% of the time. Thinking that getting rid of yachts is going to even scratch the surface of our environmental problems is a joke.
From this data, the most effective thing to focus on in combating climate change is improving efficiency of energy production (solar, wind, nuclear, geothermal, etc instead of coal, gas, etc). The next most effective thing is improving efficiency of transportation, followed by improving efficiency of heating and cooling (e.g. getting people to use heat exchanges instead of separate gas and AC). Yachts, cruise ships, and other related luxury items don’t even register on the list of priorities and are merely a blip. They’re very visible wastes of energy, but they’re lately harmless.
Sure, but the number of people actually using mega yachts is vanishingly small. It’s so small that completely eradicating them would do exactly nothing to combat climate change because the amount they contribute is within a rounding error for any meaningful measure of climate change.
it’s so small that completely eradicating them would do exactly nothing to combat climate change
That’s not true, did you read any of the link posted?
We live in a society made of billions of individuals, we are not ants or robots, everyone is supposed to do is part. Billionare part count as much as millions of people, that’s how big their footprint it.
There are very few billionaires, so while their footprint is larger on an individual basis, their total footprint is absolutely dwarfed by the rest of the population. Going after billionaires may feel good because you’re “sticking to the rich” or whatever, but even if we eradicate all billionaire carbon output, it wouldn’t put a dent in global carbon emissions.
A common refrain from many progressive lawmakers is that the rich don’t pay their fair share of taxes. “Fair share” is, of course, subjective. But a new Treasury study provides data showing that the rich not only pay more than the middle class, they pay more than one-third of their annual income in federal taxes and more than 45 percent when state and local taxes are included.
Indeed, the total tax
burden on the super-wealthy, especially those with large stakes in global businesses, is upwards of 60 percent of their annual income because of the taxes they pay abroad.
Financially they’re a blip, and ecologically they’re a blip as well. Punching up may be cathartic, but it’s not going to solve the climate crisis.
Why are you wasting your time defending billionares who are screwing the planet and everyone over? Are you getting paid or are you playing the devil advocate?
There are 800 billionares in USA alone and more than 3000 around the globe. My country italy has about 60 million people and spend 130B on public health each year. The 5.7T you mentioned would be enough to cover the healthcare spending that covers 60M people for 40 years.
So we’re at a point that, someone who owns something because they’re rich makes them evil?
Y’all have lost the damn plot if that’s the case.
We are at a point where if we don’t reduce emissions humanity is doomed. A fleet of private mega yachts is a smack in the face to everyone trying to change for good and so is a smack spending billions on “toys” when the average person is struggling to pay rent.
You seem to have lost track of the plot and of reality, look around yourself there’s a disaster or a tragedy happening every single day.
Mega yachts aren’t causing our issues. 3rd world countries with no regulations for environmental impact and consumerism is. Most of these yachts just sit in a port doing nothing but collecting dust 99% of the time. Thinking that getting rid of yachts is going to even scratch the surface of our environmental problems is a joke.
Exactly, it’s just virtue signaling.
If you look at sources for pollution, it’s largely:
From this data, the most effective thing to focus on in combating climate change is improving efficiency of energy production (solar, wind, nuclear, geothermal, etc instead of coal, gas, etc). The next most effective thing is improving efficiency of transportation, followed by improving efficiency of heating and cooling (e.g. getting people to use heat exchanges instead of separate gas and AC). Yachts, cruise ships, and other related luxury items don’t even register on the list of priorities and are merely a blip. They’re very visible wastes of energy, but they’re lately harmless.
https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/billionaires-emit-more-carbon-pollution-90-minutes-average-person-does-lifetime
Mega yachts fall into the personal transportation problem. If everyone would go around in a mega yacht we would be long time extinct.
Sure, but the number of people actually using mega yachts is vanishingly small. It’s so small that completely eradicating them would do exactly nothing to combat climate change because the amount they contribute is within a rounding error for any meaningful measure of climate change.
That’s not true, did you read any of the link posted?
We live in a society made of billions of individuals, we are not ants or robots, everyone is supposed to do is part. Billionare part count as much as millions of people, that’s how big their footprint it.
There are very few billionaires, so while their footprint is larger on an individual basis, their total footprint is absolutely dwarfed by the rest of the population. Going after billionaires may feel good because you’re “sticking to the rich” or whatever, but even if we eradicate all billionaire carbon output, it wouldn’t put a dent in global carbon emissions.
It’s the same issue as the popular notion of taxing the rich. If we took all of Elon Musk’s wealth ($486 billion from a quick check), we could fund the US government for less than a month. If we took the entire wealth of the top 400 people in the US ($5.7T combined), we still couldn’t fund the US government for a year. Here’s an article about it from the tax foundation (they have a right-center bias with high factual accuracy):
Financially they’re a blip, and ecologically they’re a blip as well. Punching up may be cathartic, but it’s not going to solve the climate crisis.
Why are you wasting your time defending billionares who are screwing the planet and everyone over? Are you getting paid or are you playing the devil advocate?
There are 800 billionares in USA alone and more than 3000 around the globe. My country italy has about 60 million people and spend 130B on public health each year. The 5.7T you mentioned would be enough to cover the healthcare spending that covers 60M people for 40 years.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/11/megayachts-environment-carbon-emissions-ban