from Hacker News

On Dromomania

by ljdk on 6/16/24, 7:44 AM with 10 comments

  • by roywiggins on 6/17/24, 4:22 AM

    Back of the envelope, 104 flights is like ~100 metric tons of carbon per year on flights alone (guesstimated four-hour flights on average), which is equivalent to about six and a half times the average American's entire yearly carbon footprint.

    I know it's fashionable to say that "personal carbon footprints" are a myth created by Big Oil, but at a certain point you're CO2 Georg[0]. 104 flights a year is not more than what some people probably do for business, so I'm not calling her the World's Greatest Monster, but still: it's an impressive number for someone who doesn't charter business jets or own a yacht.

    You could probably ride trains around Europe indefinitely like this guy and have a lower carbon footprint than most Americans: https://theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/article/2024/jun/07/exp...

    edit: She says she's flown 16 days and 18 hours by plane[1] last year. That's almost exactly 400 hours, ~100 metric tons if the figure of 250kg/hour Google threw out is correct. She works in crypto though, 100 tons is about 250 bitcoin transactions.

    Another reference point, spending 12 months on a cruise ship instead would emit about 150 tons of CO2.

    [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiders_Georg [1] https://twitter.com/sophfuji/status/1740770070111068539

  • by metadat on 6/17/24, 5:04 AM

    One con they neglected:

    Flying so frequently is unsustainable from a CO2 emissions perspective.

  • by woah on 6/17/24, 4:10 AM

    How much does this cost???

  • by readthenotes1 on 6/17/24, 4:37 AM

    One quote the author left off:

    Beauty is meaningless until it is shared. -George Orwell.

    It is not quite that extreme, but having traveled with and without others I perceive that it is closer to the truth than not.

  • by lorisg on 6/24/24, 7:14 AM

    Have you heard about « Climate change »?

  • by Centigonal on 6/17/24, 5:06 AM

    > I think that 2021 is pretty normal in terms of flying once every 9.4 days for an average person

    Tell me you grew up ultra-rich without telling me you grew up ultra-rich.