Comment by scarface74
4 years ago
Unless you have your own private plane, the airplane would just as much take off without you as Google would still be running servers whether you used it or not.
Are you alone going to make a difference by not flying? Like that neocon anti-environmental Obama said “we aren’t going to save the planet by throwing a bottle in the recycling bin”
Is it really that hard to understand?
The airplane takes off if, on average, the sum of dollars that all ticketed passengers are willing to pay for the benefit of being on it is larger than the operational and capital cost of the airline for operating that one flight.
Your contribution (in a purely causal sense, regardless of what moral statement you might read into it) to all of this is very indirect and diluted, but that does not make it zero.
How much could you reduce your carbon footprint if you didn’t use HN? Google?
Silly questions aren’t they?
Note that you're the one bringing the "carbon footprint" concept into this conversation, not me.
> How much could you reduce your carbon footprint if you didn’t use HN? Google?
Again, I don't really subscribe to the idea of carbon footprints, but for the sake of the argument: Insignificantly little, compared to the emissions caused by the flights I take.
> Silly questions aren’t they?
Absolutely.
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