Plenty of industries have gone bankrupt over the years. They are not always bailed out, or at least not bailed out successfully. Some examples in the US: the textile industry, the furniture industry, and the slave trade. Coal is headed in the same direction because market forces (the cost of coal and pressure from environmentalists and by extension everyday consumers) are working against it.

Yes, there is no alternative to planes… some of the time. Everybody has a flight they have to catch every once in a while. But some people fly twenty times a year for pleasure, some people maybe only once a year. If you have a wedding or funeral invitation on the other side of the U.S., yeah you pretty much have to take a plane. But if you’re planning a vacation or travel to a couple states over, you absolutely do have the choice to just not fly.

Covid did not indicate a floor to air travel. As I already said, it was a situation where airlines had the choice between saving money in the short term (by stopping flights) or breaking their contracts with airports and losing money in the long term once traffic resumed. If the drop-off in travel had simply been due to permanent reduced demand for flying in general—due to, for example, people taking fewer long-distance flights for vacations due to increased concern over carbon emissions—they would have simply given up on those routes and reduced the number of flights permanently.

I was not talking about freight rail, I was talking about passenger rail. Lots of passenger rail companies went bankrupt - no consolidation, just your company went out of business because nobody wanted to take the train. I do know some sketchy shit went on to drive the nail into the coffin and lead to Amtrak but the long decline before that was due to the market forces of people having cars and wanting to use them.

Finally, yes I agree that there is no true “alternative” to airlines, nor is there a true “alternative” to consuming electricity. But, you can still choose to reduce your consumption of those things.

Sure, let me google that for you.

https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/ethicalcampaigns/boycotts/history-successful-boycotts

In general boycotts are less about driving a company to bankruptcy and more about getting them to change their behavior. Some companies are surprisingly immune to boycotts but many others have walked back their problematic behavior. Notably in recent memory in the US I can think of Barilla, Chick-fil-a and (by conservatives) Budweiser. The Montgomery bus line boycott is the stuff of history.

I mean, screw their economic calculus, if people stop flying they will go out of business. If people fly less, there will be fewer (and smaller) planes in the air. It’s not that complicated. I get that in practice most people can’t stop flying entirely but I’m exasperated by the leftist view that consumers are powerless because the global elites are using mind control to force us to fly to the Bahamas on holiday.

There is no “floor” to air travel, the same way there was no “floor” to passenger rail travel. Some of the most powerful and influential men in America fought tooth and nail to protect the railroad industry, but market forces (and, yes, to a lesser extent government policy, but mainly just people buying cars) eventually led to the near-collapse of the industry. Corporations can resist change but that doesn’t mean they are always successful.

Idk tree nuts have pretty low c02 impact because they aren’t farmed as intensively I think. Like, trees don’t need as much fertilizer as annual crops. Maybe.

Airlines, cruise lined oil companies are not immutable forces of nature. They have grown to their current size to meet the demand of individuals like you and me who want to buy shit and go places.

If everyone stopped flying, passenger airlines would be out of business and no longer flying planes within a year or two. Same with cruise companies. Oil is used in more things but if everyone switched to EVs or stopped driving oil production would go way down- even more if we cut our plastic usage as well.

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking consumers are powerless. In a free market economy they are very powerful- that’s why boycotts can be so effective.

By the same logic, couldn’t you say that eating red meat doesn’t matter because ~8 agriculture companies produce 75% of the livestock-related pollution?

That’s a bit of a gimmick related to airlines betting (correctly) that flight demand would rebound after covid ended and wanting to keep their spot in line. If there was a true societal shift and people flew less, airlines wouldn’t keep flying empty planes around for the fun of it. Also, there WERE a lot fewer flights during covid, ghost planes notwithstanding. The narrative of “we are powerless to stop climate change because corporations are evil” is lazy. Corporations aren’t evil they are just amoral-they answer to market demand, whatever that is.

Vote with your pocketbook. Buy products that are produced sustainably- or if that isn’t an option, buy less.

Corporations aren’t stupid - they are very good at making money. If company X could produce a product that 10% more expensive than their competitors but sold twice as well because it was more environmentally friendly, they would absolutely do so.

California king is smaller than a regular king actually! Alaska king is bigger though

Nah no way does the average ewaste tier laptop use less power than a raspberry pi for any given task. The power consumption floor for a laptop may be lower than the rpi ceiling but that’s not a fair comparison

Not so sure about the last part. It takes ehhh about 3kg of c02 to produce 1 Watt for a year. Carbon footprint to build a laptop is about 200kg or so, but you’re not offsetting one of those you’re offsetting the raspberry PI you WOULD have bought which is just a small fraction of that. After a year or 2 you’ve almost certainly burned through your c02 savings if it’s on all the time.

You’re missing out, Facebook marketplace is THE place to buy local secondhand goods for dirt cheap without getting scammed. You do need an account but you don’t need to install anything, and the payments are not done through FB

Back when I lived in a (quite nice) apartment building I was constantly surprised at the things people threw out. Perfectly good furniture but also stuff like perfectly functional printers, artwork, computer cases…

I’ve been in one car accident in my life (my fault) and it shook me up, I remember searching “how long until self driving cars.” But I got over it, next day I was back behind the wheel. As other people have said, it’s a necessary life skill for most people in North America and it does get much easier with experience and time.

Edit: one thing that helped me is to identify what I did wrong and how i could avoid it happening again. I have a motto of sorts, “never make the same mistake twice.” You can apply that to close calls as well. In your case, you say you struggle with multitasking, but that isn’t something that is out of your control. Especially while you’re still a beginner, avoid listening to music (and DEFINITELY keep your phone down) and keep your eyes on the road. And if you’re driving with other people, they will be totally cool with you telling them, “sorry I can’t talk, I need to focus on driving.” As time goes on driving will get much easier and you can probably allow for some (limited) distractions like music, etc

I get that in a perfect society you shouldn’t need to learn to drive, but that ignores the fact that if you want to be able to function in society most people in NA need to be able to drive (unless you live in one of the handful of cities with excellent mass transit). It’s a bit like saying nobody should be forced to work for a living and then being homeless.

Thanks!

Nope, the “No” campaign (keeping ranked choice voting) outspent the campaign to repeal ranked choice voting by 100:1, largely with out of state money.

Former Lt. Gov. Loren Leman, an advocate for repeal, said he hopes the Legislature will pass a law getting rid of the voting system, but if that doesn’t happen, another repeal initiative is possible.

“I would say half of Alaskan voters were influenced, at least in part, and maybe in large part, by big money from outside the state,” he said by phone. “And ours was a grassroots, homebody campaign.”

The No on 2 campaign attracted nearly $14 millionin contributions, largely from outside the state, and outspent the Yes on 2 campaign by a 100-to-one margin.

Yeah I found that to be pretty annoying as well when I started. I don’t mind the occasional political post but it’s the same handful of talking points again and again so it gets old fast. I recommend just blocking users and blocking communities; you’d be surprised how quickly that clears them out. Lemmy is small enough that once you block a dozen or two people that post politics nonstop you give the other content room to breathe.

Regular pumped hydro has an overall efficiency of about 80%. I would guess these sphere things would be similar, assuming you can put them near a high-voltage line, since the underlying technology (pump and turbine) is the same.

Huh? Money is worth a lot less than it did in the 70s by any real metric. And wages are way higher too.