Robert Naiman wrote: > I like the spirit of this, but I'm afraid I'm not personally willing to take > this pledge. > > I would be willing to take a more modest pledge, however, something like: no > flying between two cities that are connected by a train line and less than X > hours apart.
Call be weird, but I must admit that I like the idea of a carbon tax. The more jet fuel burned, the more damage there is to the environment (all else constant). With a carbon tax, the price of jet fuel would be higher. All else constant, people would have to pay more to fly, so that they'd be less willing to fly. That would encourage video conferencing. One thing about a carbon tax is that it's a collective solution. In this individualistic age, it's hard (if not impossible) to rely on the public spirit of individuals making no-flight pledges and the like to deal with a societal problem. Absent large and active environmentalist organizations that can count on their members to cooperate to abstain _en masse_ from polluting activities on a large scale (rather than simply sending checks to the organizations), the only way to have a collective solution is for people to pressure the state to install something like a carbon tax. Of course, that's pretty hard, too. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
