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this post was submitted on 24 May 2026
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This is a much less cool post when you realize that the Earth can only sustainably support 10 billion people if we never fly, give up a lot of our modern tech, and have rice make up 50% of our diet. Basically any meat is completely off the table, as with personal cars, and probably standalone houses. If I'm given the choice between not having kids and not flying to see my family for holidays, I'll take the no-kids option.
So let's build lots of highspeed rail? We went to the moon on less compute than your cell phone and modern tech could be way more sustainable if we properly optimized. Rice is fantastic and works for a significant chunk of the current population just fine. Meat? Just gotta grow that protein in other more sustainable/efficient ways. Cars are useless in a dense urban environments and make everything worse. Fuck cars. Standalone houses are a giant waste of space and when you design your neighborhoods around this idea, everything is too spread out to actually have proper density and utility.
This is a very cool post that does point out that all of these things are in such excess. You should give StrongTowns and NotJustBikes a watch on youtube for much more on the topic of urban design.
Aviation is about 2.5% of global emissions.
In the long run then yes, we need carbon neutral fuels, but it should be possible for people to fly a little and not destroy the planet.
So basically it's perfectly fine? But for some reason you made it sound horrible?
"I don't see what's the problem with everyone living like a desperate Indian untouchable!"
These takes are why socialism is a dirty word, all because you can't just admit there needs to be some form of democratically agreed on population control and it doesn't have to be fascist by design.
You're not being oppressed by having to use the train.
As a Mexican I can confirm I'm already eating a lot of rice and beans, and I take the bus instead of flying. It's really not that bad, it's mostly over production of resource intensive corps and fossil fuels, which we could have already transitioned from without any real detriment.
Your thesis doesn't match up with this chart:
https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector
We're working to decarbonize the highest categories on that list, with rapid adoption of solar/wind, some potential for more nuclear and geothermal in the medium term, and maybe even fusion in the long term.
Then, while decarbonizing electricity, we're electrifying heating for homes, water, cooking, and we're electrifying transportation.
US carbon emissions per capita peaked in the 70's, and peaked as a whole in the 2000's. US carbon emissions per capita still greatly exceed those of other rich nations.
It's very much possible to have modern first world living standards, even with significant reductions in our resource use and net emissions. We just need to line up the incentives (aka pricing) with what is good for the Earth. And we're already doing that in many of the heaviest polluting sectors.
Or you could just take a train
May ask, which circumstances in your life have lead you to the point where you need to fly to be able to see your family?
I picked a rather niche field for my career. Leaving where I work would basically be a career reset. At the same time, a lot of my family chose not to live in a big city, and there aren't lots of good jobs there no matter what field I worked in. This was a career path I took knowing that flying around was no big deal.
Other people are replying that Trains will cure all the world's ailments. Even if we had good train infrastructure, it would get you from New York to Florida, it would never get you something weird like from Montana to Nebraska in a timely manner.
I don't think trains can solve all of it, although you in the US especially could benefit greatly from better rail infrastructur, imho.
I suspected, it was a career decision. But I also think maybe you'd have chosen a different path, if you'd have had better opportunities closer to your home?
I won't blame you for having taken those decisions in a system that takes flight mobility for granted. And it probably would be hard for you to go back, now that you've arranged your life that way. But also I think it would be a mistake to let that get in the way of envisioning a more sustainable future for our societies.
In my opinion, sustainability is more than just a tech challenge. But encompasses a broader political vision, that enables people to take more sustainable decisions in the first place. And people take decisions like that based on the opportunities and possibilities they see.