Germany is discussing possible bans & taxes on (short) flights & so conservative daily Welt is claiming that "for the poor, the costs of climate change mitigation are more threatening than climate change".
Which means it's *debunking thread time again*
If you want to argue that climate policies are particularly bad for the poor, there are plenty of examples where this claim is more or less plausible.
But you really, really don't want to pick air travel as it's the best *counterexample*. See thread.
More than 60% of German don't fly in a given year. Just 8% fly more than 3 times.
But I hear you say: maybe the poor fly little, but still spend a lot of their little income on flights?
Yeah, well: no. The richest 20% of Germans spends 4% of its income on flights. The poorest? A figure so low that it's been rounded to 0%
BTW such extreme inequalities are not just a German thing. They're found in most European countries.
...and since we're talking about air travel, inequalities and injustice, I would be remiss not to mention this study doi.org/10.1016/j.gloe…
➡️2%-4% of global population flew internationally in 2018.
➡️ 1% of world population emits 50% of air travel CO2
So why do the likes of Die Welt & The Sun make such unlikely claims.
Well it's a classic discourse of climate delay (doi.org/10.1017/sus.20…): argue that climate policies will hurt the poor, when in fact you're more interested in preserving the status quo than in social justice
as a side note - for those of us who really care about the social impacts of climate change mitigation, and spend time studying them, there's nothing more annoying than such misleading claims, often put forward by outlets with a poor track record on social issues
/END
[the discourses of climate delay cartoon is by @leolinne. Pinging @_mtiemann since I saw the Welt article first on her feed]
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To me the most striking thing in this chart is how much the Italian saving rate has *declined* over time: from nearly three times as much as the UK in 2000 to less than the UK today
And if you know the Italian social system, you know how much of it is based on household savings. Middle-class parents save their whole life to buy a dwelling for their children one day. Young people stay home & save for said dwelling rather than renting, etc.
Parents (and sometimes grandparents) use their savings to support children & grandchildren who find themselves unemployed - because no, many/most of them have no right to unemployment benefits or minimum guaranteed income.
In Germany as in the rest of Europe, we are reducing emissions in other sectors while not reducing them (and sometimes even increasing them) in the transport sector.
So each year transport accounts for a higher share of total emissions ⬇️
I think this means that the climate debate and the transport debate will progressively become *conflated*. Most of the climate debate will be about cars and planes.
Excuses such as "Let's pick some other low-hanging fruit!" or "Let's do nuclear instead!" won't cut it.
It gets worse: when asked whether they intend to implement measures to prevent such deaths from happening in the future, this is the police's reply. Note that the woman died *on a pedestrian crossing*
The leader of the Conservatives (first in the polls)
3) 05.11.23
A Liberal MP proposes to drastically reduce the rights to political participation, right of assembly / freedom of association for non-EU foreign residents