I am a swede and I am totally confused on why people in my country seems to totally have lost their minds. People only feel guilty about some things.
These are the same people that buy products from "hip" companies like Apple which are famous for making products harder to repair and practically forces people to buy completely new devices even if something is wrong on the current one and that it easily could be repaired. Yet I have never heard about any shame owning an Apple product, most likely it's the reversed.
My point is that people are irrational and only acts on stuff that either feel, sound or looks good. Like always when a headline starts with a question, the answer is probably going to be a resounding "no".
It isn't the act of flying that makes it bad. For example, a swedish company fly with partly renewable fuel (https://www.flygbra.se/hallbarhet/boka-miljo-class/faq/) and I believe any issue can be solved with technology advancement.
We shouldn't limit ourselves because of climate change. We should instead improve the technology and make it better so it doesn't impact the climate in such a way it becomes unsustainable.
This is the core issue I have with the crazy people in my country. They complain but offer zero alternatives except "not doing that". Just compare Greta Thunberg (which is a person with zero suggestions) to Boyan Slat that actually tried to develop technology to clean up the oceans.
Greta is way more famous and have way more attention even if Boyan is far, far more admirable and actually tries to provide solutions for the future.
> Just compare Greta Thunberg (which is a person with zero suggestions)
This is a lie. Plenty of suggestions have been made from this part of the political spectrum which are primarily based on incentivizing less damaging behaviour. The problem is that while we can reduce flying and we can reduce trips by car and we can reduce meat consumption and we can force shipping companies to use more environmentally friendly albeit more expensive fuels, none of the "technological solutions" you and other people say "should be developed" exist at the moment. By all means, feel free to invent new technologies which reduce carbon footprints and which help tackle climate change, but stop saying that really someone should develop these things so that maybe they could be used twenty years from now.
Twenty years ago, we had the option of either drastically raising taxes on CO2 or trusting that "technology" would arrive to reduce CO2 footprints. We were promised exclusively electric cars everywhere by 2020, passively cooled and heated housing etc. etc. None of those things have materialised, instead now we have people saying that we should "improve technology" and maybe in twenty years time we will have some solutions.
We also can produce energy without fossile fuels and burning coal. I am not saying we should not stop putting out carbon into the atmosphere. I am saying that the idea that we shouldn't travel as much etc will never fly (pun intended).
That is why you never see politicians and "influencers" etc live as they preach. Because people need to use a car, people need to fly and take boats.
What we can do is produce energy in a better way and consume it in a better way. If that means banning cars and planes that burn fuel, so be it. I am not against that. What I am against is the idea that we should stop doing stuff because our environment requires it.
I am working remotely, so I use my car more seldom that I belive many people that commutes every day. Yet, swedish companies that claim to be so environmental friendly seems to be very hostile to remote work in general.
Stuff like that is what I am against. Don't tell people how to live and then do the reverse yourself. I agree we should act now but the environmental movement is really more anti-progress than pro environment at least in Sweden in my opinion.
> We shouldn't limit ourselves because of climate change. We should instead improve the technology and make it better so it doesn't impact the climate in such a way it becomes unsustainable.
I think we totally should limit ourselves from the idea that it's totally normal to expect to be able to fly anywhere in the world in ~24 hours and to do this regularly.
Flying is a large source of CO2 emissions and we need to lower CO2 emissions. We have a myriad of experts telling us what to do in light of the climate changing fundamentally but no one listens.
Greta Thunberg is only here to remind every grown up to be better than how they currently are. The experts are here for the solutions. Like putting a price on CO2 emissions. Greta is only filling the spot that politicians don't want to fill. Because it is unpopular to tell everyone to consume less.
Fly less or not at al is a good thing to say because one flight takes up a lot of the budget everyone on this planet has for consumption.
The iPhone is not as impactful in its CO2 footprint as flying so telling people to take care with flying is perfectly ok.
Making laws to increase repairability is also a good measure, so demanding that isn't bad either.
The combined emissions from flying is about the same as the combined emissions from all cars in Sweden. Around 80% of all flying is private, 20% business. 20% of the population is responsible for 50% of the flying. Each flight is a relatively large part of a person's combined CO2 emissions, and it's pretty easy to not do it, compared to getting to work or eating food. That's why it's a pretty big deal.
As for Greta, all she's saying is that politicians should listen to the scientists and implement policies accordingly.
Obviously you dont like to be told to "not do that" if you believe technology will solve all our problems. However, most people do not share your view.
And just pointing out that the focus on not flying might be irrational, does not make it okay to fly as much as you want.
Apple devices are getting harder and harder to repair with every new generation. Replacing a keyboard on one of the 'butterfly switch' models entails replacing the entire upper half of the machine as the keyboard is riveted to the casing, compare this to the ease with which a keyboard can be replaced in most other laptops. This is made more egregious by the fact that those butterfly switch keyboards are far more prone to breakage than traditional scissor switch models. Similar problems arise with soldered-on memory, glued-in batteries and to a certain extent also the increased use of 'authenticity checks' on those spare parts which still can be replace.
I tend to use mainly older hardware of known-repairable types, Thinkpads and HP business models. I've upgraded/replaced/repaired many of these systems using parts from just about anywhere ranging from whatever happened to be lying in the spare parts stack to vague eBay imports to 'genuine' spares. CCF tubes, inverters, CPUs, memory, drives, screens, keyboards, fans, coils, batteries, you name it. This has made it possible to extend the working life of said hardware far beyond the normal 'economical' life span - e.g. the machine I'm typing this message on is a T42p from 2004. This would not be possible with current Apple hardware which would instead be 'recycled'.
I could not care less about how hard is to repair them as long as they do not need the repair. The only repair I had to do in 13 years of owning Apple products wast to replace the battery on my 2015 MB Pro. Now it is like a new.
Clocking things down on phones with degraded batteries to prevent your phone from crashing due to unstable voltages. But if you're already dedicated to the position of hating Apple, I suppose no amount of reason or facts will prevent you from spreading FUD.
Power management is a great example of how Apple works to extend the lives of their products.
I have an iPhone 6s (~4 years old) on the original battery; with power management turned on, I get 1-2 more hours of use in a typical day. More importantly, the battery indicator will go the whole way down to 1% and then gives me another ~20 min, which is plenty of time to plug into a wall or an external battery pack.
Without power management, the phone can turn off unexpectedly any time under about 30% on the meter.
Sure, but it was just an example to illustrate my point. They hanven't been the good at all in recycling their products until pretty recently.
They still try and keep people from actually repairing their devices which are perfectly fine in many cases. So I believe it's still a valid point even if there could be better examples.
And honestly, you write
> updated for a long, long time
Are they really tho? A few years is not a long, long time in my opinion and even if you don't buy a new one for a couple of years and it's still updated they usually make it unbearable slow so that you cannot live with it anymore and purchase a new one. It is easy to update, but nearly impossible to go back to an older version if the new version turns out to be very slow.
My father still uses a dumphone and a windows phone. They both work surprisingly well for him, especially the windows phone. I am actually pretty amazed on the longevity of the Nokia Lumia.
Making a phone last 2-4 years is not a long time. I believe many people could easily have the same phones for 10+ years if the phone makers were interested of making that happen. They aren't though and that is a bit of an issue.
Just compare a phone to most other products and you will soon notice people update their smart phone a lot more often than most other things. Sure it's an important device but not that many people would actually need the feature upgrade every version have.
Make a phone that lasts 20 years or more and I will start to believe that you are making good, long lasting products.
The issue is almost entirely software security. There's no way I could recommend someone use a Windows Phone today, and if they did, I'd strongly recommend they avoid doing things like internet banking and even logging into their email.
These are the same people that buy products from "hip" companies like Apple which are famous for making products harder to repair and practically forces people to buy completely new devices even if something is wrong on the current one and that it easily could be repaired. Yet I have never heard about any shame owning an Apple product, most likely it's the reversed.
My point is that people are irrational and only acts on stuff that either feel, sound or looks good. Like always when a headline starts with a question, the answer is probably going to be a resounding "no".
It isn't the act of flying that makes it bad. For example, a swedish company fly with partly renewable fuel (https://www.flygbra.se/hallbarhet/boka-miljo-class/faq/) and I believe any issue can be solved with technology advancement.
We shouldn't limit ourselves because of climate change. We should instead improve the technology and make it better so it doesn't impact the climate in such a way it becomes unsustainable.
This is the core issue I have with the crazy people in my country. They complain but offer zero alternatives except "not doing that". Just compare Greta Thunberg (which is a person with zero suggestions) to Boyan Slat that actually tried to develop technology to clean up the oceans.
Greta is way more famous and have way more attention even if Boyan is far, far more admirable and actually tries to provide solutions for the future.