Once or twice.

Look, I don’t think we really disagree with each other. I think it would be great if we switched to sail-based shipping. But for that to be viable the masses would have to be OK with the results of that, as you laid out above.

I’m not hopeful that will happen, not until supply chains start breaking under the strain of climate change its consequences. By then, it may be too late to switch.

I suggest you get to work on implementing your solution, then. It’s very easy, after all. Let me know how it goes.

We could

Who’s “we”? You’re referring to some kind of collective humanity, but so such collective exists in the real world. There is no grand effort to work together to solve common problems.

You’re ignoring the fact that sailing ships cannot compete with fossil power. Any problem becomes easy if you’re willing to ignore reality.

We could easily

I think you and I have different definitions of that word.

drastic action is necessary which will result in large inconveniences and disruption for billions of people, but nobody wants that, and no politician will get elected selling that.

Correct.

Fair.

The point was not to imply that shipping is not a large source of CO2, but:

1. More than once, I have seen it stated that a small number of cargo ships dwarfs the world’s car fleet in terms of CO2 emission. This is wrong, and originates with abovementioned conflating of sulphur and carbon.
2. At 3.9% of all GHG emissions, it is hardly correct to refer to shipping as one of the “biggest CO2 polluters”.
3. It’s not low hanging fruit. Moving cargo by sea is really very efficient, and we’re not going to reduce that carbon source by switching to other means of transport. The only way to reduce it is to move less stuff.

I do believe you are grossly incorrect

What makes you think that? None of the sources you provide disagree with what I wrote.

The biggest CO2 polluters are […] cargo ships.

No, this is a misunderstanding. Cargo ships are a major source of sulphur pollution, not carbon. Cargo ships use the cheapest fuel they can. Cheap fuel is rich in sulphur. They can do this because there are no emission regulations on the open sea. A commonly cited figure is that a single cargo ship releases more sulphur than all the cars in North America.

This figure is then misinterpreted by people who failed basic chemistry to mean that cargo ships are a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. In reality, the opposite is true; cargo ships are one of the most efficient ways to move stuff over large distances. Only electric trains are better, and only if the source of the electricity is not fossil.

Because the point of the comparison is to determine if the infrastructure investment was cost effective. What would traffic look like today if the money had instead been used to build public transport, bike lanes, and walkable streets? If the alternative investment had improved traffic even more, building the highway was the wrong thing to do.

It’s probably gone down, actually, at least in per capita terms. Boston’s population is a lot bigger than it used to be, so that has to be taken into account.

The comparison is between today and ‘today but without the highway’, not between today and before the highway was built. If the population increase is greater with the highway there, that’s still part of the induced demand.

Boston is far from car dependent; it’s probably one of the worst cities in America for drivers, and best for cyclists and pedestrians.

A city being “bad for drivers” is not a great indicator of it not being car dependant. Cities in the Netherlands are probably the most walkable and bikable on the planet, and also great to drive in because there are hardly any cars.

A lot of people insist that any highway projects always just induce demand, resulting in even more congestion, but the Big Dig did nothing of the sort. To this day, 30 years on, Boston traffic is still not as bad as it was pre-Big Dig.

Induced traffic does not mean that traffic on a specific place inevitably goes back to what it was before a new highway. It means that total traffic, including old and new infrastructure, always goes up if the total road capacity goes up.

Do you think the total car traffic in the Boston area today is greater than it would have been had the Big Dig not been built? If yes, the ‘infrastructure naysayers’ were correct.

Of course, this means new highways can be locally beneficial, for example when they are used to divert car traffic from a city center. But they still deepen the overall car dependency. Investing in rail-bound transportation while imposing heavy fees on car traffic into the city would likely be a better use of resources.

What you however skipped in your reply is the fact that the richest 8 people limiting their emissions has the same effect as the 792 people beneath that limiting their emissions.

I skipped it because I agree. There’s nothing to debate on that point.

However, the point of my first reply was to highlight that this perspective is often exaggerated to paint the global middle class (the top 10% richest people on the planet, i.e. most people in western Europe and the anglosphere) as innocent victims when in fact they are also to blame. This is what I replied to:

The narrative that the average joe is to blame for this shit is so infuriating to me.

This sentiment is oft-repeated on this kind of post, and the implication that “average joe” is not responsible is not only wrong, but actively harmful.

Also you’re last sentence is quite hostile, BP definitely came up with it to avoid their responsibility and pivot it to other people. The idea might not be ‘bad’ per se, but if you do it so to avoid your own responsibility, it is definitely bad practice (which, again, is why each of us should try to limit our carbon emissions)

Of course. By the same token, individuals trying to avoid their own responsibility by parroting “big oil invented the idea of a carbon footprint” is definitely bad practice.

Myself and 50,000 other people could start walking everywhere and it very likely wouldn’t come close to offsetting the emissions of Amazon’s fleet of trucks.

Not if you keep ordering shit from amazon it won’t. It will prevent 50,000 people’s worth of transportation emissions, though.

Don’t sell yourself short. You’re more responsible for the situation than you want to admit.

there’s a very small group of individuals called billionaires that contribute 1000x more than you or I ever could.

Wrong. The top 0.1% pollute 10x as much (per capita) as the top 10% (excluding the top 0.1%). Source

BP invented the idea of the individual carbon footprint.

If the strongest argument against an idea is “the wrong people came up with it”, the idea is probably pretty good.

Do you not understand what the word “restrict” means?