300 million lbs of fireworks and 2.7 billion dollars gone in a cloud of smoke.
As someone who grew up in a country where fireworks are legal and used on every festivity, they suck if you are a baby, a dog or not the one lighting the up.
I’m ok with professional firework shows.
I’m not ok for every kid in the neighborhood having access to little explosives.
A good compromise. When 20000 people have a great time watching a scheduled event that seems fair. Peeps can make preparations to participate or avoid.
I’m not ok for every kid in the neighborhood having access to little explosives.
Backyard rocketry is imo something to be celebrated, a bit less if it’s just buying premade fireworks, but kids learning chemistry and engineering in an exciting way isn’t bad- it also helps with developing a sense of responsibility when you will probably mess up and hurt yourself
Fireworks are a cool spectacle, imagine never seeing a fireworks show. Also the money isnt gone, its just changed hands.
They probably shouldnt be how they are now though, where every individual family wants to fire their own, thats a waste and really obnoxious when its in the middle of neighborhoods. Keep it to one centralized show, away from residential areas, and everyone gets to watch a bigger show.
Fireworks are a cool spectacle, imagine never seeing a fireworks show.
Completely agree!
Also the money isnt gone, its just changed hands.
Not with this though. A portion of the money has changed hands, the portion that goes to paying workers and investors. Another portion of the money was used to extract, refine, and process something that just burned up and no longer exists.
While money as an abstraction is made up, what it represents, the underlying value of society’s resources, is not, and that is unfortunately finite. So it’s also important to consider opportunity cost. That money could have been spent on other things, when you spend it on something wasteful and unnecessary that means it can’t be spent on more useful or productive things.
All that being said, I still think fireworks are rad and worth it, but they are a waste.
Money isn’t gone, resources are gone.
Money was literally invented to be an abstraction of resources. When people talk about money they usually mean resources.
Money was used to pay workers to extract, refine, and process resources. Absolutely none of the money is gone.
The money itself? Sure. But that’s not what people talk about when they talk about money, they are usually referring to what the money represents, i.e. resources, which were all burnt up and used to create that fire work when they could have gone to something else.
i.e. if we spent some huge proportion of our money on fireworks every year, we would still have the same amount of money on paper in the economy, but absolutely everything else would cost far more. From our actual lived perspective we would be poorer.
Thats just not how money works. We did spend a huge amount of our money on fireworks, things didnt become more expensive.
That is absolutely just how money works, if that same money had gone to say, healthcare companies instead of fireworks companies, we would have the same amount of paper money, and we wouldn’t have fireworks, but we’d have lower healthcare costs since we already paid some of them.
You’re bringing up a lot of examples that literally happen in reality and do not have the results you are claiming. Healthcare companies have been both steadily receiving more money and increasing their prices.
Wait, are we not supposed to tie $100 bills to our mortars?
Cost saving tip! Use $20 bills and cut your holiday expenses in half!
It’s just not the same…
3/4 of the fun is doing it yourself.
Technically it’s 2.999…/4 of the fun
So technically 3 again?
I think I will fight that math forever. Getting infinitely closer does not count as actually getting there.
For you. Its obnoxious for others.
No.
Asceticism is a dead end.
100% Thats why there is thr Middle Way.
As a middle path I propose we let people buy fireworks on a free market. That way they’re there, but nobody is forced to set them off.
Just the noise here. Dont see any pretty sky lights
Not only that, but they seriously freak me (and like a bunch of animals) out. Not to mention everytime they go off, even on 'murica day, someone thinks it’s a gun. At least where Ive lived.
If you have any kind of anxiety disorder, sensory hypersensitivity or heart issues, the sudden noise of fireworks will at least startle you. The constant barrage of noise that takes place in some places through some celebrations or through the year provoke people to develop even more serious health issues. Ah, but don’t you dare to suggest that the health of vulnerable people should take priority over some brief dumbfuck fun, or that there exist less harmful ways to celebrate, or that constant fireworks in places with certain population density means annoying a lot of people for the sake of very few, because then it turns out that you just “hate freedom”.
Does anyone else feel like adding salt to food is a complete waste of money?
Lmao are you really comparing salting food to setting off fireworks?
Does anyone else feel like dyed clothing is a complete waste of money?
I want my food dyed and my clothing salted. Toothpaste is a waste. I use Duncan Hines frosting instead.
Yes but we’re talking about fireworks now. Have you tried adding fireworks to your food? Could be a huge win.
Doesn’t salt act as a preservative for food? There are only a couple things I’ll add salt to. Now if we just started eating fresh food and less processed food no doubt we’d be better off. Hell we’d probably offset carbon emissions by eating locally sourced food and not having it delivered to us more than we would by banning fireworks
It hurts so many animals too.
I dislike when they’re used to excess
Fireworks are like. 000000000000001% of a concern for GHG.
You shut down a coal plant for 1 days because you switched to solar temporarily and you probably offset the output.
The impact on nature goes beyond climate gases. At least here in Germany fireworks produce 1% of the yearly pm10 particulates. That’s not nothing.
It’s not nothing, but 1% goes to show just how much is no5 made by the giant 1 day full of sky explosions, and how likely 70-80% is from transport and energy sector.
Eliminating all fireworks from earth and banning them tomorrow would have a near 0 impact on anything, and be completely erased if a coal plant runs an extra day or two.
Heya, saw this and thought of our conversation.
Good catch. And yea, at a local level this Wilhelm not exacerbate things.
The crisis begins with the emanation of farm fires in Punjab, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh, where farmers set fire to hundreds of square kilometres of paddy fields after harvesting them to clear them of residue, causing a smog jacket to form over northern India, particularly Delhi.
Banning firecrackers to not make the problem worse makes sense, given how absolutely bad it will be due to the slash and burn farming practices. But the firecrackers alone (while not good for the atmosphere) aren’t like a global warming factor. But for your on-the-ground air quality doesn’t help at all.
Assuming there would be a single source responsible for the remaining 99% of yearly pm10 particulates, let’s say a giant coal power plant, then it would take 4 days of it running to have the same impact as fireworks.
https://londonair.org.uk/LondonAir/Guide/Fireworks.aspx
Inner-city long-term effects, right there.
Giant ceremonial bonfires /= fireworks, for one. Tons of random shit can go into bonfires beyond just wood, the wood is of incredibly differing quality and chemical treatments, and bonfires by their nature a low to the ground and intended to last for at minimum an hour or they’re not worth making.
This is not the same discussion as fireworks. It’s also still not long term effects, as the site warns of poor air quality in the days that follow the giant bonfires if there is no wind or weather, but it does dissipate either way, not that this event gives everyone cancer or something.
The question was about fireworks. And yea, fireworks are an afterthought still. Compared to Guy Fawkes Night maybe even more of an afterthought. Guy Fawkes Night and 4th of July still hardly register on the global scale of CO2 and GHG outputs.
I was pointing out that fireworks were being used in a way that lowers the local air pollution for residents, for days, not just the evening. You can say ‘barely registered’ but I’ve shown you a clear case of it very much registering in terms of effects on local populous.
Bonfires are not fireworks. Guy Fawkes Night is infamously filled with tons of bonfires.
Yeah but no one ever actually does that.
Fire, explosions and bang sounds are fun. It gets old quick (I’m not a fan of firework shows), but I do enjoy lighting a small bunch of fireworks with some friends once a year or two.
Edit: I hear the argument for poor puppers, and I’m not saying I don’t care about them, but I’m pointing out the argument that they’re not just a complete waste of money/pollution
I’m the opposite, I think a proper show with professional fireworks is super fun but clowns setting off tiny loud POS fireworks randomly over the course of several hours are just annoying. They don’t have the boom boom, they don’t make much light, and people just set them off in residential areas near kids/dogs.
I mean, yes and no. The festivals I visit and my gaming PC are also a complete waste of energy when you view it like that. I hate the dangerous situations we have every year in the Netherlands with fireworks. The heavy fireworks and loud bangs, the vandalism. But I’m okay with the people who send a lot of nice colourful fireworks into the sky around new year’s eve, and the farmers with their loud “carbid” launchers.
It’s like asking a texan to get rid of their monster truck. Sure they live with their parents and never use the truck for work. But it’s just not gonna happen buddy.
we got rid of smoking and arguably that was sexy and cool
Who got rid of it, and when??
In the US it’s down from 45% of the population, to 15%, and then it used to be that 60% of those smokers smoked a pack or more a day, now 68% smoke less than a pack a day, with only 1% smoking more than a single pack (smoking exactly an entire pack in 1 day remains around 30% of smokers)
I live in a city that has criminalized all fireworks, including pop-its. We’re talking arrest and jail time are on the table just for transporting them in your car through city limits (I’m sure this violates the Commerce Clause).
However, drugs are legal. I love their priorities.
Oh, and cutting down or trimming trees on your property is illegal without a permit. My neighbor was hit by a $10,000 fine because the street tree died and they didn’t pull a permit for it.
Talk about taking it to an extreme. It’s almost like the whole city is managed by an HOA.
I definitely think they can and are often overdone. Where I’m from civilian fireworks use is very uncommon unless you’re out in the sticks. So we get at most 2 municipal fireworks display per year, New year’s eve and Canada day. New year’s eve fireworks happen some years and don’t others.
I personally love fireworks. The awe of the display is never lost upon me. I can see it becoming old if it’s something you deal with all the time. That isn’t an issue here though and I always step outside to watch them when a display is done locally.
