Americans aren't willing to pay to stop climate change

Thanks for pointing that out. edited

In Switzerland there was a vote 2 weeks ago about whether we want to support a law to reduce CO2 output by our population. The law was very clear how the money would be spent: improve heating, direct pay to poor citizens, and many others.

Cost:

- 50 cents per gallon of gas (our gas is about 6$ per gallon)

- 20$ to 100$ for a plane ticket

The law was refused by 51% of Swiss citizen.

What really killed me was that the youngest part of the population, the ones who will be the most impacted by the climate crisis, voted the strongest against it. Switzerland being one of the richest countries, I cannot understand how an increase of 10% on luxury items (plane tickets) can have this impact.

Funny story: now that the law has been refused, the oil companies announced a 15% increase of the gas price... Nobody is protesting so far.

I think "people" aren't given enough credit. They're actually pretty smart. They know that, when they're questioned by a surveyor, they can feel better about themselves by claiming that they'd be willing pay to address climate change. They know they can get that psychological benefit completely for free without having to do anything other than just answering the question in a certain way. So that makes surveys about the issue seem pretty meaningless; their outcomes have very little to do with the actual issue being surveyed.

Also, people are actually pretty smart because they know that every other individual in the economic arena will act in their own best interest. So they make the correct decision of saving money for themselves. That's exactly why any sort of individual brow beating always strikes me as totally misguided and counterproductive. People are not likely to spontaneously move to solve such a large problem when doing so puts them at an individual loss. It doesn't matter if you think that sort of behavior is immoral or unethical.

On the other hand, it seems to me that large organizations such as corporations and governments have many more incentives to mitigate large scale issues like this for a couple of reasons: 1) They can more easily coordinate since there are fewer organizations of that size that have to cooperate; 2) They are in a better position to quantify the risk of failing to act. There are probably plenty of corporate strategists that are starting to raise the alarm about a possible future world in which it's impossible to make any money as a result of a climate catastrophe.

I've never really been able to get on board with ways of arguing about climate change that fit the mold of this article. Individuals simply are not going to act to solve this problem. Get over it and move on.

1. Carbon tax 2. Cap and trade

The problem is NOT that there have been no good proposed policy solutions. The problem is that voters don't want them. This is why I'm pessimistic on the environment.

For these numbers to say anything about lack of interest in combating climate change. We would also need to know what people would answer if you switched out climate change with some other worthwhile cause. How many would want to pay 40$ for better firefighters, solve structural racism, water security in western states, or military veterans? Without something to compare it with, there is no context to say if the numbers are good or not.

I wonder if what this actually shows is that people don't like to pay taxes? Or that they think climate change should be possible to solve with the current tax rate with a reprioritizing of tax money?