Earlier quoted context omitted.
I strongly believe the consuming less is not the way to solve the climate crisis. The reason is that it's thought from a perspective of the global north, that assumes we just need to restrict a little to achieve a lot. That is not going to solve the global climate crisis. The simple reason is that there are 7 billion people who are not living in the rich countries. These people have the right to access resources as m…
> We could literally stop this with the signing of a bill. That may be, but Occam's razor suggests that it would be a good idea to ask why that still hasn't been done. Surely there are some reason why such obvious and useful things still haven't been implemented, right? I may be wrong, but i'd like to suggest that there are certain interest groups behind all of that, for whom such changes would be bad for business. A…
Clearly there are, we want cheaper Brazilian beef, Indonesian palm oil, Cambodian agricultural products. But let's say we tax imports from countries that don't clamp down on crop burning, I doubt the average consumer would feel any difference. The last flood in Germany is estimated to cost 10 billion Euro. Overall the benefit would outweigh the cost.
>Also, what makes you think that both approaches couldn't be utilized? Use less resources, increase taxes to compensate the drop in prices that would otherwise follow and gradually stop subsidizing things like meat production, at least to the degree where the price at stores is artificially lowered. At the same time, attempt to subsidize wind, sun, geothermal, nuclear and other forms of getting electricity and see whether things are better or worse in 50 years.
I think using less resources can certainly help but to a degree that it almost doesn't matter. Especially if it's just about irrelevant stand-ins. For example the EU will forbid the sale of fossil fuel motorbikes in 2035. This is about something that has an effect on 0.1% of the carbon emission of a single economic area. And with motorcycles the benefits are way way less than cars as they are driven a lot less than cars and the increased CO2 of production takes years to result in CO2 reductions of the lifetime. So a whole industry is forced to build new factories develop new models for the smallest of the small reductions, while the big stuff is left on the table. Or SUV's. SUV owners are demonized, while millions of tons of CO2 are emitted shipping Chinese made goods around the globe.
> Those approaches are not mutually exclusive, as long as you have plenty of legislative bodies on your side. Sadly, we don't and probably won't, at least until a generational shift takes place. As Planck's principle states: "Science progresses one funeral at a time", which could be attributed to social policies to some degree as well.
Agreed and this is what I want to achieve. A science driven approach not one of pandering to envy and the industry groups.