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While I understand the point, that and the classic "X company produce Y% of carbon emission worldwide!" feel very dishonest. They don't produce the waste for the heck of it. It is directly linked to our consumption. We want less plastic waste ? Then vote for more regulation, and sadly, this doesn't seem like the priority for a lot of people right now (which is understandable since rich country just send their plastic waste to poor country, they don't see the consequences of their action).

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eru 18 hours ago | parent [-]

You don't need 'more' regulation, but probably different regulation.

So eg instead of having lots of piecemeal regulation that bans straws and plastic bags and Kinder Surprise eggs etc, you can have a single relatively simple tax on plastic garbage. The total amount of regulation would go down, but effectiveness would go up.

(You can give companies who collect and deal with their plastic trash a discount on the tax, if you want to.)

Similar for carbon dioxide emissions tax, instead of silly gameable things like CAFE car standards.

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willguest 17 hours ago | parent [-]

I agree with your abstraction of the problem, but I think you stopped half-way.

Regulators, producers and consumers are all following the same interconnected incentive structures, many of which have been designed with efficient production and an exponential increase of consumption in mind, not environmental concern.

It makes sense for these companies to operate, following their obligation to shareholders. They are, by definition, successful and so the idea that they should be diminished in any way by taxation/regulation creates a dissonance that can easily be loopholed or simply undone by the next gov't. Tax is a political lever, but the incentives are emergent economic atttributes. This means that, as soon as there is enough economic influence within politics, the lever doesn't do much anyway.

	▲	eru 14 hours ago \| parent [-]
		And yet, the cap-and-trade for sulfur-dioxide worked really, really well. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_Rain_Program Our traffic congestion charging program here in Singapore also works really well (and was famously adopted by London later).