The universe was not built to cater to our desires. We can't have our cake and eat it too.

Virtually all economic activity consumes resources and energy, directly or indirectly, and in the process creates ghg emissions.

If we want to curb climate change and our emissions, it necessarily means we're going to take an economic hit.

We either do that willingly with some degree of ability to exercise control along the way, or be forced by physics to take an even worse economic hit and face vastly more death and suffering without our hands on the wheel.

There's no option where we don't get our pockets hurt.

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jcfrei 17 hours ago | parent [-]

Same reply to you as the other commentator: Fully agree that not doing anything will hurt more. The hard part is finding policies that actually work without costing the lower and middle class more right now. The conservatives basically everywhere around the world are against redistribution - so they ideologically oppose anything that looks like it. At the same time if we just enact policies that limit CO2 the rich people won't really care that flying, heating, driving and some foods have gotten a bit more expensive. But the poor people will. And of the ones who would get hurt by the higher prices a lot of them are ideologically opposed to any kind of redistributing policies. So you are kind of stuck in a catch-22 for now.

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gzread 17 hours ago | parent | next [-]

An interesting policy proposal is negative tax. Basically take the carbon cap, divide by the number of people, and give the equivalent carbon tax price to each person. A person who uses exactly average carbon sees no change, while a person who uses less gets a tax rebate, and a person who uses more pays more. You can charge it at the source, tariffing oil by its carbon content and then reducing taxes by that amount for everyone.

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jcfrei 16 hours ago | parent [-]

Again - poor people, which:

- still drive old cars with lots of CO2 emissions

- live far away from their workplace

- probably have a poorly isolated home with oil or gas heating

will be the ones with higher than average emissions. And the rich people who do will just shrug at this minor extra expense. I feel like this is not mentioned enough in discussions (probably because wealth disparity is such a touchy subject) but your ability to reduce your carbon footprint is also directly tied to your wealth.

	▲	gzread 16 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The average would also include rich people - if rich people are using far above average and poor people are using slightly above average, who's below average?
	▲	virgildotcodes 8 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Rich people, even with electric cars and solar panels, are responsible for far greater emissions than poor people even with their old beaters and longer commutes. Far, far greater. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/this-study-calculated-t...

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deaux 16 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> The hard part is finding policies that actually work without costing the lower and middle class more right now

You imprison the current administration for treason, seize their ill-gotten gains and there you go, hundreds of billions of dollars.

It's absolutely trivial. There's just a group of people that doesn't want it.

Simultaneously institute an inheritance tax as well as an exit tax of 90% of assets above $1+ billion, at time of death or leaving. That's a cool $1+ trillion in revenue for the next few decades. Both exit taxes and inheritance taxes are very established and work fine in plenty of countries, FYI. Not like yearly wealth taxes that are always criticized as not working or untested.

It's trivial to come up with policies that don't hurt the lower nor the middle class. Laughably easy. There's however a group of people that are blocking them. Those people are the problem and their blocks need to be removed to get closer to preventing then oncoming extinction event (which has complete scientific consesus). These policies work, and what needa to be done is removing of their blockers.

Come on now everyone, at least give an argument before you downvote. Warren Buffet is set to give away 99% of his wealth, so it's clearly possible. Humanity can no longer depend on the others to have the same basic decency as he does - clearly he's the exception, the others don't have it.