The idea that a producer is at fault and not also the consumer paying them to do that is strange to me.

tialaramex 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Blaming the consumer is a time-honoured way to ensure nothing is done. The consumer can't pick options which don't exist, so the producer says oh well, you can either burn coal or you can go without light - there's no mention that the producer doesn't have to burn coal to make electricity, just straight to blaming you for wanting light.

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yongjik 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's a two-sided sword. When you are the consumer, blame the producer. When you are the producer, blame the consumer. In this way everybody can blame someone else and ensure that nothing is done.

For example, more people buying EVs can meaningfully reduce CO2 consumption, but you can easily find millions of people ideologically opposed to that.

Or just look at how reliably people reject any policy that vaguely looks like a carbon tax scheme. "Fix the earth somehow, now, but I'm not paying a cent, because that wasn't my fault!" is everyone's rallying cry.

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to11mtm 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Or just look at how reliably people reject any policy that vaguely looks like a carbon tax scheme. "Fix the earth somehow, now, but I'm not paying a cent, because that wasn't my fault!" is everyone's rallying cry.

I still don't get how people got to that. In my head a decent first step for a carbon tax would be producing made consumer goods; the end result would be that yes, capitalism 'should' eventually win out and the more ecologically sound solutions would prevail.

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intended 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

When you are informed, you hold to account the person responsible.

The entire issue of incentives to consume being a reason to blame consumers, is obviated when there are entire industries that have spent significant amounts of money and capital to ensure that voters cannot come to a consensus.

The science on global warming was clear eons ago. The true revolution has been in scientists learning how weak facts are when going up against media machines.

	▲	yongjik 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		At some point, people should agree they are responsible for the opinions they hold. Otherwise there's no point even arguing, because the only alternatives are that (1) the modern society fails, or (2) we will have an iron-fisted eco-fascist ruler who will "restore the balance" by stomping on people's will.

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giantg2 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

They have renewable only energy plans. So the choices do exist. Not to mention that the choice to go without something is a valid choice. If one believes strongly enough about something, then they will sacrifice for it.

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no_wizard 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This ignores too much to be a good faith argument like lack of options to choose. Ability to choose in absence of regulation, the fact that industry spends millions to curb any regulation and I know ok missing other factors.

Individual choice is actually a small part of this wheel, almost negligible.

The vast majority of polluting is done by industry, and they also do the most not to make things better and actively often try to make things worse.

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giantg2 6 hours ago | parent [-]

People want the products. Industry wouldn't exist, or not at this scale, without that. The easiest way to see this is air travel. The vast majority of it is unnecessary - business trips that could be a zoom call, vacations, shipping, etc. People got to every place on earth using trains and ships before air travel. Possible exceptions are medical transport and some types of products, which are tiny by comparison. So yeah, pretty much all on the consumer choices.

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no_wizard 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It’s not that simple.

For instance, consumers want fast and high speed rail and light rail in cities, yet the federal government is still subsidizing hundreds of billions of dollars to car centric projects rather than allowing municipalities and state governments to have control over those funds they come with strings attached that force them to choose car centric options.

Affordable housing is another example. Consumers want reliable cheap homes but every single attempt to unseat obtuse regulations and policies that make home bulldog a nightmare across metropolitan areas all over the Us entrenched home owners fight in as many ways possible to keep new homes from being built. This pushes more people into farther out suburbs that makes an existing issue even worse.

So no, it’s not all consumer choices, not even “pretty much”.

The false dichotomy that it’s simply choice is not a good faith argument.

The other flip of the coin is this: people can consume in ecologically smart and sustainable ways, and often given the choice they do but lack of choice exists across most sectors that don’t allow them to or are knowingly priced higher than the alternative options due to poor regulation or lack of proper subsidy on the scale of the dirty alternative.

And we subsidize a lot when it comes to oil, natural gas and coal, let alone other industrial polluting industries.

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zug_zug 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

No it's not on consumer choice. The US government is SUBSIDIZING gasoline when it should be taxing it at a higher rate because of the environmental side-effects. This is standard economics theory, you tax any form of an environmental damage (e.g. carbon) at the rate of what it costs to clean it up.

	▲	derektank 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Roughly 90% of global air travel passengers are non-Americans.
	▲	asdfasgasdgasdg 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Gasoline is heavily taxed as well, far in excess of the subsidies it receives compared to typical consumer goods. Jet fuel itself has almost no tax net of its subsidies, however passenger aviation is also heavily taxed compared to most consumer goods. It is for sure incorrect in both cases to say that these goods are “heavily subsidized” as a way to absolve consumers of any responsibility for their ecological choices.

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llukas 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Policy of subsidizing various modes of transportation modes shapes consumer choices. Best example is high speed rail vs air on shorter routes.

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ro_sharp 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

As long as the pollution is a negative externality and the polluting option is (immediately) cheaper, people (especially poorer people) will choose the cheaper option.