Yes you can but you'll have to vote against your immediate self interest and comfort. The sort of changes that will have an impact on the climate will mean giving up a lot of what makes modern life convenient and comfortable.

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agentultra a day ago | parent | next [-]

Not that much of a difference for the average or lower classes of people that outnumber the rich by quite a lot. It would have a great and positive impact for them.

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SoftTalker a day ago | parent [-]

No, the rich will be able to pay the carbon taxes easily, the average folks will suffer under them.

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Timon3 19 hours ago | parent [-]

Carbon taxes can be implemented such that average folks benefit from them, e.g. by paying everyone back the average tax amount. Wealth generally correlates with carbon emissions, so wealthy people would pay more than they get back. This would greatly incentivize less emissions-intensive products and services.

Unfortunately there's no way the rich would ever let this go through.

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SoftTalker 17 hours ago | parent [-]

> Wealth generally correlates with carbon emissions

That may be true but there aren't enough wealthy people to just attack their consumption. In aggregate, regular people use a lot more energy. There's no way out of this that is going to be popular.

	▲	Timon3 16 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> That may be true but there aren't enough wealthy people to just attack their consumption. Not sure I understand, the goal isn't to attack anyone's consumption? The whole idea is to stop costs from being externalized. The concept doesn't require wealthy people to make sense, but existing wealth disparity makes it even more attractive for regular people. > In aggregate, regular people use a lot more energy. Why would the aggregate matter? Individually, regular people use waaaay less energy than the upper class. That means these regular people would, on average, come out slightly positive. And the "cleaner" someone's lifestyle is, the better this scheme would leave them (which poor people necessarily tend towards, since they cannot afford spending much on consumption).

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tzs a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Changes can be phased in. For example that's why places phasing out ICE cars are generally doing it by phasing out new ICE sales over many years and letting any cars already on the road when new sales stop stay on the road, and are concurrently building public charging infrastructure.

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grackasthebig a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Thermodynamics; your convenience and comfort (CnC) are merely externalized on others not eliminated; someone else makes your stuff, deals with the environmental toll in the future.

Happy to sacrifice some of your CnC to ease obligations on those you give no assurances to.

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bluefirebrand a day ago | parent | prev [-]

I think there are gradients to this

It would be hard for me to vote against indoor plumbing if that was needed to save the planet

I would vote against "Same Day Delivery" in a heartbeat though, if it helped

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tgsovlerkhgsel a day ago | parent | next [-]

Best the corresponding parties can do is banning plastic straws (no impact but feels great) and massive bureaucratic hurdles for air conditioning in private homes (because it's an "unnecessary luxury" and if your apartment is unbearably hot during a heat wave where the temperature doesn't drop below 25 even at night, you're just not correctly using shades and windows).

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estearum a day ago | parent [-]

Not really. We've made significant enough progress on this issue to prove that policy-driven progress is in fact possible.

This type of cynicism is both unwarranted and unhelpful.

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tgsovlerkhgsel a day ago | parent [-]

These changes were often not driven by the "green" parties though.

	▲	estearum 18 hours ago \| parent [-]
		This is far too complex a conversation to have at the level of abstraction you're trying to have it. Just say what you're trying to say. I don't know what "green parties" refers to across the entire globe of climate efforts, but quite obviously yes, most of the positive climate policies have been pushed by people who care about the climate. Just as obvious, most of those policies were not successfully enacted by the fringiest and most extreme versions of pro-climate people.

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estearum a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Not to mention there are plenty of environmental improvements that are vast and near-term quality of life improvements. The only penalty on many of these things is financial, but even that is only in the near-term, and in the medium to long term become financial wins.