From what I understand, it's something like 10% of our infrastructure that contributes 99% of green house gasses.
Even if 90% of people on earth decided to recycle and go vegan and drive an electric car, it wouldn't make any difference as long as that 10% is using un-clean infrastructure (container ships are said to produce the pollution of millions of cars, we still burn coal for most of our energy needs, etc).
1. That's not how supply and demand works. The infrastructure is there to sustain our behavior. If we change our behavior, we'll change the system.
2. We can do other things than what you suggested. We can reduce consumption over mere recycling. We can have fewer children. We can drive less and reduce car ownership beyond just using electric cars. We can shift taxes to carbon from other things.
3. If other things make bigger differences, we can work on them too. Eating less meat is not exclusive with reducing consumption to reduce the number of container ships.
4. If you don't want to do anything, you don't have to. You can give up on making a difference. That's what billions of people are already doing. If you have more important things to do, you should probably do them.
Or we can use regulation and taxes to re-internalize externalities of actions like burning coal for power or shipping items via highly polluting container ships.
Regulation and taxes are a means not an ends. They do not, in and of themselves, fix the problem. They fix the problem by getting people to do the things spodek suggested.
Thats true, but they also do something else which is internalize costs, meaning that people can make better apples to apples comparisons of the true costs of things.
Right now climate change emitting energy is unfairly subsidized because the climate change costs are not accounted for.
Oh totally. I'm just pushing back against the idea that taxes are the solution in and of themselves because sometimes I think people hear that and think "Oh, so I can basically keep doing what I'm doing and just pay a bit more in taxes and things will be fine." when it's really "Massive emissions taxes will make your current lifestyle unaffordable so you will be forced to make significant cuts in your energy consumption."
Right and it will be massive to make a difference. But to me the bigger issue is that the markets are missing a piece of very important information and so are not being very efficient in solving the problem.
If we internalize the costs, it works as a lever to change consumption, but in my view more importantly it makes the markets more able to allocate resources correctly.
Well, when the problem is externalities (carbon emissions are a cost of certain types of energy production, but a cost not paid for by the producer or consumer), the solution is generally to re-internalize the externalities. Taxes are a pretty efficient way to accomplish that.
Yes. They just tend to be much more effective than asking billions of individuals to each take actions that without such regulations and taxes would mean additional cost, inconvenience, and mental overhead compared to alternatives.
Your understanding is wrong. For example, 27% of emissions come from transportation and the majority of that comes from personal transportation (cars basically).
Well, that 10% exists to serve us consumers. Container ships are big polluters. Maybe if we tried to buy things locally and second hand rather than ordering new stuff from overseas, it might have a minor impact on shipping?
And regarding coal, it's possible to choose a green electricity supplier here in Ireland at least
Burning durty fuel produces more than just CO2 which causes acid rain / Smog etc. Those container ships use surprisingly little fuel so their greenhouse gas emissions are fairly low. It's really just nitrogen oxides etc that are an issue.
Even if 90% of people on earth decided to recycle and go vegan and drive an electric car, it wouldn't make any difference as long as that 10% is using un-clean infrastructure (container ships are said to produce the pollution of millions of cars, we still burn coal for most of our energy needs, etc).