A ridiculous and uninformed article. This is a great example of the type of magical thinking we often see when it comes to issues like this. The reality is that changing the behavior of superemitters is not nearly enough to make a difference, compared to the sum total of the emissions of ordinary people.
Let’s redo the headline:
- People driving their kids to school is driving the climate crisis
- People having enough to eat is driving the climate crisis
- People taking nice vacations with their families and friends is driving the climate crisis
The problem doesn’t seem too easy to solve now.
Just as we can’t fund a robust welfare state by taxing the rich alone (everyone must pay high taxes for it to be enough), we will do nothing about climate change by focusing only on superemitters (most aspects of life must be decarbonized if we’re going to stop climate change).
For better or worse, the wealthy are the thought leaders of society. Their values trickle down to the middle and lower classes. When we see them consume at a high rate (per capita), it sends a message that “what I can afford to consume is ok to consume”. So the masses end up throwing away hoards of cheap single use plastics because it’s convenient and not expensive.
The issue with mass consumption by the wealthy is how it influences the behavior of the more impactful middle and lower classes.
In the Steve Jobs biography I was originally shocked that he and his wife had hours long debates about whether or not to use a drying machine (vs hanging laundry outside). For a long time I never saw what he was fighting for, but now it makes sense to me.
> - People driving their kids to school is driving the climate crisis - People having enough to eat is driving the climate crisis - People taking nice vacations with their families and friends is driving the climate crisis
By my count, two out of the three are reasonably considered “excess” and are seemingly not being questioned as claimed by the headline.
"...if the top 10% of global emitters were to cut their carbon footprint to that of the typical EU citizen... that alone would cut global emissions by around one third." - p.208 The Climate Book (Greta Thunberg)
> Let’s redo the headline: - People driving their kids to school is driving the climate crisis - People having enough to eat is driving the climate crisis
There is huge range between excess and shortage.
There are people in developed world who do not drive their kids in SUVs.
There are people in developed world who walk their kids to school. Good urban design / spatial planning is better for live and environment.
> we will do nothing about climate change
We will do nothing. This attitude is just looking for excuses. CO2 emissions per capita in Austria are half of those in USA.
It does seem to be the conclusion that people arrive at but don’t really want to say out loud. If we really want to save the climate we should all just kill ourselves.
People like the feeling of personal progress, mostly through accumulating material posessions, increasing social capital, and raising kids. Getting in the way of any of those is a good way to get thrown out of office. So any solution to the climate crisis has to work within these constraints. I don't understand why people don't grasp this.
I disagree. A solution to the climate crisis needs to face up to the fact that we simply can't continue to consume as we have, if we want a world that's livable for current, much less future generations. It's not that goddamn hard to see.
Who’s “we” and what do you mean by “livable”? There’s no mainstream climate model that predicts the globe becoming uninhabitable for humanity. Even the worst case scenarios in well done models only show global growth slowing by a few percent without any climate mitigation. Meanwhile we have a carbon neutral technology, nuclear energy, that even with its problems can easily provide energy albeit at a higher cost than coal.
The predicted higher temperatures existed in the past and had some of the highest archeological rates of biodiversity. Thats not to say the outcome will be all positive; certainly some regions will encounter issues during the transition, but there’s also going to be a lot of opportunity opened up within the range of predicted outcomes by climate models. Increased agricultural production in northern regions, less cost of heating in many heavily populated areas, and of course new transport routes across the arctic. That’s not to mention all of the benefits fossil fuels are bringing to people much poorer than you in the global south.
Stop consuming what exactly? Shelter, climate control, transportation, food? It is not like Starbucks and luxury handbags are causing the bulk of emissions.
The church has been questioning greed for quite a while. If trends in the west continue the church is going to go away before the instinct to be greedy does. I think this is a fundamental problem for all of the current solutions to our climate crisis. Any strategy which requires everyone to stop being greedy and consider others is most likely going to fail. I think that a lot of people are under the impression that all that needs to happen is things just need to get bad enough and then eventually people will see the error of their ways. Self delusion is such a powerful force in both directions I think it’s unlikely to happen.
Good luck telling to the billions
of people living in poverty in South America, Africa, and Asia that they have to give up on the dreams for a more affluent life. While we (The West, the rich countries etc call it whatever you want) enjoyed the high living standards for decades.
How exactly was that dream going to happen with the global north constantly exploiting the global south anyway? (Asia seems to be doing just fine these days, so I don't know what you're talking about there.)
It's more accurate to say, good luck telling the faux affluent they need to cut back on the mindless and excessive consumption.
For example, we know the negative impact of factory farming. We're also aware that too much animal protein has health consequences. And yet The West- as unhealthy as ever - can't help itself.
IMHO we need a cure that isn't worse than the disease. I think we need to embrace capitalism, up to a point. That is, maximize profit until you hit a certain point, then stop. I call it the policy of "Enough". Make the threshold generous, or even self-declared. I don't think the ideology of capitalism suffers all that much from this adjustment. Once you succeed to a certain point, you leave the game and enjoy your life.
Plus, we don't have to be too draconian about solutions. For example, we can and should mandate that no new vehicles above a certain weight, and no new small jets, should be produced. The ones in existence we leave alone, and let decay take its course. The same with billionaires: leave them alone, and limit the next generation.
I'm happy to hear criticism, but bear in mind that I'm rather attached to this idea. It's novel, as far as I know, and I think it could satisfy both hard-core capitalists AND environmentalists, which is a rare thing. So please, try to offer ideas to improve it. As for the right Enough number, I think for me it's about 10M 2023 USD. I'd like to get to a point in human history where everyone can get there.
Why this rather than a tax to achieve your desired externalities? The problem with this kind of policy is it's very arbitrary - some bureaucracy decides what is and isn't allowed. It also usually comes with a subtext of attacking a particular segment of society that you aren't part of.
If we can remove carbon from the atmosphere or offset it, than a tax equal to that expense during production and used to offset should achieve the outcomes you want. (Ignoring how many programs are poorly built for correctly achieving this real offset).
Taxes are unpopular. The policy of Enough can be done voluntarily. In fact, I've toyed with the idea of starting a company who's employment agreement requires agreeing to the conditions of Enough. I think it would even be useful for individuals, in private, to consider what their own Enough number is.
Also, taxes don't try to curb unbounded greed and growth. The Enough policy acknowledges unbounded growth is actually the biggest problem.
My “walk away” number is also $10M (in 2018 dollars, based on when I concluded that target).
Trouble with climate is my carbon footprint would likely go up in retirement rather than down, from the time and resources available to travel. Walking around my town and puttering around waiting to die isn’t my ideal retirement; doing that while having the money to do 10x more fun things is worse not better.
(Side note: I don’t expect to ever retire with $10M in even then-current dollars unless we quickly go Weimar in inflation terms.)
> Trouble with climate is my carbon footprint would likely go up in retirement rather than down
This is also one of my pet peeves with the "degrowth" movement's solution to climate change. Essentially they want to alleviate the problems not by innovating to do more with less, but to have people do less. This would mean less work for everyone, but obviously less work means more leisure time. Unless every decides to take up meditating, they're going to consume more during their leisure time, creating not only more work, but also more of every type of negative externality.
I like it. One way to do this is to create a personal consumption budget based on what a normal life would look like if the resources were equally shared and everything was done in a sustainable way. The rich would have to come down many steps of the ladder (and pretty much everybody reading this would be classified as rich) and the poor would be able to go up a bit. I don't think it could be done with 8 billion people though, but doing the math on this is super complex and probably would be years worth of work.
It doesn't work, because "enough" here would have to be something like, maybe everyone lives in a small apartment in a city, is vegan, and doesn't travel much or at all.
Ten mil is way higher than that. It's probably more like a 50k or lower income with no wealth.
For me and for a lot of people I know, this would be a significant downgrade and I'd rather compete to maintain or improve my quality of life.
I don't have ten mil, but if everyone lived like me, we would be buggered.
You don't know that. It hasn't been tried, and I daresay you don't even understand what I'm proposing.
One neoliberal capitalist way to implement the Enough system is to make agreement to it a condition of your employment, and also a condition of your investment. You agree to retire and divest as soon as you earn a certain amount. At work, you vacate the role and let someone else try it out. With your investments, you sell and let someone else be a stakeholder.
> maximize profit until you hit a certain point, then stop
This was explicitly the goal of early capitalist philosophy. Adam Smith envisioned a world where growth came to an end as societies expanded to fill their "economic space".
Smith misinterpreted human desires and motivations; enough is never enough as long as our potential future adversary is also accumulating wealth. Economic arms races ensure there will never be enough.
I was thinking about this in the context of wealth inequality and the "existence of billionaires". I don't think that the common refrain of simply attempting to "tax billionaires out of existence" is functional or reasonable. People work hard, then they hit a really good idea and their company sky rockets in value. The notion that there is no ethical way to become a billionaire and that somehow all billionaires are inherently evil is, to me, very naive.
However, Elon Musk shouldn't exist. So how do we stop that? My proposal is a cap on revenue per employee before a company must go public, and a cap on individual ownership of any company. So for example maximum $5m per employee revenue before you have to list, then a single person or entity can own at most 10% of a company.
This means once you hit that figure, you have to list the company and cash out, and let other people step in and take not only responsibility but also share the revenue and ownership more equitably.
> IMHO we need a cure that isn't worse than the disease.
Agreed, but you need to realize that one of the symptoms of the disease is the destruction of global civilization as we know it. That's not something we're going to see tomorrow, or in 5 years, but in 10-20 years, if we continue on with the status quo, I would say it's quite likely.
> I think it could satisfy both hard-core capitalists AND environmentalists
Unfortunately not. All the things you mention (air travel, billionaires, etc.) are things that are literally responsible for accelerating the destruction right now.
As far as "draconian" goes, we had 50 years to get something done. We're down to about 5 years before we start seeing the first tier of real consequences now. Draconian is pretty much where it's at for the next several decades, if we're thinking realistically.
The idea that capitalism should go to a point and then be stopped is a pretty standard one from Marx. He greatly admired capitalism but believed once it made people rich it would no longer be needed and the workers would naturally take over through revolution. That’s not to say you’re wrong just because you agree with Marx, but rather you should consider why you are so attached to this idea. Marx’s ideas are a type of religion dressed up to look scientific via “historical materialism”. It’s appealing to believe that time is under humanity’s control rather than something outside of humanity, but there’s strong reasons to believe that is false (the universe will last much longer than humans will).
I think you need to re-read Marx, then. I'm not a Marxist, at all, mainly because of the empirical evidence that hardcore redistribution of wealth goes very, very poorly. Frankly it annoys me and worries me that some people associate literally any limit on capitalism with socialism. Adam Smith's invisible hand was driven not by self-interest, but enlightened self-interest.
Putting a hard, generous upper limit on wealth accumulation is not even close to Marxism.
Greed and excess are at the core of our economies which are based on infinite growth. It just doesn’t add up to a healthy society or healthy environment.
We need to embrace degrowth and radically change our economic system.
But we won’t, at least not in time, so I hope the survivors of our post-capitalist meltdown are able to craft something better.
Readit News
Let’s redo the headline: - People driving their kids to school is driving the climate crisis - People having enough to eat is driving the climate crisis - People taking nice vacations with their families and friends is driving the climate crisis
The problem doesn’t seem too easy to solve now.
Just as we can’t fund a robust welfare state by taxing the rich alone (everyone must pay high taxes for it to be enough), we will do nothing about climate change by focusing only on superemitters (most aspects of life must be decarbonized if we’re going to stop climate change).
The issue with mass consumption by the wealthy is how it influences the behavior of the more impactful middle and lower classes.
In the Steve Jobs biography I was originally shocked that he and his wife had hours long debates about whether or not to use a drying machine (vs hanging laundry outside). For a long time I never saw what he was fighting for, but now it makes sense to me.
By my count, two out of the three are reasonably considered “excess” and are seemingly not being questioned as claimed by the headline.
There is huge range between excess and shortage. There are people in developed world who do not drive their kids in SUVs. There are people in developed world who walk their kids to school. Good urban design / spatial planning is better for live and environment.
> we will do nothing about climate change
We will do nothing. This attitude is just looking for excuses. CO2 emissions per capita in Austria are half of those in USA.
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
The predicted higher temperatures existed in the past and had some of the highest archeological rates of biodiversity. Thats not to say the outcome will be all positive; certainly some regions will encounter issues during the transition, but there’s also going to be a lot of opportunity opened up within the range of predicted outcomes by climate models. Increased agricultural production in northern regions, less cost of heating in many heavily populated areas, and of course new transport routes across the arctic. That’s not to mention all of the benefits fossil fuels are bringing to people much poorer than you in the global south.
For example, we know the negative impact of factory farming. We're also aware that too much animal protein has health consequences. And yet The West- as unhealthy as ever - can't help itself.
Deleted Comment
Plus, we don't have to be too draconian about solutions. For example, we can and should mandate that no new vehicles above a certain weight, and no new small jets, should be produced. The ones in existence we leave alone, and let decay take its course. The same with billionaires: leave them alone, and limit the next generation.
I'm happy to hear criticism, but bear in mind that I'm rather attached to this idea. It's novel, as far as I know, and I think it could satisfy both hard-core capitalists AND environmentalists, which is a rare thing. So please, try to offer ideas to improve it. As for the right Enough number, I think for me it's about 10M 2023 USD. I'd like to get to a point in human history where everyone can get there.
If we can remove carbon from the atmosphere or offset it, than a tax equal to that expense during production and used to offset should achieve the outcomes you want. (Ignoring how many programs are poorly built for correctly achieving this real offset).
Taxes are unpopular. The policy of Enough can be done voluntarily. In fact, I've toyed with the idea of starting a company who's employment agreement requires agreeing to the conditions of Enough. I think it would even be useful for individuals, in private, to consider what their own Enough number is.
Also, taxes don't try to curb unbounded greed and growth. The Enough policy acknowledges unbounded growth is actually the biggest problem.
Trouble with climate is my carbon footprint would likely go up in retirement rather than down, from the time and resources available to travel. Walking around my town and puttering around waiting to die isn’t my ideal retirement; doing that while having the money to do 10x more fun things is worse not better.
(Side note: I don’t expect to ever retire with $10M in even then-current dollars unless we quickly go Weimar in inflation terms.)
This is also one of my pet peeves with the "degrowth" movement's solution to climate change. Essentially they want to alleviate the problems not by innovating to do more with less, but to have people do less. This would mean less work for everyone, but obviously less work means more leisure time. Unless every decides to take up meditating, they're going to consume more during their leisure time, creating not only more work, but also more of every type of negative externality.
Ten mil is way higher than that. It's probably more like a 50k or lower income with no wealth.
For me and for a lot of people I know, this would be a significant downgrade and I'd rather compete to maintain or improve my quality of life.
I don't have ten mil, but if everyone lived like me, we would be buggered.
You don't know that. It hasn't been tried, and I daresay you don't even understand what I'm proposing.
One neoliberal capitalist way to implement the Enough system is to make agreement to it a condition of your employment, and also a condition of your investment. You agree to retire and divest as soon as you earn a certain amount. At work, you vacate the role and let someone else try it out. With your investments, you sell and let someone else be a stakeholder.
This was explicitly the goal of early capitalist philosophy. Adam Smith envisioned a world where growth came to an end as societies expanded to fill their "economic space".
Smith misinterpreted human desires and motivations; enough is never enough as long as our potential future adversary is also accumulating wealth. Economic arms races ensure there will never be enough.
However, Elon Musk shouldn't exist. So how do we stop that? My proposal is a cap on revenue per employee before a company must go public, and a cap on individual ownership of any company. So for example maximum $5m per employee revenue before you have to list, then a single person or entity can own at most 10% of a company.
This means once you hit that figure, you have to list the company and cash out, and let other people step in and take not only responsibility but also share the revenue and ownership more equitably.
Agreed, but you need to realize that one of the symptoms of the disease is the destruction of global civilization as we know it. That's not something we're going to see tomorrow, or in 5 years, but in 10-20 years, if we continue on with the status quo, I would say it's quite likely.
> I think it could satisfy both hard-core capitalists AND environmentalists
Unfortunately not. All the things you mention (air travel, billionaires, etc.) are things that are literally responsible for accelerating the destruction right now.
As far as "draconian" goes, we had 50 years to get something done. We're down to about 5 years before we start seeing the first tier of real consequences now. Draconian is pretty much where it's at for the next several decades, if we're thinking realistically.
Putting a hard, generous upper limit on wealth accumulation is not even close to Marxism.
We need to embrace degrowth and radically change our economic system.
But we won’t, at least not in time, so I hope the survivors of our post-capitalist meltdown are able to craft something better.