[saudioger]

Individuals don't care about efficiency, they care about price. This is partially why the government had to step in to create labor laws. Unless they're directly impacted by it right now, the average consumer does not care. The American meat industry is downright terrible in some cases, and people are buying more meat than ever.

If you halved the price of the iPhone by introducing slave labor in some faraway land, you would still sell a boatload of iPhones.

This is one of the ways that I believe government should intervene because individuals are very bad at deciding based on long-term impacts.

[douglaswlance]

Individuals do care about efficiency, because they care about paying less in their electric bill.

How did the USA lower emissions the most in 2017 while also withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord? Because efficiency is increasing across the board and people are buying more efficient devices.

If you produced lab-grown meat that was undistinguishable and utilized energy more efficiently, then it would be less expensive and people would buy it.

[saudioger]

Individuals only care about efficiency if it impacts price.

There are numerous examples of people paying more for things in the long term because they're less expensive immediately. Entire industries are built on this. Again, humans aren't particularly good at forecasting long-term decisions.

Additionally, The VAST majority of emission decrease in the past 10 years in the US has been due to moving from coal to shale gas, not because of individual purchasing decisions. It's iterative movement that was caused by a combination of market forces and government regulations, not one or the other on its own (and the current administration is actually reversing many regulations that promoted shale gas over coal).

Renewables still don't even touch the impacts of moving from coal to shale gas.