[NeedMoreTea]

Doesn't this avoid the core point of decarbonising the economy? Rather than getting Chevron to limit emissions, we need them to cease emissions. Which for an oil company means find an entirely new line of business - hopefully something like renewables - or cease to exist. Allow a tiny few to continue for the purposes of creating plastics we can't easily substitute by something else. Yes, that expects and requires far-reaching regulation.

Continuing to exist, and emit, just a bit slower is only delaying climate impact, and by a tiny amount.

[parasubvert]

Cutting off the supply without shifting demand doesn’t solve the problem though, it aggravates people to vote in populists who will deregulate.

[Gibbon1]

The way I figure if someone buys a gasoline powered car, they've just committed us to 50-100 tons of CO2 emissions. Seems like that is what you want to stop not playing games with fuel taxes.

[orbifold]

That seems incredibly low. 1kg of Beef produces ~1ton CO2 equivalent emissions

[MertsA]

This is incorrect. Beef takes a ton of food and releases a good bit of greenhouse gases but nowhere near a ton per kg of meat. Here's a study looking at multiple other studies on the CO2 equivalent greenhouse gases per kg of beef. In particular you'll want to look at page 85.

https://web.archive.org/web/20070709233421/http://www.defra....

That gives a range from 32.3kg per kg of beef to 15kg per kg of beef.

[donkeyd]

According to EPA [0]:

> A typical passenger vehicle emits about 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year.

I guess that's why so many people are urging to buy less beef. [1]

0: https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-t...

1: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jul/21/giving-u...

[Luuseens]

Can you provide some sources for this number? Seems high, and first results from a cursory Google search suggest it's between 14 to 60 kg CO2 per 1 kg of beef.

[QuantumAphid]

Although beef and other animal ruminants have always been part of the planet's carbon cycle where carbon sources are kept in balance by carbon sinks. What knocks us out of balance is extracting carbon sources (ancient forests) from underground and burning them rapidly within a century-- much faster than any natural carbon sink can absorb.

[Gibbon1]

Yeah our problem isn't just cars, it's basically everything.

[NeedMoreTea]

Much of the developed world already has deregulating populists - that's half the damn problem. Except populism never lasts, and populist regimes are always incredibly divisive and usually end discredited.

It's what comes next that matters.

[parasubvert]

It can last over a decade, that’s plenty of time to wreak havoc.

[nickserv]

Agreed. At this point I'm more inclined to follow the "seize their assets and jail their leaders" doctrine rather than a "let them continue to profit" one.

[PeterStuer]

I'd suggest, if you go that route, just revoking their drilling licence. I find it highly unlikely as current governments, with few exceptions, seem hell bent on extracting even more, even if that means using grotesqly environmental destructive practices such as fracking.

[coliveira]

Correct, we need to largely regulate these companies out of existence.

[parasubvert]

What country would ever vote for such a policy? It is immensely impractical. This level of radicalism is how you get right wing populists who will rather happily jail the environmental radicals.

Most of the world continues to rely on fossil fuel for the essentials of life. Change that before throwing execs in jail.

[thrower123]

This is moronic. Unless we are going to massively step up building of nuclear plants, you cannot eliminate fossil fuel usage, for transport, for heat, and most of all electricity. Renewables don't cut it.

That would just be suicidal.