| I strongly believe the consuming less is not the way to solve the climate crisis. The reason is that it's thought from a perspective of the global north, that assumes we just need to restrict a little to achieve a lot. That is not going to solve the global climate crisis. The simple reason is that there are 7 billion people who are not living in the rich countries. These people have the right to access resources as much as the people born in rich countries. Consuming 20% less carbon in the west will not offset the increased consumption in the rest of the world. Every gallon of oil that can be produced at a reasonable price will be consumed. If Europe and the US switched to all electric cars tomorrow, the rest of the world would still consume the oil, especially at a lower price than now (because the US and Europe are no longer conusming it). There are things we could do right now, without significant impact to our lifestyle. I just learned, that over 3% of climate emissions are crop burning. 2% is deforestation. We could literally stop this with the signing of a bill. The US and the EU agree to tax imports from crop burning countries at a high rate. It will drive up prices of Brazilian beef and Indonesian palm oil a little, but of little impact to the consumer. Cement is another 3%, which could be solved with CO2 neutral cement. Electric trucks will be a game changer once they are cheaper to run than Gas trucks. And yes nuclear is something we can't stop developing. When I argue for a tech forward approach than not because I'm a tech bro that believes science solves all problems, but because I strongly believe reductions are not gonna work. If we rely on consumption reductions we are truly screwed. |
That may be, but Occam's razor suggests that it would be a good idea to ask why that still hasn't been done. Surely there are some reason why such obvious and useful things still haven't been implemented, right? I may be wrong, but i'd like to suggest that there are certain interest groups behind all of that, for whom such changes would be bad for business.
Also, what makes you think that both approaches couldn't be utilized? Use less resources, increase taxes to compensate the drop in prices that would otherwise follow and gradually stop subsidizing things like meat production, at least to the degree where the price at stores is artificially lowered. At the same time, attempt to subsidize wind, sun, geothermal, nuclear and other forms of getting electricity and see whether things are better or worse in 50 years.
Those approaches are not mutually exclusive, as long as you have plenty of legislative bodies on your side. Sadly, we don't and probably won't, at least until a generational shift takes place. As Planck's principle states: "Science progresses one funeral at a time", which could be attributed to social policies to some degree as well.
Of course, in regards to electric vehicles, one also has to consider the necessary infrastructure to support them and what's the CO2 cost of creating their batteries in the first place. For a while, and certainly in some geographical settings, hybrid vehicles could also be good for a gradual transition.