[smackeyacky]

A lot of companies think this way, but it isn't necessarily true that excess carbon emissions aren't a financial pain point. Putting aside the implementation of carbon taxes, there are a lot of enterprises out there who could increase their productivity and reduce carbon emission as a side effect.

Agriculture in particular would fit in that category but any manufacturer emitting carbon is basically burning something that they could burn less of and save money.

So I don't think carbon emission reduction is necessarily a good way to market a company. Efficiency and cost savings that just happen to reduce emissions? That's where the focus should be.

[tuatoru]

Companies use fossil fuels because they have no choice, either because of chemistry or because of the doctrine of shareholder primacy, or because they lack access to credit.

There are no alternatives to carbon-intensive inputs in the offing for many industries. For all of them, efficiency measures require capital investment. Borrowing to install efficiency measures reduces next-quarter returns to stockholders. Companies with low profits have a hard time borrowing.

Yes, it may be a pain point, but it's also a coordination problem (or three).

The cases where efficiency provides a clear benefit? Few and small, on the global scale.

[smackeyacky]

I don't agree with that. Any opportunity to make a 10% reduction in carbon emission that also saves you money should be pursued, and there should be a lot of them out there.

[m12k]

> Efficiency and cost savings that just happen to reduce emissions? That's where the focus should be.

Isn't that where the focus has already been for decades? Which has pretty definitely proven itself insufficient for curbing emissions at anywhere near the scales that we need?

[smackeyacky]

Yes I would agree with that, but that doesn't mean we should stop trying. As an example, the NZ government is currently funding grants to reduce carbon emissions in livestock by 10%, which is an easily achievable target with current technology but the knowledge of how to do it isn't widespread.

A lot of this progress is unfortunately going to fall to governments and grants like this, which is probably where any carbon mitigation company needs to concentrate rather than venture capital. Once the claims about cost reduction can be proved, agriculture will follow soon enough.

Other industries will have similar grant schemes.

[m12k]

IMO that's exactly the argument why wee need a carbon tax. The status quo is that the only people who are really doing anything at all are some governments and the wokest part of the population. That's not nearly enough - we need all the companies and the whole population too. We don't just need to incentivize doing something else, but simultaneously disincentivize doing a lot of what we currently do, so everyone actually starts looking for alternatives. We can't just make emissions illegal without shutting down society, but we can (and should) make them painful.