[gruez]

>corporations and institutions that created a society where carbon emissions are unavoidable and onto personal lifestyle choices

I mean, it's tempting to blame "corporations and institutions" for the lack of climate-friendly options, but how much of that is them being evil, and how much of that is due to aggregate consumer preferences? If say, 70% of consumers chooses the cheapest option available (disregarding climate impact), and the remaining 30% doesn't constitute a critical mass for a separate line of climate-friendly products, can you really blame "corporations and institutions" for following what the majority of consumers want?

[lozenge]

What's the consumer preference re child labour? What's the consumer preference re slavery or conflict diamonds? What's the consumer preference re leaded gasoline? How about factories polluting rivers, as was common in the US not that long ago? Should we have told people to prefer undyed fabric because it would create less pollution?

Let's not limit society to just what "consumer preference" determines. We should be using our institutions (ie the government) to make things better.

[throwaway894345]

> Can you really blame corporations

Yes, because carbon isn't priced into the economy, and corporations lobby to maintain that status quo. Moreover, consumers can't choose between "cheap" and "environmentally friendly" because corporations don't publish information about the carbon footprint of their products (although they do lots of greenwashing--advertising "environmentally friendly" with no actual accountability).

The solution is pricing carbon emissions into the economy so the market will figure out how to use those emissions most efficiently. The function of "blame" here is to make it less advantageous for corporations to obstruct the path toward averting climate change.

Note also that corporations aren't the only ones who deserve blame: there are also the politicians in their pockets on both sides. Obviously the Republicans who deny climate change, but also those Democrats who preach it and then do next to nothing to stop it (throwing a few billion at the least-effective conceivable climate initiatives) or use it for cover for trillions of dollars of progressive social spending (via "climate justice").

[gruez]

>Yes, because carbon isn't priced into the economy, and corporations lobby to maintain that status quo.

I don't disagree that corporations are blameworthy by lobbying against climate change legislation. That said, you're changing the topic here. The entirety of that sentence was about the "lack of climate-friendly options" and the comment I was replying to was talking about "a society where carbon emissions are unavoidable".

>Moreover, consumers can't choose between "cheap" and "environmentally friendly" because corporations don't publish information about the carbon footprint of their products

Is this really an issue? Just assume anything that doesn't have strongly worded environmental claims is not environmentally friendly. Given that a supermajority of consumers care about the environment (at least in the abstract), if a product is actually environmentally friendly, it's probably going to be predominantly labeled.

[throwaway894345]

> I don't disagree that corporations are blameworthy by lobbying against climate change legislation. That said, you're changing the topic here. The entirety of that sentence was about the "lack of climate-friendly options" and the comment I was replying to was talking about "a society where carbon emissions are unavoidable".

I don't see how I'm changing the topic. As you noted, the original topic was "corporations and institutions that created a society where carbon emissions are unavoidable and onto personal lifestyle choices". You seemed to be arguing that the landscape of goods and services is carbon intensive because consumers demand cheap products irrespective of climate concerns. I'm rebutting that with "consumers don't have the information to choose between climate and cost, they can only compare costs". Specifically, I noted (or rather implied) two ways to facilitate that information: require every product to publish information about its carbon footprint (with accountability mechanisms) or just price it into the cost of the item via carbon tax or similar.

> Is this really an issue? Just assume anything that doesn't have strongly worded environmental claims is not environmentally friendly. Given that a supermajority of consumers care about the environment (at least in the abstract), if a product is actually environmentally friendly, it's probably going to be predominantly labeled.

Yes, because "strongly worded environmental claims" is meaningless. There's no accountability that products making these claims outperform their competition at all, and even if they do outperform the competition, a consumer can't know by how much (am I paying 50% more for a product that emits half as much carbon, or only 1% less?). There's virtually no regulation here.

[gruez]

>I'm rebutting that with "consumers don't have the information to choose between climate and cost, they can only compare costs".

Fair point, I apologize for the accusation.

>Yes, because "strongly worded environmental claims" is meaningless. There's no accountability that products making these claims outperform their competition at all, and even if they do outperform the competition, a consumer can't know by how much (am I paying 50% more for a product that emits half as much carbon, or only 1% less?). There's virtually no regulation here.

But voluntary labeling seem to work fine with "organic"/"non-GMO" products? I agree that being able to compare two conventional products and choose the least bad option has value, but the lack of a pesticide content label didn't prevent the proliferation of organic products on supermarket shelves.

[throwaway894345]

Organic and non-GMO are USDA regulated labels. Corporations will punish them for fraudulent use of the label. https://www.ams.usda.gov/rules-regulations/organic/labeling