[dragonwriter]

> I’m not an economist by profession but I suspect (and at some point want to try and model) that one’s carbon footprint is just a linear function of three variables: the amount of money spent, the fraction of all money that’s in active circulation in the economy, and the fraction of clean energy in the total economy.

On average, it is true by definition (at least, if one holds that all activity in some way supports personal consumption) that carbon footprint from consumption is (global carbon output) × (personal consumption) / (global consumption).

It sounds like your proposed hypotheses essentially rephrases this.

> Thus the only solution to reduce your carbon footprint is to pretty much just spend less money!

In the short-term, sure. What spending a premium on things that reduce carbon footprint in normal narrow analysis (but which force the reductions in the short term to be someone else's increases who aren't paying the premium) does isn't actually reducing the near term footprint of the whole economy, it increases the economic incentive for production models which reduce the footprint per unit output.

[danuker]

As a non-economist also, I am quite sure moving $1 of your yearly expenses away from CO2 heavy suppliers will encourage the market to find other solutions.

What you spend your money on matters, even more than voting.