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by lwouis
1379 days ago
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The market is not working. What you see on the graph is a global growth of emissions. CO2 is a global problem, and we haven't improved on it yet, in any significant fashion. If you are implying that the market has reduced emissions in developped countries, i believe you're reading the situation wrong: China has become the world's factory, and its emissions have exploded, but the products manufactures are exported and consumed in the most developped countries. So effectively, developped countries emissions have grown. It's trivial to understand this when you observe the explosion of goods and services available in these countries, at the press of a button. There was never in history that many objects around us, in developped countries. Our footprint on the global world is growing rapidly and has never decreased. The market is failing to deal with climate change because the environment costs (sometimes called externalities) are not part of the market dynamics. The market uses money, but has a blind eye to anything physical. Business is just money and human labor. No mines, no pollution. It's all dollars. Polluting a lake is a X million dollars fee, not an irreversible loss in a one-time resource. |
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Now people have caught on to the fact that we need locally made things. There’s a huge push among my peers for things that are Made in USA or Made in Canada, and food grown within 100 miles, and things that are durable vs things that are plastic. My colleagues who work in manufacturing automation cannot keep up with the insane demand for onshoring production. I’m talking about everyday objects, but to further illustrate the idea: which car brand is currently the coolest, and why, and where is it made?
All of this is just here - remember they have a sort-of-free market in China. Once they reach the GDP per capita where most people care about such things as the environment, the same dynamic will play out there.
I agree that we should price in externalities though.