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> that could be: give away solar panels and two way heat pumps to low-income families, tax the profits of oil and gas companies, enforce right to repair, remove tariffs on chinese car makers if they create jobs in europe, fund train networks to get tickets cheaper than flying, invest in renewable energy to make electricity cheap. theres a lot of options. all of them will lead to some inflation and public debt but there are easy ways to offload that to the rich. The problem is that most of these (and potentially all of these) ideas sound good, but achieve very little. Some (e.g. right to repair, sadly) will achieve almost nothing at all. This would be a scatter-gun approach at best; at worst, it creates the impression of doing something while actually doing very little. I don't know what the best solution is. Arguably a genuine carbon tax (one that taxes large producers for the previously-externalised costs of greenhouse gas production, while providing tax cuts to the general population) is the single most effect means of enacting real change. However, Australia demonstrated that even a scheme that results in real, substantial income tax cuts while generating measurable, real reductions in emissions is vulnerable to a scare campaign by a committed, ultra-right attack dog politician. I strongly suspect that our only potential way out of this now is via geoengineering, and that's fraught with dangers. I am also worried that a lack of government interest in climate change will eventually induce a highly wealthy individual to undertake geoengineering privately, without oversight, scientific input or regulation. But I cannot see the world stopping this any other way, other than by reversing the effects of climate change via nuclear winter. |
I'd be curious as to why you say that. I feel that, right now, you would be correct. But if we could move society to a new paradigm where right-to-repair were the default, then cheap non-OEM parts manufacturers would bloom and repairing something would become much cheaper than replacing. Imagine if every object sold had to come with a manual describing how to repair common failures, and a support department to answer for other components.
Personal anecdote: My $700 oven has a microswitch that broke. The oven wouldn't work without it but the replacement part was all of $5. However the vast majority wouldn't know how to repair it.
Expand this to cellphones, computers, tables, wardrobes, cars, tractors and I feel it would have an impact. And... I suppose... my gut feeling is the biggest part of the problem is psychological. People are overwhelmed and don't know what they can do to help. Raising awareness is crucial, but just raising awareness obviously does nothing to reduce CO2 emissions - it's in second order effects when people start thinking harder about what they can do.
Another anecdote: I gave a seminar recently about energy to a small local environmental conference in a nearby town. My starting point was that nobody knows how to talk about energy - we can talk about length, size, weight, cost, speed, age, price, longevity and so, because we know the units - feet or meters, pounds or kilograms, dollars/euros/yen/etc, mph/kph/mps/etc and so on. But ask someone what is a "Joule" or what can you do with a "kilowatt-hour" and you get blank stares. The outcome? I learned of an attendee who drew lines on his kettle for 1-cup, 2-cups, and so on, and now boils only the necessary amount of water. That won't really move the needle on CO2, but it will raise awareness.