The important question is this: Which kinds of changes are hard, which are easy? The status quo is a powerful and crushing force, fighting it is hard. My suspi

The important question is this: Which kinds of changes are hard, which are easy? The status quo is a powerful and crushing force, fighting it is hard. My suspicion is that tweaks on efficiency won’t cut it. They are important, no doubt, but to get anywhere with tweaks on efficiency many changes in many different areas are necessary, there is no centralized solution of getting every American a passive house. The big flaw of climate change is that it creates no incentives for individuals and businesses to change their behavior. Climate change is a nice example for the tragedy of the commons. My suspicion that tweaks which require many changes in many different areas won’t cut it is somewhat founded on that. Incentives work wonders if you want all people to do something differently, like renovating their house to add better insulation. Governments could try to create incentives but have generally been unwilling to. It’s also very hard to get incentives right and it is very hard to get them implemented without being overrun by lobbyists. I don’t know why but I somehow arrived at the conclusion that a big infrastructure push by governments with a rather singular focus would have a bigger chance at success.