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I suspect the point is that consumers have very little control over how corporations consume energy. In the case of the production of cars, consumers can only d
by II2II 5y ago
I suspect the point is that consumers have very little control over how corporations consume energy. In the case of the production of cars, consumers can only decide to buy a car or to not buy a car. They do not have the power to modify the design or manufacturing process. (It is also worth noting that this is true regardless of the mode of transportation the consumer chooses.) A similar thing can be said for the web. A consumer can choose to use Facebook or not to use Facebook. They do not have the power to modify Facebook's operations to reduce its environmental impact.
It's also worth noting that consumers rarely have the data necessary to compare the environmental impact of products or services being offered. For example: are ebooks or print books more environmentally friendly? It's easy to pretend the former since it looks cleaner. No trees are being chopped down to make pulp. No diesel belching trucks to deliver physical goods. On the other hand, there was a time when the semiconductor industry was seen as clean since it lacked the belching smokestacks of traditional industries. (The mining of rare materials was unseen. The dumping of hazardous chemicals was unseen. Ewaste wasn't even acknowledge until the mid to late 90's.)
- klipt 5y ago> It's also worth noting that consumers rarely have the data necessary to compare the environmental impact of products or services being offered. Exactly, and this is the kind of problem that's solved by taxing externalities appropriately. Then the impact shows up in the price, and the common consumer behavior of preferring cheaper products naturally leads to preferring lower environmental impact products.
- KingOfCoders 5y agoEvery consumer can choose a green energy provider. A minority does. Every consumer can buy a smaller car that uses half the the steel and consumes half the gas. A minority does. Every consumer can eat less meat. A minority does. Consumerism trumps everything. Consumerism is ten thousands years old when people started to produce for other - and the strongest force to predict people behaviour. Consumerism killed East Germany and it brought down the Soviet Union and it will consume capitalism.
- Someone 5y ago> In the case of the production of cars, consumers can only decide to buy a car or to not buy a car. They do not have the power to modify the design or manufacturing process. Not overnight, but in a free market, people buying SUVs over smaller cars makes producers make more and larger SUVs. That trend can be reversed if consumers start buying fewer SUVs and more smaller cars. I think that would work in reality too, even though the real market isn’t a perfectly free one.