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One issue with individual action, in the absence of a market incentive such as cap-and-trade or a carbon tax, is that reducing your use of power/fossil fuels re
by NumberWangMan 5y ago
One issue with individual action, in the absence of a market incentive such as cap-and-trade or a carbon tax, is that reducing your use of power/fossil fuels reduces demand, thus ever so slightly reducing prices, which will give others licence to use more. It doesn't 100% cancel out your efforts, but it does reduce the effect.
One issue with EVs is that they aren't necessarily a feasible option for a lot of households due to their cost. Putting a market incentive in place would lead to a hundred different ways of reducing our CO2 emissions from driving, not limited by the ingenuity of one person or organization. More people working from home, more carpooling, distributed co-working spaces, more use of public transportation, even shifting how we design and zone our towns and cities, are a few things I can think of.
I strongly recommend that anyone who wants to take a very direct, immediate, simple action to move the USA toward having a carbon fee and dividend policy* take a look at this (or at the very least, send it to your environmentally concerned friends and family): https://citizensclimatelobby.org/senate/ https://citizensclimatelobby.org/senate/
(*a tax on carbon, where, that get returned to all citizens so as to reduce or even eliminate impact on lower income families)