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“Personal footprint” is propaganda by oil/gas/coal industries, it’s absolutely idiotic. There should be a worldwide tax on producing greenhouse gas. Extreme eco

“Personal footprint” is propaganda by oil/gas/coal industries, it’s absolutely idiotic. There should be a worldwide tax on producing greenhouse gas. Extreme economic, business, travel, etc, isolation on every country/corporation that doesn’t subscribe to it. Bankrupt them into the ground.

duped 5y ago
I mean at the end of the day attempting to shift blame to "the corporations" for emissions is neglecting the fact that the corporations are emitting in order to (ultimately) supply consumers.
- Spooky23 5y ago
  So if my municipal water company, through its incompetent failure to maintain infrastructure, damages a road due to a water main break, that’s my fault because I need to drink? It’s pathetic that the thought process of corporate PR flacks has sunk into the brains of normal people.
  - bumby 5y ago
    Not your fault, but in part your responsibility to fix it which would likely be incurred by higher rates in the future to pay for maintenance. Those maintenance costs can be an externality for end-users as well. Fines and costs will trickle down to consumers (that's not to say they are unwarranted).
    - Spooky23 5y ago
      Typically it’s cheaper to maintain vs wait for stuff to fail. My wife used to be a finance director for a water utility. Part of that gig was having a capital program that proactively maintained infrastructure. When they started that program ~20 years ago, they were criticized for a resulting higher rate structure. (5-7%) more than a similar city in the region. But now… that difference flipped and then some. A key failure of critical valves in the neighboring city cost nearly $10M, while the planned replacement was like 80% less.
      - bumby 5y ago
        I have experience as a reliability engineer in infrastructure. I would say it's very context dependent, but for the most part it's cheaper to maintain up to a point. A lot of the contextual distinction comes with the criticality of the component. Critical components, by the definition of being critical, have a high downside of failure (whether that's cost of operational). I will say that there are some occasions where it may be cheaper (both in financial cost and availability) to run something to failure. The real problem IMO is that cognitive biases can prevent people from making those objective decisions. When dealing with things like probability of failure where there's uncertainty, it's easy to be swayed by a competing priority that feels like it has more immediacy and less uncertainty.
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    > the thought process of corporate PR flacks has sunk into the brains of normal people I think it's the opposite: Saying that poeple are powerless, and entirely dependant on corporations, is the thought process and message of the corporations. We are just helpless subjects of the aristocracy. > It’s pathetic It's sad that people add these words, which rationally only indicate a lack of argument, and practically tell us nothing and inflame discussion on the Internet - where it hardly needs to be inflamed.
- simion314 5y ago
  >I mean at the end of the day attempting to shift blame to "the corporations" for emissions is neglecting the fact that the corporations are emitting in order to (ultimately) supply consumers. They want to make big money, the fact they give you products it is not the goal. Is it still legal to just burn the gas at the oil pumps?I remember videos of burning flames on top of this oil pumps and I don't think we the consumers asked for that, it is just that a billionaire oil dude won't invest into fixing the issue when he can open more oil/gas drilling sites and make more billions.
  - duped 5y ago
    Right, but the point is that it's only more profitable to open more oil and gas extraction facilities without repairing the broken one because there's demand for oil and gas in the first place. As an example, about 20% of the emissions in the US stem from residential energy usage (0). Blaming energy companies for these emissions is ignorant of the fact that it's supplying the demand of the American citizens who are using that energy in the first place - and while shifting that blame off to some faceless corporation or billionaire villain might result in some good policy decisions to reduce emissions (for example, making gas and oil so expensive to extract or use for energy production that residential energy providers switch to renewables) but it goes too far from absolving consumers from the fact their demand creates the market that generates emissions in the first place - which leads to bad policy decisions like leaving homes to use natural gas for heating and cooking. All I'm saying is that when it comes to emissions and climate change we need to look at it holistically, rather than come up with these mythical comic book villains. (0) https://www.pnas.org/content/117/32/19122 https://www.pnas.org/content/117/32/19122
    - simion314 5y ago
      >All I'm saying is that when it comes to emissions and climate change we need to look at it holistically, rather than come up with these mythical comic book villains. I agree that someone that keeps the lights or TV on while he is not using them is also at fault but it is not possible to catch the person that is doing this , where it is easy to make illegal the behavior that is easy to control for. Maybe the gas will cost a bit more but this might encourage new technology to appear or green energy to take over. I am curious if this happens somewhere in US and if there are results or is too socialist to ever happen? In my country(Romania) there is a tax for polution (for ex cars with old or big engines pay a bigger tax), this tax money goes into green programs, like persons can install solar panel or isolate their homes and the government will give you some money up to 90%. (I am expecting comments like the poor pay for the rich solar panels but IMO you could make the rules to add limits on who can benefit.
- nefitty 5y ago
  You nudge the drug addicts and prosecute the drug dealers. Also, re: veganism. Go vegan to reduce suffering.
- willturman 5y ago
  Massive negative externalities are exactly what the levers of policy and taxation should be pulled to address. If corporations pass the tax to consumers and the price of their product becomes undesirable using current mechanisms of production, who cares? That's an unsustainable business. If the product is a necessity, run it as a non-profit government utility or businesses can adapt with technology.
  - space_fountain 5y ago
    I don't think the person you're replying to is saying anything else, but consumers could, if they decided in mass, do literally everything the government can do around pricing in externalities. Pricing in externalities isn't just forcing companies to pay for the price of their externalities, it's also forcing consumers. And honestly consumers do need forced. We aren't solving this through personal responsibility. But it's also ridiculous to say something like just 100 companies responsible for 71% of global emissions when those companies are just fossil fuel extractors. I'm responsible for burning gas, not the company that just happened to pull it out of the ground.
    - moron4hire 5y ago
      How can you be responsible for the burning of the gas when there is no meaningful alternative? I don't ask to have my food shipped across country. I don't ask my electric company to burn oil. All I want is food. All I want is heat in my house. But the only places to get those things from are burning carbon fuels.
      - space_fountain 5y ago
        There are meaningful alternatives. You can choose to pay more and get an electric car and pay for net 0 electricity. For a bit more you could shop from a local farm. If enough people did that it would incentive those options to get better, but they are all choices I could make today edit: and in fact if we want to solve these issue the sort of actions we will need to take. There isn't anyone who could fix these problems easily without sacrifices and is choosing not to
- dahfizz 5y ago
  I want to consume good. In order to consume good, I must purchase good from company. I have no say in how good was produced. The goal is to align incentives such that companies can produce goods without destroying the planet. The goods themselves are not the issue.
  - wildzzz 5y ago
    You personally don't have a say but the market does. If it artificially costs more to produce a good, the market would ideally find a way to produce the same good in a manner that doesn't involve heavy carbon taxes. For carbon taxes, the company can either eat the cost and cut into profits or pass it onto the customer and hope their goods are inelastic enough to still make the same margins. If the demand was elastic, a company may decide to either not make that product any more or find a way to make it so that it costs less than the carbon taxed version. Unfortunately, researching new processes costs money and a company may just decide it's cheaper in the short term (which is only what Wall St thinks in) to just continue business as usual. The problem is that at the end of the carbon tax equation, what does the money go towards? Can we significantly offset carbon emissions with the tax income? Is it already too late? Without some significant rebalancing humanity's greed and feelings towards nature, I'm not even sure any of this would ever work.
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    > In order to consume good, I must purchase good from company. I have no say in how good was produced. You can buy from a different company, or a subsitute good, or not buy it. We aren't powerless at all. Companies live and die by consumer purchasing decisions. > The goal is to align incentives such that companies can produce goods without destroying the planet. The goods themselves are not the issue. It depends on the goods. Some can't be produced without destroying the planet.
    - dibujante 5y ago
      Yep! Just buy from a non-emitting company. They wouldn't lie to you and claim to be non-emitting, because that would be mean.
- Xelbair 5y ago
  But to solve that we could for example regulate companies instead of creating sham feelgood campaigns about reducing 'personal footprint'.
- bcrosby95 5y ago
  It is BP that shifted the blame to consumers back in the 00s. And they spent hundreds of millions on this marketing campaign - more than they did on fixing their own house. The idea of a personal carbon footprint didn't exist before this.
- keymone 5y ago
  First of all, “attempting to shift blame” is exactly the kind of propaganda I’m talking about, so kudos. Second, virtually nothing consumers require is inherently ghg-emitting, it’s just the cheapest way to satisfy the need, which is why trying to satisfy in a less ghg-intensive way is economically unviable until you start punishing ghg-intensive processes. There is zero blame on consumers as I see it - they want something inherently ghg-intensive, they’ll have to pay higher price. Incentives work on all levels but you need to start with the source - producers. They must pay for externalities.
  - gruez 5y ago
    >Second, virtually nothing consumers require is inherently ghg-emitting, it’s just the cheapest way to satisfy the need, which is why trying to satisfy in a less ghg-intensive way is economically unviable until you start punishing ghg-intensive processes. You could say the same for corporations. There's nothing about an incorporated legal entity that requires the emission of greenhouse gasses. >There is zero blame on consumers as I see it - they want something inherently ghg-intensive, they’ll have to pay higher price. There is zero blame on corporations as I see it - if consumers don't want something inherently ghg-intensive, they’ll have to pay higher price.
    - keymone 5y ago
      > There's nothing about an incorporated legal entity that requires the emission of greenhouse gasses. Except profit maximization, you mean? > if consumers don't want something inherently ghg-intensive, they’ll have to pay higher price. And they will, that’s the point. Doesn’t shift an ounce of blame off of corporations to customers - they will proceed to destroy the environment because short term profits are more important than long term survival.
      - gruez 5y ago
        >Except profit maximization, you mean? that just goes back to your previous comment. There's nothing about consumers that require them to emit greenhouse gasses, but they do so because it's the cheapest. >they will proceed to destroy the environment because short term profits are more important than long term survival. they won't emit greenhouse gasses if there's a market for non greenhouse gas emitting products. See for instance, all the GMO-free/organic/vegan/free-range/fair trade products at your local supermarket. I'm not sure about all the labels, but I know for a fact that organic products have better margins than conventional ones.
- Johnny555 5y ago
  No consumer asks for methane to be vented to the atmosphere. Consumers have certain needs/desires (cooking, electricity, etc), but they don't have a need/desire for greenhouse gas emissions. It may be most cost effective to allow gas leaks while delivering the gas, but that shouldn't be equated to demand leading to gas leaks.
  - hokkos 5y ago
    but even cooking with fossil methane release a lot of fossil methane at the consumer home : https://news.stanford.edu/2022/01/27/rethinking-cooking-gas/ https://news.stanford.edu/2022/01/27/rethinking-cooking-gas/
    - Johnny555 5y ago
      But again, no one is asking for a stove that leaks methane. They may be asking for gas cooking (though inductive cooktops are a reasonable alternative), but no consumer said "Give me a stove that leaks natural gas into my house every time I use it (and even when I don't)".
- theptip 5y ago
  I think "blame" for emissions is the wrong lens here to get to a solution. I do think there is a bit of asymmetry here and there is some blame to dish out, in that there are corporations (e.g. Big Oil) that are spending large sums lobbying to try to distract the public from implementing effective solutions that would eat into their profits. There isn't really a propaganda machine that's as focused on misdirection in defense of special interests in the other direction. (I suppose the Fox News retort would be that the IPCC are being alarmist to inflate their grant budgets? But I think we're many orders of magnitude off in terms of $-weighted harms here vs. emissions from the oil & gas industry.) I wouldn't say we should blame the corporations for their emissions, just for their shady astroturfing, self-interested lobbying, and other activities that misdirect the public dialog on the harms of their emissions. At the end of the day, the high-level solution is simple (not easy): rather than thinking about emissions as something that is the "fault" of companies or individuals, if we tax the externality that we care about (CO2 emissions) at a consistent price, then the market will work out the rest. The CO2 tax will get baked in to the price of every good, and people will naturally shift their consumption away from goods that are unreasonably CO2-producing (as they will become unreasonably expensive). I'm not a free-market maximalist, but this is one of the cases where markets are the best solution to the problem. This isn't an easy solution to implement though, as it requires strong international coordination to prevent emissions from being offshored to countries that either don't sign up to the carbon tax, or that do sign up but enforce laxly. If the US was really on board with achieving this, they could probably team up with the EU and succeed.
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  This depends. Well, kinda. We banned plasic straws to "save the seas", while most of the palstics in the seas are from industrial and fishing equipment, that are not affedcted by the banned straws. Custumer wants a cooked burger, and sure, some emissions come from cooking burgers (and all the other processes, from the animals birth to a burger patty in the restaurants fridge), but I'm pretty sure none of the customers wanted gas leaks. Same with plastics... we banned straws, so it seems that "the government is doing something", while most of the plastics in the seas are either fishing/industrial equipment, or trash from a few rivers in asia. Just look at the amount of plastic packaging that is used and discarded from production to retail of many items, even paper "eco" straws (if nothing else, the amount of plasic foil used to package the straws on the pallet).
- tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
  The corporations are emitting to supply consumers because emitting is often a cheaper way to supply consumers. The solution isn't to not supply consumers, it is to supply them in a more sustainable way. In some cases this may not be possible, but in many cases it is. We shouldn't push to destroy our quality of life, we should push to make it sustainable. This can only happen through regulation, because as a consumer, you can't really choose to pay 10% more to get e.g. a laptop where the aluminium was smelted using renewable energy.
radicaldreamer 5y ago
It's exactly the same playbook the drink companies used to keep pumping out unlimited plastic bottles: it's on the consumer to recycle them.
Spooky23 5y ago
Exactly. Milk is treated like toxic waste because of cow farts, but incompetent oil companies spew waste or flare gas for operational reasons. Trivial issue to fix. I bet US companies get tax breaks for the lost product.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- radicaldreamer 5y ago
  Of course, they use it as an expense to offset taxes on profits probably, even though the "product" is unusable (who's checking anyway?)
soperj 5y ago
Only way that happens is if the USA leads it. Couldn't even get you guys onto the metric system, what do you think the chances are that you'll subscribe to this?
- wolverine876 5y ago
  The USA does quite a number of good things. Don't buy into the hopelessness; it's just a message of the reactionary movement (which they successfully have many others repeating), to shut down their competition.
throwaway22032 5y ago
It doesn't even make sense because it ignores the fact that we literally cannot reduce our personal footprints to a level that would prevent significant climate change. There is no sustainable level of emissions. In order for me to reach net zero I'd have to sell my house, car, give up all of the food that I eat (yes - all of it - my oat milk has a nonzero footprint that is not capturable), etc. The only actual solution is to institute a carbon tax so that we develop technological solutions to all of these problems. Basically, you can't choose to go net zero as an individual.
- bumby 5y ago
  Where are you getting the idea that personal footprints have to be reduced to zero or less? That assumption only holds if there are no carbon sinks. What you're really saying is you can't reduce your footprint and keep the same quality of life. The problem is, in part, when we define the quality of life by the amount of shit we consume. Some consumption is necessary or great, but probably not the amount seen in many industrialized nations.
  - space_fountain 5y ago
    I was going to reply something similar, but I think the core of the comment you're replying to is that this is a collective action problem. Making any changes on my own will be harder on me than if everyone made a change. Both because technology can solve a lot of this, and because I look and feel worse positionally if it's just me making a change.
    - throwaway22032 5y ago
      I don't think it's merely _hard_, I think it's fundamentally impossible for us to do it without technological advancement or at least greater application of existing technology. I don't think that 7 billion people can live net zero without us building loads more solar panels, nuclear plants, changing a bunch of industrial processes, etc. These are things that individuals literally cannot do. Even trivial things like - I can't buy a net zero fork to eat my dinner with. I mean, I'm sure one or two things I could, but at the scale of my entire life it would become a full time job. I guess I could start a co2 capture company, that is actually feasibly possible. But I don't think that's what people are getting at with the personal responsibility stuff. It's all - "which brand of tape are you using to fix the leak in your roof?"
nebula8804 5y ago
>There should be a worldwide tax on producing greenhouse gas. Extreme economic, business, travel, etc, isolation on every country/corporation that doesn’t subscribe to it. Bankrupt them into the ground. But this punishes poor countries trying to modernize. Shouldn't the US pay for the ~412 billion tons of co2 it has dumped into the atmosphere since its inception? Same goes for EU.

duped 5y ago

I mean at the end of the day attempting to shift blame to "the corporations" for emissions is neglecting the fact that the corporations are emitting in order to (ultimately) supply consumers.

Spooky23 5y ago
So if my municipal water company, through its incompetent failure to maintain infrastructure, damages a road due to a water main break, that’s my fault because I need to drink? It’s pathetic that the thought process of corporate PR flacks has sunk into the brains of normal people.
- bumby 5y ago
  Not your fault, but in part your responsibility to fix it which would likely be incurred by higher rates in the future to pay for maintenance. Those maintenance costs can be an externality for end-users as well. Fines and costs will trickle down to consumers (that's not to say they are unwarranted).
  - Spooky23 5y ago
    Typically it’s cheaper to maintain vs wait for stuff to fail. My wife used to be a finance director for a water utility. Part of that gig was having a capital program that proactively maintained infrastructure. When they started that program ~20 years ago, they were criticized for a resulting higher rate structure. (5-7%) more than a similar city in the region. But now… that difference flipped and then some. A key failure of critical valves in the neighboring city cost nearly $10M, while the planned replacement was like 80% less.
    - bumby 5y ago
      I have experience as a reliability engineer in infrastructure. I would say it's very context dependent, but for the most part it's cheaper to maintain up to a point. A lot of the contextual distinction comes with the criticality of the component. Critical components, by the definition of being critical, have a high downside of failure (whether that's cost of operational). I will say that there are some occasions where it may be cheaper (both in financial cost and availability) to run something to failure. The real problem IMO is that cognitive biases can prevent people from making those objective decisions. When dealing with things like probability of failure where there's uncertainty, it's easy to be swayed by a competing priority that feels like it has more immediacy and less uncertainty.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  > the thought process of corporate PR flacks has sunk into the brains of normal people I think it's the opposite: Saying that poeple are powerless, and entirely dependant on corporations, is the thought process and message of the corporations. We are just helpless subjects of the aristocracy. > It’s pathetic It's sad that people add these words, which rationally only indicate a lack of argument, and practically tell us nothing and inflame discussion on the Internet - where it hardly needs to be inflamed.
simion314 5y ago
>I mean at the end of the day attempting to shift blame to "the corporations" for emissions is neglecting the fact that the corporations are emitting in order to (ultimately) supply consumers. They want to make big money, the fact they give you products it is not the goal. Is it still legal to just burn the gas at the oil pumps?I remember videos of burning flames on top of this oil pumps and I don't think we the consumers asked for that, it is just that a billionaire oil dude won't invest into fixing the issue when he can open more oil/gas drilling sites and make more billions.
- duped 5y ago
  Right, but the point is that it's only more profitable to open more oil and gas extraction facilities without repairing the broken one because there's demand for oil and gas in the first place. As an example, about 20% of the emissions in the US stem from residential energy usage (0). Blaming energy companies for these emissions is ignorant of the fact that it's supplying the demand of the American citizens who are using that energy in the first place - and while shifting that blame off to some faceless corporation or billionaire villain might result in some good policy decisions to reduce emissions (for example, making gas and oil so expensive to extract or use for energy production that residential energy providers switch to renewables) but it goes too far from absolving consumers from the fact their demand creates the market that generates emissions in the first place - which leads to bad policy decisions like leaving homes to use natural gas for heating and cooking. All I'm saying is that when it comes to emissions and climate change we need to look at it holistically, rather than come up with these mythical comic book villains. (0) https://www.pnas.org/content/117/32/19122 https://www.pnas.org/content/117/32/19122
  - simion314 5y ago
    >All I'm saying is that when it comes to emissions and climate change we need to look at it holistically, rather than come up with these mythical comic book villains. I agree that someone that keeps the lights or TV on while he is not using them is also at fault but it is not possible to catch the person that is doing this , where it is easy to make illegal the behavior that is easy to control for. Maybe the gas will cost a bit more but this might encourage new technology to appear or green energy to take over. I am curious if this happens somewhere in US and if there are results or is too socialist to ever happen? In my country(Romania) there is a tax for polution (for ex cars with old or big engines pay a bigger tax), this tax money goes into green programs, like persons can install solar panel or isolate their homes and the government will give you some money up to 90%. (I am expecting comments like the poor pay for the rich solar panels but IMO you could make the rules to add limits on who can benefit.
nefitty 5y ago
You nudge the drug addicts and prosecute the drug dealers. Also, re: veganism. Go vegan to reduce suffering.
willturman 5y ago
Massive negative externalities are exactly what the levers of policy and taxation should be pulled to address. If corporations pass the tax to consumers and the price of their product becomes undesirable using current mechanisms of production, who cares? That's an unsustainable business. If the product is a necessity, run it as a non-profit government utility or businesses can adapt with technology.
- space_fountain 5y ago
  I don't think the person you're replying to is saying anything else, but consumers could, if they decided in mass, do literally everything the government can do around pricing in externalities. Pricing in externalities isn't just forcing companies to pay for the price of their externalities, it's also forcing consumers. And honestly consumers do need forced. We aren't solving this through personal responsibility. But it's also ridiculous to say something like just 100 companies responsible for 71% of global emissions when those companies are just fossil fuel extractors. I'm responsible for burning gas, not the company that just happened to pull it out of the ground.
  - moron4hire 5y ago
    How can you be responsible for the burning of the gas when there is no meaningful alternative? I don't ask to have my food shipped across country. I don't ask my electric company to burn oil. All I want is food. All I want is heat in my house. But the only places to get those things from are burning carbon fuels.
    - space_fountain 5y ago
      There are meaningful alternatives. You can choose to pay more and get an electric car and pay for net 0 electricity. For a bit more you could shop from a local farm. If enough people did that it would incentive those options to get better, but they are all choices I could make today edit: and in fact if we want to solve these issue the sort of actions we will need to take. There isn't anyone who could fix these problems easily without sacrifices and is choosing not to
dahfizz 5y ago
I want to consume good. In order to consume good, I must purchase good from company. I have no say in how good was produced. The goal is to align incentives such that companies can produce goods without destroying the planet. The goods themselves are not the issue.
- wildzzz 5y ago
  You personally don't have a say but the market does. If it artificially costs more to produce a good, the market would ideally find a way to produce the same good in a manner that doesn't involve heavy carbon taxes. For carbon taxes, the company can either eat the cost and cut into profits or pass it onto the customer and hope their goods are inelastic enough to still make the same margins. If the demand was elastic, a company may decide to either not make that product any more or find a way to make it so that it costs less than the carbon taxed version. Unfortunately, researching new processes costs money and a company may just decide it's cheaper in the short term (which is only what Wall St thinks in) to just continue business as usual. The problem is that at the end of the carbon tax equation, what does the money go towards? Can we significantly offset carbon emissions with the tax income? Is it already too late? Without some significant rebalancing humanity's greed and feelings towards nature, I'm not even sure any of this would ever work.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  > In order to consume good, I must purchase good from company. I have no say in how good was produced. You can buy from a different company, or a subsitute good, or not buy it. We aren't powerless at all. Companies live and die by consumer purchasing decisions. > The goal is to align incentives such that companies can produce goods without destroying the planet. The goods themselves are not the issue. It depends on the goods. Some can't be produced without destroying the planet.
  - dibujante 5y ago
    Yep! Just buy from a non-emitting company. They wouldn't lie to you and claim to be non-emitting, because that would be mean.
Xelbair 5y ago
But to solve that we could for example regulate companies instead of creating sham feelgood campaigns about reducing 'personal footprint'.
bcrosby95 5y ago
It is BP that shifted the blame to consumers back in the 00s. And they spent hundreds of millions on this marketing campaign - more than they did on fixing their own house. The idea of a personal carbon footprint didn't exist before this.
keymone 5y ago
First of all, “attempting to shift blame” is exactly the kind of propaganda I’m talking about, so kudos. Second, virtually nothing consumers require is inherently ghg-emitting, it’s just the cheapest way to satisfy the need, which is why trying to satisfy in a less ghg-intensive way is economically unviable until you start punishing ghg-intensive processes. There is zero blame on consumers as I see it - they want something inherently ghg-intensive, they’ll have to pay higher price. Incentives work on all levels but you need to start with the source - producers. They must pay for externalities.
- gruez 5y ago
  >Second, virtually nothing consumers require is inherently ghg-emitting, it’s just the cheapest way to satisfy the need, which is why trying to satisfy in a less ghg-intensive way is economically unviable until you start punishing ghg-intensive processes. You could say the same for corporations. There's nothing about an incorporated legal entity that requires the emission of greenhouse gasses. >There is zero blame on consumers as I see it - they want something inherently ghg-intensive, they’ll have to pay higher price. There is zero blame on corporations as I see it - if consumers don't want something inherently ghg-intensive, they’ll have to pay higher price.
  - keymone 5y ago
    > There's nothing about an incorporated legal entity that requires the emission of greenhouse gasses. Except profit maximization, you mean? > if consumers don't want something inherently ghg-intensive, they’ll have to pay higher price. And they will, that’s the point. Doesn’t shift an ounce of blame off of corporations to customers - they will proceed to destroy the environment because short term profits are more important than long term survival.
    - gruez 5y ago
      >Except profit maximization, you mean? that just goes back to your previous comment. There's nothing about consumers that require them to emit greenhouse gasses, but they do so because it's the cheapest. >they will proceed to destroy the environment because short term profits are more important than long term survival. they won't emit greenhouse gasses if there's a market for non greenhouse gas emitting products. See for instance, all the GMO-free/organic/vegan/free-range/fair trade products at your local supermarket. I'm not sure about all the labels, but I know for a fact that organic products have better margins than conventional ones.
Johnny555 5y ago
No consumer asks for methane to be vented to the atmosphere. Consumers have certain needs/desires (cooking, electricity, etc), but they don't have a need/desire for greenhouse gas emissions. It may be most cost effective to allow gas leaks while delivering the gas, but that shouldn't be equated to demand leading to gas leaks.
- hokkos 5y ago
  but even cooking with fossil methane release a lot of fossil methane at the consumer home : https://news.stanford.edu/2022/01/27/rethinking-cooking-gas/ https://news.stanford.edu/2022/01/27/rethinking-cooking-gas/
  - Johnny555 5y ago
    But again, no one is asking for a stove that leaks methane. They may be asking for gas cooking (though inductive cooktops are a reasonable alternative), but no consumer said "Give me a stove that leaks natural gas into my house every time I use it (and even when I don't)".
theptip 5y ago
I think "blame" for emissions is the wrong lens here to get to a solution. I do think there is a bit of asymmetry here and there is some blame to dish out, in that there are corporations (e.g. Big Oil) that are spending large sums lobbying to try to distract the public from implementing effective solutions that would eat into their profits. There isn't really a propaganda machine that's as focused on misdirection in defense of special interests in the other direction. (I suppose the Fox News retort would be that the IPCC are being alarmist to inflate their grant budgets? But I think we're many orders of magnitude off in terms of $-weighted harms here vs. emissions from the oil & gas industry.) I wouldn't say we should blame the corporations for their emissions, just for their shady astroturfing, self-interested lobbying, and other activities that misdirect the public dialog on the harms of their emissions. At the end of the day, the high-level solution is simple (not easy): rather than thinking about emissions as something that is the "fault" of companies or individuals, if we tax the externality that we care about (CO2 emissions) at a consistent price, then the market will work out the rest. The CO2 tax will get baked in to the price of every good, and people will naturally shift their consumption away from goods that are unreasonably CO2-producing (as they will become unreasonably expensive). I'm not a free-market maximalist, but this is one of the cases where markets are the best solution to the problem. This isn't an easy solution to implement though, as it requires strong international coordination to prevent emissions from being offshored to countries that either don't sign up to the carbon tax, or that do sign up but enforce laxly. If the US was really on board with achieving this, they could probably team up with the EU and succeed.
ajsnigrutin 5y ago
This depends. Well, kinda. We banned plasic straws to "save the seas", while most of the palstics in the seas are from industrial and fishing equipment, that are not affedcted by the banned straws. Custumer wants a cooked burger, and sure, some emissions come from cooking burgers (and all the other processes, from the animals birth to a burger patty in the restaurants fridge), but I'm pretty sure none of the customers wanted gas leaks. Same with plastics... we banned straws, so it seems that "the government is doing something", while most of the plastics in the seas are either fishing/industrial equipment, or trash from a few rivers in asia. Just look at the amount of plastic packaging that is used and discarded from production to retail of many items, even paper "eco" straws (if nothing else, the amount of plasic foil used to package the straws on the pallet).
tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
The corporations are emitting to supply consumers because emitting is often a cheaper way to supply consumers. The solution isn't to not supply consumers, it is to supply them in a more sustainable way. In some cases this may not be possible, but in many cases it is. We shouldn't push to destroy our quality of life, we should push to make it sustainable. This can only happen through regulation, because as a consumer, you can't really choose to pay 10% more to get e.g. a laptop where the aluminium was smelted using renewable energy.

radicaldreamer 5y ago

It's exactly the same playbook the drink companies used to keep pumping out unlimited plastic bottles: it's on the consumer to recycle them.

Spooky23 5y ago

Exactly. Milk is treated like toxic waste because of cow farts, but incompetent oil companies spew waste or flare gas for operational reasons. Trivial issue to fix. I bet US companies get tax breaks for the lost product.

deleted 5y ago
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radicaldreamer 5y ago
Of course, they use it as an expense to offset taxes on profits probably, even though the "product" is unusable (who's checking anyway?)

soperj 5y ago

Only way that happens is if the USA leads it. Couldn't even get you guys onto the metric system, what do you think the chances are that you'll subscribe to this?

wolverine876 5y ago
The USA does quite a number of good things. Don't buy into the hopelessness; it's just a message of the reactionary movement (which they successfully have many others repeating), to shut down their competition.

throwaway22032 5y ago

It doesn't even make sense because it ignores the fact that we literally cannot reduce our personal footprints to a level that would prevent significant climate change. There is no sustainable level of emissions. In order for me to reach net zero I'd have to sell my house, car, give up all of the food that I eat (yes - all of it - my oat milk has a nonzero footprint that is not capturable), etc. The only actual solution is to institute a carbon tax so that we develop technological solutions to all of these problems. Basically, you can't choose to go net zero as an individual.

bumby 5y ago
Where are you getting the idea that personal footprints have to be reduced to zero or less? That assumption only holds if there are no carbon sinks. What you're really saying is you can't reduce your footprint and keep the same quality of life. The problem is, in part, when we define the quality of life by the amount of shit we consume. Some consumption is necessary or great, but probably not the amount seen in many industrialized nations.
- space_fountain 5y ago
  I was going to reply something similar, but I think the core of the comment you're replying to is that this is a collective action problem. Making any changes on my own will be harder on me than if everyone made a change. Both because technology can solve a lot of this, and because I look and feel worse positionally if it's just me making a change.
  - throwaway22032 5y ago
    I don't think it's merely _hard_, I think it's fundamentally impossible for us to do it without technological advancement or at least greater application of existing technology. I don't think that 7 billion people can live net zero without us building loads more solar panels, nuclear plants, changing a bunch of industrial processes, etc. These are things that individuals literally cannot do. Even trivial things like - I can't buy a net zero fork to eat my dinner with. I mean, I'm sure one or two things I could, but at the scale of my entire life it would become a full time job. I guess I could start a co2 capture company, that is actually feasibly possible. But I don't think that's what people are getting at with the personal responsibility stuff. It's all - "which brand of tape are you using to fix the leak in your roof?"

nebula8804 5y ago

>There should be a worldwide tax on producing greenhouse gas. Extreme economic, business, travel, etc, isolation on every country/corporation that doesn’t subscribe to it. Bankrupt them into the ground. But this punishes poor countries trying to modernize. Shouldn't the US pay for the ~412 billion tons of co2 it has dumped into the atmosphere since its inception? Same goes for EU.