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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 su

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.
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    > They wouldn't lie to you and claim to be non-emitting I don't understand: Everyone is always lying? You have no power to identify the truth and act on it?
    - dibujante 5y ago
      How would you verify a company's emissions? With your monitoring satellite? Otherwise, it's their word against your inability to verify anything.
- jrgoff 5y ago
  It is not feasible for consumers to be informed at that level about all of the goods they consume and for most of us there I doubt there is a practical way to be informed about these sorts of things for most products even if we were to try. Furthermore, even if we were informed for a particular product there may be no better behaved alternatives in the marketplace for something we consider to be a necessity.
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    > It is not feasible for consumers to be informed at that level about all of the goods they consume Nobody said "all", we don't have to live in a world of perfection and extremes. We can buy electric cars, use renewable energy. > even if we were informed for a particular product there may be no better behaved alternatives in the marketplace for something we consider to be a necessity. Things might not turn out well if you try something, so don't try? How do someone get out of bed in the morning on that basis? Your point is that you are absolutely powerless to do anything? It's obviously false, but why is that important to you?
- keymone 5y ago
  Yes, that is exactly what the “personal carbon footprint” propaganda wants you to believe. Majority of the planet is close to living in poverty, majority don’t have the luxury to go for the more expensive option because of their love of the environment.
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    > Majority of the planet is close to living in poverty Who said anything about the majority? And that's certainly not the demographic of HN, or the people creating most of the carbon footprint. Also, by advanced economy standards, most of the world is deep in poverty. > majority don’t have the luxury to go for the more expensive option because of their love of the environment. It's not luxury and love, but necessity, responsibility, and survival. The impovrished people will suffer the most. Also, the options aren't necessarily more expensive, and are generally much cheaper if you account for the costs of climate change.
    - keymone 5y ago
      > if you account for the costs of climate change. either you were led to believe it's only personal responsibility of direct consumers to account for the costs of climate change, or you were paid to propagandize that claim. if first - you're wrong, if second - i'll leave it unsaid.
Symmetry 5y ago
No, but the cost is still predictable. If you want a concrete patio then the process of making the cement for it will have produced a ton or so of CO2 given current technology even though you never touched the fossil fuels involved. If you want to fly to Europe and back that's two tons produced even though you never bought the jet fuel. The per capita carbon emission of the US is about 14 tons or so. Of those, 4 are things the government or other entities are doing on your behalf that you don't have any control over but 10 are going towards your own consumption of things like patios and plane flights and beef. You can't realistically get that down to 0 but you can certainly cut back a whole want if you want to. Or you can pass laws that prevent corporations from producing carbon and offering you the things you want to consume, given the collective action that way makes a lot of sense. Now, for some things like methane leaks there are obvious ways to reduce the carbon cost of our consumption out of proportion to the reduction in our consumption. But for others, like plane flights, we don't have any means yet of doing that. In the end if we want large reductions in our carbon footprints without large technological innovations it's going to have to mostly result in us consuming less.

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.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  > They wouldn't lie to you and claim to be non-emitting I don't understand: Everyone is always lying? You have no power to identify the truth and act on it?
  - dibujante 5y ago
    How would you verify a company's emissions? With your monitoring satellite? Otherwise, it's their word against your inability to verify anything.
jrgoff 5y ago
It is not feasible for consumers to be informed at that level about all of the goods they consume and for most of us there I doubt there is a practical way to be informed about these sorts of things for most products even if we were to try. Furthermore, even if we were informed for a particular product there may be no better behaved alternatives in the marketplace for something we consider to be a necessity.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  > It is not feasible for consumers to be informed at that level about all of the goods they consume Nobody said "all", we don't have to live in a world of perfection and extremes. We can buy electric cars, use renewable energy. > even if we were informed for a particular product there may be no better behaved alternatives in the marketplace for something we consider to be a necessity. Things might not turn out well if you try something, so don't try? How do someone get out of bed in the morning on that basis? Your point is that you are absolutely powerless to do anything? It's obviously false, but why is that important to you?
keymone 5y ago
Yes, that is exactly what the “personal carbon footprint” propaganda wants you to believe. Majority of the planet is close to living in poverty, majority don’t have the luxury to go for the more expensive option because of their love of the environment.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  > Majority of the planet is close to living in poverty Who said anything about the majority? And that's certainly not the demographic of HN, or the people creating most of the carbon footprint. Also, by advanced economy standards, most of the world is deep in poverty. > majority don’t have the luxury to go for the more expensive option because of their love of the environment. It's not luxury and love, but necessity, responsibility, and survival. The impovrished people will suffer the most. Also, the options aren't necessarily more expensive, and are generally much cheaper if you account for the costs of climate change.
  - keymone 5y ago
    > if you account for the costs of climate change. either you were led to believe it's only personal responsibility of direct consumers to account for the costs of climate change, or you were paid to propagandize that claim. if first - you're wrong, if second - i'll leave it unsaid.

Symmetry 5y ago

No, but the cost is still predictable. If you want a concrete patio then the process of making the cement for it will have produced a ton or so of CO2 given current technology even though you never touched the fossil fuels involved. If you want to fly to Europe and back that's two tons produced even though you never bought the jet fuel. The per capita carbon emission of the US is about 14 tons or so. Of those, 4 are things the government or other entities are doing on your behalf that you don't have any control over but 10 are going towards your own consumption of things like patios and plane flights and beef. You can't realistically get that down to 0 but you can certainly cut back a whole want if you want to. Or you can pass laws that prevent corporations from producing carbon and offering you the things you want to consume, given the collective action that way makes a lot of sense. Now, for some things like methane leaks there are obvious ways to reduce the carbon cost of our consumption out of proportion to the reduction in our consumption. But for others, like plane flights, we don't have any means yet of doing that. In the end if we want large reductions in our carbon footprints without large technological innovations it's going to have to mostly result in us consuming less.