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You’re not wrong, but hoping people will choose anything other than the default thing is going to result in failure. If you lay out cities for cars, people will
by qgin 5y ago
You’re not wrong, but hoping people will choose anything other than the default thing is going to result in failure. If you lay out cities for cars, people will use cars. If you build massive urban areas in places that stay in the 90s with high humidity, people are going to blast the AC. If disposable things are cheaper than longer lasting things because there’s no cost to throwing it away, people are going to do it.
People just follow the path of least resistance in a given environment and only an extreme minority are ever going to be persuadable to consciously go against that at all. If we want different behavior, we’d need to bulldoze most of America and start over.
- wbsss4412 5y agoI think that was the point they were making. Techno-optimism is saying “don’t worry, we don’t need to change anything, technology will save us!”
- spongechameleon 5y agoAgree. The climate-friendly path must become the path of least resistance if we want to have any hope of staying within the 1.5C threshold. Three step process to get there: 1. Identify the optimal "climate path" for every need- transportation, consumer goods, etc... 2. Disincentivize all other paths via penalties (taxes & regulations) 3. Incentivize the climate path via subsidies It will take large scale government action first. Technological solutions will come as a result of the new financial rules of the game.