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People need to be carbon literate about as little as they need to be nicotine literate when buying cigarettes. Just like with cigarettes, the only thing we need

People need to be carbon literate about as little as they need to be nicotine literate when buying cigarettes. Just like with cigarettes, the only thing we need as a society is to finally freaking price in the negative externalities of releasing carbon into consumer prices, aka carbon tax — just like we managed to do that with cigarettes. If you still want to eat that $40 steak and can pay up for it, go for it. There's no need to curtail individual freedom when there's a simple and easy solution out there: Just make everyone pay for not just their consumption, but also for the damage it is causing on top. Problem solved.

grog454 4y ago
> Just make everyone pay for not just their consumption, but also for the damage it is causing on top. Problem solved. More like problem stated. Determining true ecological impact is not trivial even if you ignore all the perverse incentives.
Aromasin 4y ago
Thing is, we wouldn't even need a tax to do that; we'd simply need to cut the exorbitant subsidies that go to meat and dairy production, and put them into foods with a better nutritional value/carbon impact ratio. A litre of dairy milk should simply never be as cheap as a litre of soy milk. The market value does not represent the "true" price to the consumer because of heavy government intervention. The figure in this study sums it up pretty well, discussing what percentage of money and how much goes into each agricultural sector: https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/blog/meat-and-dairy-gobble-up-farming-subsidies/ https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/blog/meat-and-dairy-gobble... To be frank, every country's subsidy ratio should look like India's in my eyes.
globular-toast 4y ago
Cigarettes are a good example of a cultural paradigm shift that happened quite quickly (at least in the UK, US and Australia). Perhaps younger people don't realise that just a few decades ago cigarettes and cigarette advertising was everywhere. But it wasn't taxes that squashed cigarettes usage. Cigarettes were already taxed heavily, but that didn't put people off. What squashed it was marginalising it. It was banned from indoor places and many public spaces. They were no longer allowed to advertise, even to the extent that they can't display fancy logos and colours on the boxes. It was essentially stripped of all glamorous elements and was laid bare as the unhealthy, disgusting and archaic habit that it is. Advertising and marketing are extremely powerful and therefore can be extremely evil. Cigarettes were the most perfectly marketable product of the tobacco industry. The way they looked and felt was so perfectly appealing. It's easy to look back and see the marketing as evil now. What's not so easy is looking forward. I want to see the same treatment applied to other harmful things. Why are fast food companies allowed to advertise everywhere? Obesity is essentially food addiction. Nobody wants to be obese. They are obese because they are addicted to food. But we still allow fast food advertising everywhere. It's nothing short of exploitative. Car companies are allowed to market their vehicles as an extension of one's self. So they can produce ridiculously overweight and overpowered vehicles by appealing to the insecure male part of the population with names like "Ram", "Viper" and "Raptor". Large vehicles need to be strictly utilitarian. Need a large vehicle? Fine, but it's going to look like a white box and be called something like "Cargo Master" or maybe just "Van size 2". Also they should be banned from car parks and smaller roads that are designed for cars or smaller vehicles.

grog454 4y ago

> Just make everyone pay for not just their consumption, but also for the damage it is causing on top. Problem solved. More like problem stated. Determining true ecological impact is not trivial even if you ignore all the perverse incentives.

Aromasin 4y ago

Thing is, we wouldn't even need a tax to do that; we'd simply need to cut the exorbitant subsidies that go to meat and dairy production, and put them into foods with a better nutritional value/carbon impact ratio. A litre of dairy milk should simply never be as cheap as a litre of soy milk. The market value does not represent the "true" price to the consumer because of heavy government intervention. The figure in this study sums it up pretty well, discussing what percentage of money and how much goes into each agricultural sector: https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/blog/meat-and-dairy-gobble-up-farming-subsidies/ https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/blog/meat-and-dairy-gobble... To be frank, every country's subsidy ratio should look like India's in my eyes.

globular-toast 4y ago

Cigarettes are a good example of a cultural paradigm shift that happened quite quickly (at least in the UK, US and Australia). Perhaps younger people don't realise that just a few decades ago cigarettes and cigarette advertising was everywhere. But it wasn't taxes that squashed cigarettes usage. Cigarettes were already taxed heavily, but that didn't put people off. What squashed it was marginalising it. It was banned from indoor places and many public spaces. They were no longer allowed to advertise, even to the extent that they can't display fancy logos and colours on the boxes. It was essentially stripped of all glamorous elements and was laid bare as the unhealthy, disgusting and archaic habit that it is. Advertising and marketing are extremely powerful and therefore can be extremely evil. Cigarettes were the most perfectly marketable product of the tobacco industry. The way they looked and felt was so perfectly appealing. It's easy to look back and see the marketing as evil now. What's not so easy is looking forward. I want to see the same treatment applied to other harmful things. Why are fast food companies allowed to advertise everywhere? Obesity is essentially food addiction. Nobody wants to be obese. They are obese because they are addicted to food. But we still allow fast food advertising everywhere. It's nothing short of exploitative. Car companies are allowed to market their vehicles as an extension of one's self. So they can produce ridiculously overweight and overpowered vehicles by appealing to the insecure male part of the population with names like "Ram", "Viper" and "Raptor". Large vehicles need to be strictly utilitarian. Need a large vehicle? Fine, but it's going to look like a white box and be called something like "Cargo Master" or maybe just "Van size 2". Also they should be banned from car parks and smaller roads that are designed for cars or smaller vehicles.