So, you think the U.S. would be much poorer today if it had implemented tighter vehicle emission standards, as Europe did, in the 70s? Do you think human develo

So, you think the U.S. would be much poorer today if it had implemented tighter vehicle emission standards, as Europe did, in the 70s? Do you think human development requires Lincoln Navigator-sized cars with zippy acceleration? Would progress and wealth creation have been significantly impeded if it were more expensive for people to build massive homes in the desert? We get to make lots of choices. We get to decide how we spend our free time and what our preferences are. Much of GHG emissions are the product of relatively arbitrary (and often externality-exploiting) human druthers. It would be nice to see this fully quantified, but I suspect we would see a massive reduction in GHG emissions if we all just chose to value reading, soccer, hiking, and vegetarian food over Jetski-ing, NASCAR, motorbike touring, and meat at every meal; if 90% of the people driving < 17 MPG cars went to driving ones that did better than 28. CO2 emissions would go down a fair bit; how would human progress and wealth creation be hindered if our value system changed thusly?