"the public will never change consumption patterns to be more environmentally friendly" Gas / oil / coal / food are not free. In fact the poorer you are, the

"the public will never change consumption patterns to be more environmentally friendly" Gas / oil / coal / food are not free. In fact the poorer you are, the more expensive they are relative to total lifestyle. The financial markets are pretty messed up. The newspaper interest rate is 0.025% or whatever, but it doesn't matter. The real world interest rate for poor people is 29.99% credit cards and loansharks and rent-to-own scams. If that were fixed, so poor people could buy house insulation and solar panels at bank level interest rates instead of loan shark level interest rates or no operating financial markets at all... "So it seems systematic changes are necessary." We don't have the political organization at this time to do anything other than mess things up worse than they are currently. The same folks who can't provide a modern medical system, a sensible K12 or higher ed system, can't do foreign policy without killing millions of innocent civilians, can't run an economy to the benefit of more than 1% of the citizens, if, given more power over environmental issues, are just going to find a way to make the rich richer, the poor poorer, and kill a bunch of proles all while telling us its for "our" own good. One has to be pragmatic, screwing up is the only thing they've done for a couple generations. Given that historical record, its very hard to support .gov intervention beyond the "put a green ribbon imported from a Chinese factory on my car to raise awareness" level of action.