It would only take a very small fraction of the population to care and change everything. The small fraction that profits from the polluting industries and uses those profits to maintain the status quo.
Lets start with best country of the world that is made of 300 million consumers and 1000 factory owners (also known as polluters) each of which has identical share of the market.
To reduce pollution, factory owners would need to use less polluting means (i.e. less profit) and produce less (again less profit).
What happens if 999 factory owners do adhere to pollution-reduction, while 1 of them is polluting a bit more than others? (Answer: The polluter increases his share of the market, as more profits can be reinvested; and with more market share the profit will grow even more)
The point: consumers incentivize factory owners to polute, if consumers buy stuff despite polution.
This exercise ignores legislation, but law will not change until enough of consumers/voters start to care of the topic and will be ready to pay more for less and demand for it.
Why are owners of capital deemed to be innocent when subject to the invisible hand and not the consumer? Answer is probably due to media influence paid for by the profits I alluded to earlier
I would like to label guilt/innocence as irrelevant.
The scenario above, describes the dynamics of how incentives work.
As long as consumers expect stuff to be cheap, somebody will step up to provide that (reaping profits). Only highly conscious society or totally authoritarian one can make these changes (though probability of dictator caring about environmental effects is low, and probably not sustainable).
Edit: guilt/innocence are irrelevant in the sense that they do not change the outcome. If human gets into a tigers cage and gets eaten (or seriously injured), outcome was predictable without the need to know who is at fault (tiger or human).
Whatever policy you implement, end result must be that stuff costs more and people live with less: virtually no personal cars, no for-fun-flights (vacation), force people to wear same pants for years and repair them when they get damaged.
That is hard pill to swallow for many, even for somewhat environmentally-aware beings.
Assuming no free energy is invented.
Related: exponential growth (x % each year) is not sustainable (approx 2500 years to consume whole universe converted to energy on 5% yearly growth); effectivity increases only multiply exponential function by a constant.
> Whatever policy you implement, end result must be that stuff costs more and people live with less: virtually no personal cars, no for-fun-flights (vacation), force people to wear same pants for years and repair them when they get damaged.
> That is hard pill to swallow for many, even for somewhat environmentally-aware beings.
You’re not wrong but I think adding some context would be helpful here.
That appears to be the situation now but it didn’t necessarily have to be this way. If effort in earnest was started earlier to develop the technologies necessary for transitioning off hydrocarbons, develop renewable energy generation, and so on the transition may not necessarily be so severe. And the policy which enabled this delay did cost consumers any way due to the active funding of a pro hydrocarbon influence campaign. Though I would guess the total cost of that policy is still much lower than actually trying to transition.
I think transitioning is a much easier pill to swallow if you realize that the decision will be made one way or another eventually and that it’s better to be proactive rather than reactive when trying to solve such an existential issue. That is, if one believes the science and cares about the future beyond just one’s self. Unfortunately that influence campaign I was mentioning earlier did a good job of denying the issue, used bad science to deceive, delayed climate action, degraded efforts of those fighting against it, etc. However I do acknowledge the ability to care beyond just one’s self is, to a certain extent, a financial privilege.
Incentivizing having less children is also another long term approach to limit emissions as technology becomes more efficient. Though it seems this has already been accomplished unintentionally in many places.
I’ve gone on kind of a rant but my point is yes the necessary policy decisions are more severe today but it absolutely did not have to be this way. And that is important to keep in mind because that campaign is still actively at play today.
Right, our incentive system (money) is non-binding if you have enough money to spend on avoiding consequences.
We need something different (or perhaps something additional) which can motivate those people to pull their heads out of the sand and quit chasing profit for profit sake and change the status quo.
