Unfortunately that's not practical for most people. Also, we overinvest in our highways and cars because there seems to be almost no collective will to build a national transportation network beyond that.
And I don't want to completely rag on one side of the political spectrum because if we could build a whole bunch more nuclear reactors we could solve a lot of this very quickly in the short-term.
Finally we could all eat a whole lot less beef. But I don't see any of this happening even if the current crop of leaders is kicked out the next round of elections.
There are solutions to a lot of the problems we face here in America but many of them are going to annoy both sides of the political fence differently therefore they're not going to happen. I'd love to see that change but I'm not holding my breath.
(Although the total difference in carbon emissions from diet are subsumed by the emissions of one cross-country plane flight [1] [2], so if you're concerned about optimizing the inner loop, that's what you, as a typical reader of this site, probably need to look at.)
[1]: http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/food-carbon-footprint-diet
[2]: http://calculator.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx?tab=3
A small number of concerned and informed individuals trying to reduce their own carbon footprint is pointless. There's no way it pencils out to anything even vaguely worthwhile, even if they went to extremes. Even if they committed suicide and left their entire inheritance to carbon reductions it simply doesn't add up.
On the other hand, a carbon tax that introduces virtually imperceptible changes across the entire economy of the world, would actually fix the problem.
So yes we can do both, but one makes effectively no difference, even if it feels like a big deal to the person doing it.
I fear this is the thing that'll prevent any real progress toward managing climate change. While everyone will accept using canvas bags instead of plastic, they also want to keep the luxuries they've become accustomed to.
Obviously, subsidies to cattle ranchers are bad. But whether they are funded from increased debt or a carbon tax does not affect their badness.
If you're wondering "why not use targeted legislative mandates instead of carbon taxes?", I'd say that taxes have an advantage in that they're harder to game and need fewer adjustments over time. For example, if you introduce a mandate to make cars more fuel efficient, manufacturers will tweak the vehicles they sell so they are no longer "cars" but some legislatively distinct class of vehicle, and people who like gas guzzlers will just drive those tweaked vehicles. But if instead there's just a carbon tax on fuel it's a lot harder to game your way around the legislative intent.
[1] Assuming that the balance between just paying the tax and evading the tax still favors paying it. You don't want to impose a $20/pack tax and find that you've just given organized crime a major boost.
There's a whole lot of businesses where that's relatively easy, but since carbon is effectively free, they'll happily squander it for no real gain.
Rising sea level is the _result_ of Mr.Trump swearing in 3 months back?, I understand this forum is echo chamber for anti trump discussions, but you are reaching so far here.
Most peoples behavior is mainly due to capitalism, all of them, multiple generations, were raised watching ads which gets them to buy new "stuff" all the time, so "stuff" gets made/sold to keep the cycle going.
Internet and TV ads are storefront's of this "stuff". Instead of using your personal dislike of few people and spreading the message to blame them for climate change, you could get politics/personal feelings out of it, and tell people not to buy so much "stuff".
[0]https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170314081553.h...
Key finding: In comparing abstinence-only programs with comprehensive sex education, comprehensive sex education was associated with a 50% lower risk of teen pregnancy.
And it's a finger in Putin's eye too!
It is not as if we just lose a bit of beach, if sea levels rise then everything at the new level that can be sought by water through rivers or otherwise will be under water. Not Atlantis style, but no longer habitable by cities as we currently build them.
What's more, the coastline going missing is but one symptom. Weather patterns are set to get more erratic and extreme which will cause significant damage and loss of life continuously for the forseeable future.
As we are being reactive rather than proactive in this matter, it will likely take significant disasters before anyone begins to make the changes even once weather begins to worsen and cities begin to sink.
The argument about eratic weather is not very good. I have heard multible storm experts say that they can really not model the overall changes. There might be more and bigger storms in one area but less in another. I really think that if anybody is pretending he can predict storm frequence in 50 years is just confirming their bias.
It really doesn't, when you have 7 billion people working hard to make the climate change as quickly as they can, and unfortunately we've already spent half a century knowing about the problem and doing nothing. The whole point is that we've changed major climatic change from a geological time frame to a human-scale time frame.
You'll see major upheaval as a result of climate change in your lifetime, and your children will see much worse.
The storm predictions, incidentally, are quite safe - no chance of them being wrong. Higher sea surface temperatures will absolutely lead to more frequent and violent storms; there's no chance at all of that not happening.
One to two generations is a long time.
I have listen to interviews with storm experts and it seems that they are not quite so sure about is then you. That said, it seems that compared to the world economy and what some people suggest, the damage from storms seems quite low.
Are there any more concrete numbers about how much destruction is expected from global warming? It's not infinite and it must be less than some amount of money.