It'd be great if the conversation were about how we can solve these problems, but currently the conversation is about whether the scientific reality of climate change is actually a hoax invented by the Chinese. So long as these yahoos keep getting elected, we've got a long ways to go before we start talking about cutting beef out of our diet.

Then don't take about global warming. Talk about conserving water, talk about providing cheaper forms of energy for cars / home, talk about enhancing federal / state parks, etc.

It sounds good on first thought as a strategy for those anti g.w. folks to move on to your second step. But tons of those yahoos act like cheaper energy in bad for people. It's bad for people selling oil, but good for everyone else.

Can I still eat lots of poultry and pork? If so, I'd be down with less beef. I'm down to about one hamburger and one steak a week.

Yes. Cutting beef from your diet and replacing it with other meats cuts about 80% of the difference in carbon emissions between the typical American diet and a vegetarian diet.

(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

But to extend the metaphor, fixing your own code is kind of pointless if all the other code running on the box runs unchanged. Fixes need to be made to shared libraries to have any impact. This means promoting politicians who aren't taking advantage of the situation to earn kickbacks from corporations who feel they will be negatively affected by fixing the problem, and implementing things like carbon taxes so that every decision made in the economy bakes in the real costs of carbon.

Fortunately, this is not an either-or situation. :) I advocate all of the above, but it's important not to be in ignorance about where the real issue lies.

In reality, it is an either-or situation.

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.

Oddly enough, eating less beef did not impact my ability to agitate for environmentalism. So, no, not either or. Demonstrations of giving a shit by making personal sacrifices are powerful accompaniments to donations, voting, protests, etc.

We usually use farmed venison for burgers, I prefer it to beef. It's about $10/lb ground from the local butcher. More expensive than beef, but cheaper than eating out. That said, we only have burgers about once a month.

They (we, I should say, as a city slicker myself) have the right idea, provided we don't wipe out all our annual carbon savings in one go by flying to Thailand for holiday.

That would be really really hard to do, for sure. Honestly, I think these luxuries that we've come to rely on, we cannot seriously convince people to not use them. We've got to find a better option.

> provided we don't wipe out all our annual carbon savings in one go by flying to Thailand for holiday.

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.

If we as a world get serious about it and begin taxing carbon emissions from flights (and other sources), I'm confident that we'll be able to handle the problem. There is going to be some extreme global discomfort in 2100-2200, but we're not going to go extinct and things will be getting better by 2400-2500.

I'd only be comfortable with taxing carbon emissions from flights if all of the tax money was directly funneled into clean energy research and development. Otherwise, it's just going into the pockets of politicians and funding defense contractors.

No, it's still better for it to be taxed than not. I would be perfectly happy to see a revenue neutral carbon tax. What the tax is spent on is orthogonal.

No, what the tax is spent on is extremely important. For instance, if revenue from a carbon tax is funneled into subsidies for cattle ranchers, it's kind of counter-intuitive isn't it?

Money is fungible. Generally speaking, new taxes are not causally linked to spending on any particular issue.

Obviously, subsidies to cattle ranchers are bad. But whether they are funded from increased debt or a carbon tax does not affect their badness.

The other alternative is to use the tax income to offset other taxes, or even return it directly to citizens as a dividend.

Then what's the point of the tax? I can see how airlines may funnel some effort into R&D to reduce carbon emissions, but only to the point where it becomes profitable to them. Returning the tax as a dividend to the consumer is just as pointless as the consumer is in no way obligated to be climate conscious with their capital.

The point is to discourage carbon-profligate behavior by making that behavior more expensive. If you increased cigarette taxes and used it to lower other sales taxes that would still reduce cigarette use[1]. Maybe you'd get even faster reductions in smoking if the cigarette taxes were all earmarked for R&D on ways to end addiction, but making something more expensive tends to reduce consumption of it regardless of how the tax is later spent.

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.

That is indeed the point of the tax. For businesses all up and down the supply chain to figure out how to do what they do, but with less carbon production.

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.

You'll have to pry the beef from my cold, dead fingers.

Hey, I'll take a synthetic meat burger. Just get some fat on it and I'm good.