There's a constant war of words here: are individuals responsible for cleaning up their footprint, or are corporations responsible for their dirty practices, or are governments responsible for putting policies to guide the economy?

The answer is: we need all three. We will not tackle climate change without strong change on the personal, corporate, and governmental levels.

I agree with need all tree. However someone needs to go first and that is government. They need to level the playing field so no corporation can gain an advantage of abusing externalities and educate the population.

We have business leaders in the US claiming for more tax. At the same time we have 3rd world countries shipping trash back to the 1st world.

Governments could and should be doing more to price externalities and force innovation.

We do indeed, but the leverage lies with and so the emphasis should be on the governmental. I have changed my lifestyle markedly since I had my own personal revelation around climate. I don't use that to go on a holy crusade to convert, I don't even mention it unless a discussion goes there and asks. That's so I can live with myself, and look the kids, who will have to endure the consequences, in the eye. Companies engage in far more greenwashing, lobbying and distraction than real efforts, eco brands somewhat excepted.

I cannot change labelling law to require impacts (emissions, habitat, sustainable) clearly shown to allow me to buy with wisdom. I can only guess. I am certain, despite having above average interest, I often guess wrong. I can't bring a carbon tax, packaging levy, delist companies that don't play along, or creatively rewrite corporate law to place survival as important as profit, or change international trade law.

One new oil rig, chemical plant or drilling field can easily cancel the individual efforts of an entire city, perhaps country.

So I tend to see it as government first last and everything; corporate at gun ^W legislation point, and individual as a matter of personal ethics and social acceptance. Despite having started with me - as far as I'm reasonably able.

If you could only pick two out of those three, which would you choose?

Governments and Corporations will never do anything without strong demand from individuals. Individuals however are completely unable to solve climate change through daily personal decisions, it has to come from large institutions.

All in all, the only way to address the issue of climate change is collective mass action, including strikes, boycotts, divestments, ect from all large polluting entities, while simultaneously leaving governments no other options but to address these issues head on.

If governments put a price on carbon, individuals and corporations will do their parts as a result.

Yes, with the caveat that it must be a large enough tax to make it cheaper to use cleaner energy sources. Otherwise it will go the way of regulatory fines: they become the cost of doing business and amount to a fixed line item on a budget rather than a factor that scales.

Change happens at the margins. NASCAR for example is unlikely to care about even rather extreme carbon taxes, but even fairly small tiny taxes matter for electricity generation which is at a major tipping point.

individuals and government. Corporations don't exist in a vacuum.

Corporations dictate consumer behavior in the ways that matter here. Do you think individuals agitated for the rise of throw-away goods during the rise of mass produced plastics in the 60s? This was the simply the most companies could do in the production process to maximize profit in a way that wouldn't stop customers from buying.

Also, nothing will change until people stop imagining that corporations and government are foreign bodies comprised of something other than their neighbors and themselves.

It is weird how people pretend that corporations and governments are some type of weird entities with minds of their own instead of just a group of individuals. Individuals changing priorities will directly result in corporations and governments changing priorities.

But the inverse is also strongly true. It's why people decry the "nanny-state". The government and corporations can make decisions that result in changes in individual behavior. Many times, it's easier to get 51 senators (or whatever) to agree on pushing policy than mobilizing millions of consumers on the same issue. Part of the advantage of a representative government is that it's a smaller group of people to arrive at a consensus.

Societal changes are always about some group reaching a consensus on a topic and collectively acting on their decision. Governments and Corporations can sometimes be easier to deal with than 300+ million individuals when it comes to driving that consensus.

Individuals and corporations. Government doesn't exist in a vaccum.

government and corporations. Individuals don't exist in a vaccum.

It doesn't prove much.

Consumers drive the business decisions.

Set incentives to make the consumers choose the more environmentally conscious choice, via a carbon / plastic / waste tax to cover the externalities.

If consumer drove business decisions, we‘d still have no seat belts and the ozone layer would not exist anymore because of CFC.

In some ways, consumers can make a difference, but only to serve as a trigger for political decisions (if we get lucky).

Also in your example, what comes first – the consumer’s choice or the carbon tax?

The tax should come first. Price incentives are strong, they will drive consumer behavior which will drive business behavior.

Wheren't both those examples driven by government regulations?

Yes, for example in 49 U.S.C. §301 and 42 U.S.C. §7671.

That is my point :)

When you have a coordination problem, there are just two possible answers: either it's the government or some other government-like body.

> if drastic shifts in disposable consumerism don’t occur soon.

Now the question is how to achieve the drastic shift. The popular opinion is that we need to vote in the right politicians and the change should come from the top. I used to think this way for a long time. I've changed my opinion recently. Think about any significant societal change in the last century or so. Women suffrage, civil rights movement, anti-war movement, gay rights. None of these changes have come from the top. None were initiated by the parliament. They all started as a popular rebellion, direct action and civil disobedience.

Completely agree. To that I add catastrophes, because most environmental acts (e.g. the air pollution control act in the USA or the watershed act in the UK, both in the 50s) came about in part because of previous environmental disasters or dangers we were not careful enough to prevent, and only after tragic incidents did the politicians decide they had to push for these types of acts.

The other tool we have in our toolbox nowadays is consumerism. We can choose what to buy, so if there are alternatives that are more environmentally friendly and that are gaining momentum because of our shifting ethical and moral values, every other opportunist will want to, at the very least, not miss out on an opportunity. This is why I support extinction rebellion even though I find them quite annoying. It brings an issue into the mainstream conversation which will hopefully change our attitudes towards excessive consumerism.

Indeed, politicians are quite cowardly. Even the "progressive" ones won't move forward until the majority has.

Another point I find relevant is all your examples involved a non-trivial (possibly overwhelming for this crowd) use of violence (which I think you somewhat understated as civil disobedience).

So... do we have the stamina to ramp up our "protest" into something mildly violent?

civil disobedience is by definition non-violent. Unless by non-trivial violence you mean the violence against the protesters (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_Riders)

Desegregation & civil rights was by no means non-violent. Gay Rights was by no means non-violent- in fact, one of the penultimate moments of the gay movements was the stonewall riots, a series of violent acts against the police that are still ceberated to this day within the community. (Not that I'm arguing they are unjustified in their behavior- but there's nothing peaceful about throwing a brick- and most importantly, that brick thrown has practically been enshrined into LGBTQ mythology.)

Arguing that violence is never the answer and pointing to movements that had violent elements that then are regarded as successfully rising up against oppressive systems is nonsensical.

"No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible" ~ Stanisław Jerzy Lec

Sure, you won't be able to make a measurable impact by yourself. However your mindset quickly leads to a tragedy of the commons type response that leaves us all in trouble. We should all take a more proactive approach to this in both our private life and in our professional work.

This is an excellent analogy given that snowflakes don't exactly have any agency over whether they end up in an avalanche, and removing individual snowflakes from a mountain won't an avalanche stop.

> removing individual snowflakes from a mountain won't an avalanche stop.

That is exactly the point of the analogy. One single snowflake doesn't prevent the avalanche and therefore one single snowflake is not to blame. However if enough snowflakes are removed the avalanche is stopped. Similarly no single person is going to fix climate change. The only way we see results is if enough people band together to make changes.

And historically the best way for people to band together to collectively do the same thing is via government action. Far more important to do activism and press the government to solve it than to inconvenience yourself and think "Well, I did my part, now everyone should do the same".

tragedy of the commons is solved by regulation, not by hoping that individuals or corporations will discipline themselves

That's clearly true. Otherwise, why would the fossil fuel and related industries be spending so much money fighting any attempts to put a price on carbon or otherwise regulate it?

I agree. We need regulations to change and that includes both taxes and subsidies which are the main topics of the article and the top comment respectively. But in order to change those things, we need political will and that political will comes from self discipline.

Any regulation on corporate behavior is ultimately just a proxy for regulation on individuals (because it's often easier to regulate corporations, as they tend to be more accountable). Corporations will discipline themselves if the demand for their product goes away.

Who writes and enactsn the regulation?

> tragedy of the commons is solved by regulation

Tragedy of the commons is caused by regulation. That's how you get commons in the first place—resources that everyone is allowed to use but no one has any investment in. It's solved by allowing the commons to be homesteaded and converted to private ownership.

But it is us who are actually performing the "consumerism". It is us who buys tons of garbage and then throw it out. It is us who continue to buy gas guzzlers and wanting to live grossly inefficient lifestyles via living in suburbia, combined with us voting against mass transit.

It is also us who vote in people who do not care about climate change.

Ultimately, we are the ones who are willingly giving money to these companies. We simply don't seem to care on a grand scale because there continues to be high demand for inefficient goods. We are voting with our dollars.

> But it is us who are actually performing the "consumerism". It is us who buys tons of garbage and then throw it out.

If only we could collectively incentivize more efficient lifestyles.

I agree, I think a carbon tax that puts a price on the damage people do day to day with their behavior is the only thing that’s going to work on a meaningful scale. The needed changes are too painful to make without pushing hard on peoples’ wallets.

Carbon taxes end up being a regressive tax on the poor (not entirely, but marginally), especially given that poorer folks are often forced to commute longer distances and live in less well insulated and modernized homes.

An approach that focuses on decreasing the price of clean technology, rather than one that just raises the price of dirtier tech and assumes later rebalancing would be a much more effective approach, with possibly still having carbon taxes for corporations, but not individuals.

It doesn't have to just be a tax, the government could make it revenue neutral and use the revenue to provide an offsetting subsidy for cleaner tech.

You can't really live "efficient" being poor.

Poor people are responsible for way less in terms of carbon.

Not really in my experience. I live in a country that buys old cars from the rich. We have many "ohh, my lungs" cars here.

The same with appliances. People are too poor to buy A+++ electronics.

If you meant poor enough so I go hunting... then yes.

Here's some data:

https://ourworldindata.org/co2-by-income-region

I'm sure there is some nuance there, but by and large, wealthier people produce more CO2.

Certainly. Wealthier people may be more likely than the poor to drive Teslas instead of smoke-belching old bangers, but they also tend to fly more, heat and air-condition their huge houses, use many more gadgets and appliances that generate CO2 during both manufacture and use, etc.

Depends on your poorness. Poor in India or Africa live extremely efficiently.

It is us who collectively decide not to collectively incentivize more efficient lifestyles.

The outlook is bad if "survival of a large portion of all humans" isn't itself the incentive.

It's like this on most issues on HN. Some of them benefit from a larger following (Animal cruelty, politics in your community), while others will simply be useless without government involvement to shut down the offenders. The only thing an individual is really accomplishing by avoiding flights in most cases is inconveniencing themselves and assuaging their conscious. Change needs to come from the top here, or nothing meaningful will get done.

You're right, but the more people are able to make good choices, the more politicians will be able to put pressure on companies who make money on carbon emissions. Politicians can't do anything unless consumers really show they're able to change.

Climate change is a problem of consumption and how economies are completely dependent on carbon emissions. You just cannot realistically forbid this and this without hurting the economy and its existing carbon-dependent infrastructure. Climate change will be fought on campaigning on consumers so that they call on their good will and shift markets.

I guess the only reliable way to make consumers change their choice is fear mongering about climate change. We need more climate change hard-scifi.

If consumers act like lazy sedentary irresponsible kids, the only way will be to instate hard measures: banning personal cars and adding more organized public transport, switching to reusable glass and steel packaging, reducing bullshit jobs to avoid useless transportation, economies of scale to avoid emissions, a big nuclear energy plan, etc. To be honest all those things should already be startups. They're not complicated. It's a matter of law and how salesmen are pushing consumers to make bad choices.

Exactly.

I've done no research on the company but I assume Graham is profiting off of its success. Since only collective action will solve climate change's effects on the middle and lower classes this is just cynical profiteering off of global disasters.

There's two things to this. Yes, we shouldn't be buying shampoo in the disposable plastic containers - but corporations shouldn't be able to manufacture them in the first place.

So .. what should we be buying shampoo in? Not glass in the shower? Non-recyclable tetra pack?

I don't buy shampoo. My shower contains a single bar of soap.

Here in Denver there is a shop where I can buy a reusable glass bottle that they will refill for me when I bring it back to buy more (soap, shampoo, detergent, etc). Perhaps supermarkets could transition to this model for everything.

Ideally bringing the old bottle somewhere to get it refilled.

Yes a nice strong plastic bottle of shampoo that you keep. Wont have branding however or whatever the packaging is supposed to convey for this brand. It will be your own choice of color or look.

Is it not possible to manufacture shampoo in solid form? Like a bar of soap?

Soap bars?

"Start with yourself"

And this doesn't address that, it just attempts to price the poor out of flying... Awesome stuff.

This will have zero impact on the affluent, we'll continue to fly whenever and wherever we want.

And the amount of money raised can then be spent on cleaning up the externalities.

I am very uncomfortable pricing the poor out of things. That's the fundamental issue with sin taxes like this.

If you want to help the poor then redistribute wealth, don’t allow people to destroy the planet.

A carbon tax could be used for a UBI, or for electric car subsidies, or for negative income tax

And if you did you would probably be chasing and optimizing for your quarterly revenue goals and using every dirty trick in the book to get ahead.