Respectfully but very firmly disagree. It’s the role of nation-state actors to protect against exactly things like this (tragedy of the commons) where everyone is individually incentivized to act against the common good.

Every nation is also individually incentivized to act against the common good of all nations.

The difference is that nations can meaningfully negotiate with each other.

Individuals don't really have a way of widespread negotiation other than elected representatives.

Being a leader in technology that the whole world has to deploy in the next twenty years can be an advantage.

Which is ostensibly why things like the (laughably impotent) UN exist.

Yes and no. Nation states resolve coordination problems of their citizens. But while being (somewhat) coordinated within, they're still in regular competition with each other. To get nation states to not themselves fall into geopolitical tragedies of the commons, you'd need a global government above all nations.

The only people who have enough power to solve the problem are the leaders of a handful of countries.

So, while obviously only people can solve the problem, it's only a select few people that actually can do anything about it. You or I have no more power than that which democracy affords us.

In the end, it will be the individual who makes the final decision. And we are going to decide to be comfortable now, rather than save the current state of the planet for future generations.

I am a pick-up-the-litter kind of guy, but I am not going to do without air conditioning.

Leanardo DiCaprio feels passionately about climate change, but he's not giving up his private jet flights.

Barack Obama feels strongly too, but he's not going to give up yacht vacations.

Human nature dictates the final result. Perhaps we'd better devote our energies towards ways to deal with the inevitable. Because nobody's going to voluntarily live 100 years in the past for the benefit of those 100 years in the future.

Only 100 companies are responsible for 71% of global emissions[1]. Individual decisions have such a vanishingly small impact on the environment that it's actually counter-productive to make this type of argument.

People have a limited amount of time to spend on different aspects of their lives. If you dedicate all of your "saving the planet" time to minor personal changes, you won't have the time to do what is actually necessary -- push for political change which will actually address the problem. Yes, you aren't saying "don't try to solve the bigger problem (lack of action by governments)" but you are saying "focus on the smaller problems (what type of laundry liquid you use)" -- which would inevitably result in the bigger problems being neglected by most people.

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10...

The 100 companies include Shell, BP, Chevron, etc.

They are only producing the means for abusing the environment-- it's the end users that are doing the damage.

I suppose you could argue that if we outlawed petroleum production that it wouldn't allow the abusers anything to work with, but it would also deny the world of most of the progress made in the last 150 years.

> You or I have no more power than that which democracy affords us.

Which is very good in many ways, one of which being that we get scared too easily from headlines and tend to forget about many other pressing issues that all have to be taken care of all the time.

The only people who have enough power to solve the problem are the people building better technology. If you can't replace gasoline with something equally affordable, people will not accept it.

Most leaders - at least in democratic countries - don't actually have a lot of power to do things that the people don't want them to do. Just look at Macron attempting to raise taxes on gasoline. He wishes he had approval ratings as "good" as those of Donald Trump. People are rioting in the streets.

Now perhaps if you have a really wealthy country like Norway, you can afford to subsidize electric vehicles or renewable energy. The same won't work for other countries, especially emerging economies.

> The only people who have enough power to solve the problem are the people building better technology.

Not building. Funding. The problem with technological solutions to global problems isn't lack of technology, or science. It's lack of funding for R&D, deployment and maintenance.

Politicians are the ones who decide for or against a carbon tax. Politicians also decide laws where you can put wind turbines and solar panels, whether to build roads or rails, whether to allow buildings without insulation and with fossil fuel heating.

If I did everything I reasonably could I might be able to produce a third of the carbon footprint of an average citizen of my country, it's literally impossible for me to go down to zero without living as a hunter-gatherer in the woods. The hunter-gatherer lifestyle doesn't feed eight billion people, so not even that is a scaleable solution.

> Politicians are the ones who decide for or against a carbon tax. Politicians also decide laws where you can put wind turbines and solar panels, whether to build roads or rails, whether to allow buildings without insulation and with fossil fuel heating.

And politicians do some mix of what they personally believe is right and what will get them re-elected— When political leaders try to make big changes without the support of the populace, the result is generally bad. The question then turns to how to increase popular support for actually taking governmental action on climate change.

Perhaps if you became a politician you would get their perspective.

If I became a politician today it would certainly take me more than ten years before I got anywhere further than my local council. By then we already used up our carbon budget.

"You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?" "No," said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, "nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people." "Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy." "I did," said Ford. "It is." "So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't people get rid of the lizards?" "It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want." "You mean they actually vote for the lizards?" "Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course." "But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?" "Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in.

Things like zoning, light rail, solar and wind allowance are all very local politics. Your local council is where the change is needed.

You are blaming the politicians who apparently took the “ten years” before they got anywhere for making whatever choices they think best reflect their intents. Yet you do not wish to do the same.

So? I also blame people dumping toxic waste in rivers and yet I don't want to become the boss of a chemical plant.

It is the responsibility of all countries, of course. The problem is that the countries most willing to do something are also the ones with the least influence over the matter. On a global scale Iceland for example can do very little to offset the trends. It takes the buy-in from the biggest countries before something meaningful can happen.