You could flip it round and say that's why the US is lagging behind the EU in environmental protection and consumer rights.

I suspect the correct answer is somewhere between the two approaches.

The amount by which the EU is better than the US in environmental protection is basically a rounding error relative to what’s actually necessary to stop climate change. You might as well say they’re equal.

Climate change is far from the only environmental problem have. Sure, it's the biggest but also the biggest to solve.

And the EU has had a consistent push to solve it, unlike the US, which for instance during the Trump era pulled out of the Paris accord.

The solution for climate change would come from technology. Not random politicians virtue signalling and signing useless agreements which doesn't make any meaningful difference.

Technology is the problem, not the solution. Doing more technology increases the problem, as can been seen from the data over the last decades.

What you're looking for is magic. Magic would solve it.

I'm surprised people still bring up carbon capture tech as a solution.

It happens a lot around here lately but it's just such wishful thinking IMO.

If you have that much carbon-neutral energy, carbon-neutral materials, space, maintenance to really make a dent... And all those things don't displace green resources that could have been used for other necessary things instead... You wouldn't have had any problem to begin with.

See how much shit we get here when we get a few % less natural gas here in Europe. We're in a huge crisis over just that. That's a promille of what we'd need to capture enough carbon for 0.01 degree cooling.

It's just some distraction from the hard things that are needed to solve it. And a big paycheck for the industry behind it obviously.

It's simpler to think "technology will save us" than "we as a species screwed up and have already destroyed 2/3 of wild life (not talking about the consequences of global warming, that's yet to come), maybe we should change drastically".

We've known about climate change for decades and global CO2 output has only increased. Just assuming technology will solve it is foolish.

The continent that provides companies like ASML and plenty of machinery in general, and is regularly in the news - not just now with the Nobel Price - when it comes to bio-tech?

Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, sure, but there is plenty of IT inside the machines. You are too concentrated on some very hip consumer companies and don't see the vast ocean of important businesses in the middle, that don't have much or any consumer contact.

Where is your evidence? What a horrible contribution to the discussion, both divisive (and without reason, out of nowhere), and of the lowest quality.

I actually went through the trouble and looked for the evidence missing from your post. If anything we need to look at Asia most of all. Also because at least for Germany, where through decades long contacts I witnessed some of it personally, we (Germany) transferred significant know-how to China quite voluntarily, and our big companies still insist on continuing to invest there even when many smaller businesses have become far more cautious. Link: https://www.reuters.com/world/german-dependence-china-growin... (German dependence on China growing "at tremendous pace" - paywalled)

Here's some, mostly opinion pieces so YMMV (I'm missing rigorous data and statistics with explanations of what they measured, these article are all too "freeform" for my taste):

- https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/strategy-and-corporate...

- https://www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/commentanalysis/arid-4...

Somewhat better:

- https://dgap.org/en/research/publications/europes-capacity-a...

However, we also have https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03318-w so it's not so easy to make definitive statements about everything.

> Sure. It also explains why EU is lagging horribly behind the US when it comes to technology.

Probably because the EU (government(s)) doesn't sink as much money in to research as the US government. The technology of the US was built on Cold War spending:

* https://steveblank.com/secret-history/

Most of the tech we used in our day to day lives was also created with government spending:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Entrepreneurial_State

I think you would have a very hard time proving this without leveraging monetary policy. Sure some low level components are and companies built on top of that but it doesn’t mean the tech I’m using is supplied by the US government.

Pretty much all the tech I use comes from the private sector

You mean, like the Internet? Or GPS?

Also the US government is injecting a ton of money into private companies, so it's not necessarily visible.

yes the internet and GPS were created by the government, but a bunch of other stuff isn't

What does it mean to ”lag behind” when it comes to technology at a country/continental level?

Lack of legislation

What about the EU contributions to the web stack, like requiring every website on the internet forcing an accept cookies mouse click?

No, that would be the US buying up every EU tech company that dares to become successful with free helicopter money.

Or maybe every EU tech company approaching success will voluntarily move to US, since that is where the (free) market is and that is where it can become successful.

Where is this free market you speak of? Even the gung ho market of the US is regulated and by no means free.

This thread really brought out the libertarians in droves.

There are multiple markets and varying degrees of regulating them. But the universal constant is that the less regulated a market is the better for consumers and society.

That's a bold statement and by no means a universal constant. If your rivers are on fire because there is no environmental regulation, then that is not good for society.

Good example! Environmental regulation managed to drive manufacturing out of developed countries making them vulnerable to less scrupulous, unfriendly regimes while merely shifting the environmental impact elsewhere.

The correct solution was, of course, taxing externalities like pollution and CO2. That would've allowed the free market to search for solutions naturally and locally.

That is my main qualm with regulations: they are a brute force imposed solution which solves the perceived problem on the short term while doing damage and 2nd order effects on the long term.

How is taxing externalities not a measure of regulation?

Taxation uses market mechanisms and thus encourages market solutions. Regulations impose politician-thought solutions directly on market participants.

Does it? I mean China is not exactly as free a market as the US, and I wouldn't say they are lagging horribly behind... on the contrary in many cases

And why do I have to click on the stupid popup on cookies for every freaking website. Thank you EU...

Thank the website instead. They only have to ask you if they want to track you.

Hacker News does not show a cookie popup, for example, because they have no intention of tracking you.

At least now you have a choice. If you don't like the popups, there are extensions to kill them.

Well the stupid popup is coming from the stupid website. If they stopped collecting data they mostly don't use (let's be honest, most websites probably don't do anything useful with most of the data), then they would not have to show the popup.

Something to do with massive brain drain after/during WW2 and the Holocaust? At least for the atom bomb and spaceflight that seemed to be the case...

Brain drain continues today. Innovation happens in the US while EU... mandates charging connectors.

Lagging horribly in what way?