But none of the examples you give move the needle enough with regards to climate change.

You're just following what feels like it would be good for the environment (and maybe it is good for your local environment) but isn't actually impactful at a large scale.

You write eloquently, but futilely.

I think it's not meant to be an exhaustive list of things to do.

Instead, what if it's a mindset: Doing such things, and 1000 others, some of them vastly more important than others.

And you can add to the list (instead of just saying "it won't work").

E.g. high car gas taxes, so there'll be trains, buses and bike lanes instead for everyone.

> Doing such things, and 1000 others, some of them vastly more important than others.

That doesn't make any sense why would we make sacrifices that are not important.

Eating less beef will reduce the market price and make it cheaper for everyone else, increasing their consumption accordingly.

The whole point of a capitalist economy is to “route around inefficiency”, in the same way the internet is designed to “route around damage”. Any single player or even a large contingent of players, who act inefficiently, are only increasing the alpha available for another player to exploit.

“Inefficiency” in this sense is anything that doesn’t maximize personal benefit - profit or other quality of life. Anything that is legal according to the rules of the game (or tolerated by society) is going to happen whether it’s you that does it or someone else.

The only long term solution is that if this is what needs to happen, we have to encode that into “the rules” so everyone plays by that rule. Personal recycling or personal consumption reduction does nothing at a social level, and in fact is pushed as a deliberate stalling tactic to avoid and stall those political actions which could have a real impact.

This is also the problem with bitcoin - any one player choosing not to participate in mining only increases the reward for the remaining players who will continue to participate. If there is only one person on the planet willing to mine, she gets all the rewards. So simply choosing not to mine does nothing, you’re just transferring profit to someone else.

Humanity has already built the first AIs, they are emergent paperclip-maximizers encoded into the bylaws of corporations and market structures. And they will route around any attempt to un-maximize paperclip production according to whatever levers we continue to give them. If you don’t want people to eat as much beef, you have to build that rule into the system, it’ll never happen due to personal-level changes in behavior.

If people eat less meat because they have a larger tax, then no, capitalism won’t adapt that way. I didn’t mention how those changes should be adopted. As per Adam Smith: capitalism only works in small, well-defined markets. It was never meant as an end-all control system.

Governments can alter the rules of the game we play and they are (indirectly) controlled by us, as least in democractic countries.

taxing meat is what I'm referring to as "changing the rules of the game", it affects everyone. But a personal decision to just eat less meat yourself is not going to affect anything, because all you're doing is making beef cheaper for everyone else, and they'll eat more of it as a result.

similarly, even a country-level tax, you're only making it cheaper for other countries who don't care. We saw this play out with Russian oil last year - banning it from the West didn't make it go away, it just made it cheaper for certain other states to import it. The commodity market is global.

The fundamental point I'm trying to make here is the "capitalism routes around inefficiency/morality". That's what it's designed to do, in the same way the internet routes around infrastructure damage (or censorship etc, which is fundamentally infrastructure damage). By taking a moral stand, you only increase the alpha available for other players to exploit.

These "individual moralistic stand" approaches like personal-scale recycling are inherently less effective than taxing producers, or outright bans. The reason they are pushed is because they are ineffective, and because they stall out the political will to adopt real solutions that would be effective.

No, capitalism is not about routing around inefficiencies. Me not eating meat might make it cheaper, but people don’t buy based on price alone. Similarly, if the EU won’t buy Russian oil, it does incentivizes more reliance on green energy on the long run and that will be a net decrease in oil consumption for the world. Especially that the EU is a big financial power, and in combination with carbon taxes it could indirectly greenify other countries decisions.

(E.g. india did buy up russia’s oil cheaper, but if there would have been a carbon tax in the eu with serious tariffs on products made in a not eco-friendly way, their usage might not have increased as much)

> No, capitalism is not about routing around inefficiencies

that is the observable impact though. perhaps the bitcoin example is more straightforward - if only one person on the entire planet is willing to mine, they get the entire block rewards of the entire network.

this is an extreme example, but if you have a small number of corporations who don't give a shit about environmentalism and pursue maximum profit within whatever the law allows, you get to pretty much the same result. People doing good in one area only increases the alpha available for another player to exploit.

capitalism literally is the removal of morality from economic planning - by making it about personal interests and profit, you ensure that if one player has those uncomfortable morals, that other players will take care of the problem and ensure maximum profit is pursued regardless. It's an Autonomous System designed to eliminate morality from the field of economic activity.

I think you have some good points, at the same time, here where I live, in the food store, a part of the freezer is filled with plant based food - if people hadn't voluntarily decided to be vegetarians, then, there would have been meat instead.

When enough people change their behavior, that can have an effect. And I suppose you're right that that effect is smaller than what one would hope (for the reasons you mentioned), and laws or taxes would have more effect

Futility becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy way too easily to let it persuade one not to do what one thinks is right

Harming yourself, advising others to harm themselves, and advocating for your government to enforce harm is not "right".

Further, even if what you advocate isn't exactly harmful, just neutral (ie eating local vegetables instead of imported, nevermind that the carbon footprint difference is negligible) wasting valuable political capital on useless gestures is objectively wrong.

That all sounds okay at an individual level, but to affect the massive change we need, relying on moral self-agency is not going to suffice.

So do you want governments to legislate that you must live with your parents? Or that you must not eat meat? Otherwise it's fine and good that a small share of the populace will make these choices on their own, but we need an order of magnitude more.

Carbon tax incentivizes many of my points, but it’s not like my points are the sacred script on what to follow. That and some others do require government legislations (which are a good thing in most cases, and ideally are there to protect and serve the people!), e.g. mandating a standard container, others like living with your parents would need a social change, but that can also be influenced by the government, e.g. much less tax on rent in case of multi-generational homes.

> Hell, most liquids meant for drinking could easily come in a few sizes of these reusable bottles

Oh how I wish I could just bring a reusable bottle to some dispenser at the store and refill directly. Milk, common juices, soaps, etc. So many bottles going into trash/recycling all the time.

Just tax carbon and everyone can decide with their wallets just how much they want to eat meat or imported Peruvian fruits

Yes, that’s definitely one of the most realistic ways going forward, though the recyclable bottles part would need separate government standards and laws.

The problem is that absent technology we need to reach 0 carbon emissions. Not just what it was in 1950 or 1900 but actually 0. This implies a standard of living far worse than you suggest. And even at 0 it will take hundreds of years to undo current warming.

It’s not going to be politically feasible since 99% of people don’t want to live that way. Thus we have to pursue alternatives.

We are currently accelerating towards a cliff. We may not stop the car before the cliff, but the next best thing we can do is getting our legs off the pedal.

Maybe technology will help us achieve that last minute stop we so need, but we have to start somewhere.

Meanwhile, I encountered an adult the other day who only drinks from plastic disposable cups so that they don't have to wash dishes.