The easiest way to get people to buy less is to raise prices.
If we had a carbon tax that correctly priced the environmental impact of goods, it would decrease consumption. Without having to shame people into removing themselves from the economy.
If we had a carbon tax that correctly priced the environmental impact of goods, it would decrease consumption. Without having to shame people into removing themselves from the economy.
"Increasing the retail price of tobacco products through higher taxes is the single most effective way to decrease consumption and encourage tobacco users to quit." [0]
https://www.who.int/tobacco/mpower/publications/en_tfi_mpowe...
E.g. raising gas prices will dramatically hurt citizens living on the country side or outside cities without public transport, and force them to move into the cities, which in turn cause higher demand on housing and rent increase.
But if you live and work on the country side, higher gas prices will crush you because it impacts not only you personally but the school transport for the kids, the transporting wares from/to rural supermarket, for infrastructure maintenance/development, agriculture/farmers etc etc
There are so many little things that people take for granted that is will have an impact on those living on the country side.
And in the end you just shift the problem to the cities, where the influx of more people cause rising housing costs, higher unemployment, more miserable people and higher prices on foodstuffs because farmers give up.
Living rural areas and farmers are a very important factor for a happy nation IMHO.
Yes, obviously higher fuel prices would affect those who need to drive further due to longer distances between things (i.e. the countryside), but it will also encourage those who only do so by choice to make different choices, which is what we desperately need.
Lower middle class should see no change. Middle class should see a net loss if they don't change their habits. And anything beyond would see a substantial loss.
Give each person a carbon ration, if you didn't use it fully you get money back. If you used more than your fair share you have to pay significantly large taxes that go directly to the pockets of people who use less and infrastructure.
No, you'll just remove them from the economy without their consent, by introducing regulation to artificially lower supply. Everyone is against this: the companies who won't make as much profit and the consumers who won't be able to purchase the goods that they want. Good luck with that.
A few things:
1. Presumably any carbon tax would have to be secured and defended by our democratic institutions. Thus we would have consent (or as close as you can get to large scale consent in our multi-actor society). While I agree that regulating basic consumption for large swaths of the economy has a bit of an authoritarian bend to it, I'm not sure how else we incentivize ourselves to decrease consumption.
2. Lowered supply is not a given. Companies would be incentivized to find production chains, energy sources, and materials that had a lower impact (and thus a lower tax). Less impactful products would be able to price themselves under the high-impact products and satiate the demand.
EDIT Added 3. Consumption itself is not the enemy. The thing we want to minimize is negative externalities. It just so happens that under our current system, manipulating levels of consumption is the only lever our society has for affecting industrial emissions.
If we want to buy less we need to shrink the economy, including government spend.
Personally, I’m just trying to build more things and gather more things myself. Buys less and saves money.
Buying land gives money to someone who buys stuff.