I really want to see big companies compete on green transformation. It shouldn’t just be the right thing - it needs to be sexy and cool.
Space race but green race?
Space race but green race?
Anyone who dreams of extraterrestrial manufacturing should be keeping an eye on refining processes that reduce the carbon to a small fraction of the inputs.
Even if the current state of affairs has the West not producing the bulk of global carbon emissions, there's a solid argument to be made the West still has a responsibility to pioneer technologies that can ultimately be transferred to the planet's largest polluters.
Or we could stop outsourcing production to those polluters, and do it in countries with better environmental standards instead. It is confusing to me that this isn't the #1 goal of environmentalists right now.
When will those technologies be invented? How long will it take to get them to be used globally? It feels like every few years we're given a new cutoff date for a serious course correction to prevent massive, irreparable climate change from occurring. Do we have enough time? Why do we seemingly prioritize the development of third world economies over climate action?
We do need to compete with production in places with lax standards. Right now it’s apples and oranges, because they aren’t including externalities and modern capitalism is addicted to “too good to be true” stories. Either they need to tax the production fairly, or we do.
It needs to be profitable first and foremost.