"Mitigation and development goals cannot be met through incremental change". [0]
"Transition pathways entail distributional consequences such as changes in employment and economic structure" [0]
[0] - https://scientistrebellion.com/we-leaked-the-upcoming-ipcc-r...
What we need to do is to ruthlessly tax externalities that haven’t effectively been considered before, and use the proceeds to transition to an economy with net zero climate gas emissions. Then repay the damage with large-scale CO2 sequestering, multi-gigaton scale.
If economic growth is considered everything we value getting cheaper and more abundant over time, anthropogenic climate gas emissions can be considered a horrendous debt that needs to be repaid. This is achievable! It’s expensive, but doesn’t require a 1950s lifestyle for everyone.
Captialism at its core is soulless and I hate it — BUT so far I've failed to see any alternatives I would trust to help on this matter. These days I just see romantic descriptions of communism and socialism (actual socialism, not the social democracy Americans often mistake for it) everywhere, from people who clearly haven't ever had to live in it.
Just as a reminder, here in Germany we're _still_ cleaning up the economical and ecological disasters of the GDR to this day (Bitterfeld anyone?), and the USSR didn't exactly lead the green revolution either (Chernobyl, Mayak, ....)
Whenever I see people advocating "Tackling climate change needs a system change", I'm like: Yeah... nope.
Side note: If we acknowledge that a realistic CO2 tax is democratically unpopular - excellent! Now we're making progress, that's a real piece of data to work with. It needs to happen, there's absolutely no way around it. If it doesn't currently fly in a democracy, we need to sweeten the deal. Trying to force it through by revolutionary means is an act of desperation, let's hope we don't even have to consider it. There's a hundred ways to make it more palatable. Let's start in that end!
Paying part of the CO2 tax back to individuals is one way of bribing the electorate to do what's necessary.
The French government tried to spin a fuel tax as a carbon tax apparently. And protesters said it wasn't just about that tax.[3]
[1] https://ballotpedia.org/Washington_Carbon_Emission_Tax_and_S...
[2] https://ballotpedia.org/Washington_Initiative_1631,_Carbon_E...
[3] https://apnews.com/article/ap-top-news-riots-france-paris-in...
We've got three choices:
1. Harness that growth to decarbonize. 2. Let the rich accumulate it all. 3. Give it to the poor who will use it to enjoy a middle class life style. Which may or may not include a middle class carbon foot print.
Degrowth really isn't an option. The only way to achieve it is through mass unemployment, and that will just result in riots and election losses.
What degrowth advocates usually ask for is a ban on stuff like gas cars. But the past two years have shown that banning one type of economic activity just moves out else where.
(however, me personally, I don't think growth is really necessary anymore. The real problem since at least the 80s/90s has been inequality, so the thing people should really look at is redistribution of wealth/income etc.) We have everything we need, we just don't have the political and economic systems to put it in good use.