Few willing to change lifestyle to save the planet, climate survey finds | Hacker News Reader

Few willing to change lifestyle to save the planet, climate survey finds

theguardian.com

34 pointsperfunctory36 comments

I'm not surprised. Trying to rely on people to voluntarily change their behaviour while leaving companies to seemingly do whatever they want without consequences is a terrible idea. Why should people sacrifice their lifestyle while large corporations continue to make cheap, disposable goods and waste resources anyway? What's the incentive to consume less and change our lifestyles if leaders/celebrities/billionaires just fly to conferences in private jets at a whim, and waste such resources at an immense scale anyway?

Plus... saying things is easy. Actually doing things differently are not.

Yeah, it's the wrong question, and thus a distraction from getting the problem solved. Instead they should have asked "Do you support a tax on the top 1% of polluters, which is paid as a dividend to the bottom 99%?"

I suppose that might have the unintended consequence / cobra effect of making people want the top 1% to pollute more, so they get a bigger dividend payment, but, on the other hand, I don't think that the top 1% care about what the rest of us want, so their only incentive will be to reduce their tax burden.

Pollution doesn't happen because some "top 1%" want it, it happens because it is a byproduct of goods and services consumed by all of us.

A small tax won't change behavior, but a large tax will impact consumer prices of the relevant goods. Who do you think the "top 1% of polluters" are with respect to greenhouse gases? If USA adds a heavy tax to imports from Saudi Aramco and other oil companies, gas prices will jump and that will be the "unwilling change to lifestyle" that voters will complain about. If Coal India, the world's largest manufacturer of coal, gets heavily taxed then people's electricity costs will rise significantly and they will riot. If you tax producers of carbon-heavy commodities like concrete and steel, the tax will directly be passed on to those using concrete and steel, that's how commodities work. The same applies for all other industries relying on carbon emissions - to significantly reduce usage, the taxes need to be so high that people actually can't afford these "carbon-heavy" services any more and start using them much less.

It's not just about the willingness to voluntarily unilaterally change your own lifestyle, it's about the willingness to tolerate your government implementing measures that de facto force you (and others in your country) to change your lifestyles. While, as the article states, "Most (76%) of those surveyed across the 10 countries said they would accept stricter environmental rules and regulations", I believe that this is said with an implicit assumption that these stricter environmental rules and regulations will mostly affect "someone else" i.e. "top 1% polluters" without requiring any noticeable change in the goods and services they use.

As a reasonable starting point, the "top 1%" wouldn't be the companies that sell products that most people need (like cars and electricity), it would be the consumers that use vastly more resources than the average consumer.

So, for example, if the average person flies N miles per year, then add an extra tax to the people who fly 10xN miles. If the average person uses N joules of gas to heat their home, then add an extra tax to the people who use 10xN joules.

However, there are going to be cases where it makes sense to tax cheap-but-polluting products to give a dividend to help people buy more-expensive but less-polluting products, even if that means that prices go up slightly. That's just capturing the externalities of the polluting products, though.

Okay, I think I understand your idea - essentially to impose nonlinear costs to consumption of "carbon-heavy" goods and services, so that someone who flies 10xN miles pays much more than 10x of tax.

It would be interesting and useful if it worked, however, I'm sceptical of this working - in essence, while "linear" taxes can be relatively easily (there still are difficulties, especially internationally) levied at any point e.g. manufacture, import, sale or use, anonymously, no matter who or how consumes the product. However, having such a "nonlinear" tax is quite hard to administer effectively since it requires taxing at the point of use, tracking all points of sale to the specific individuals, aggregating them (if the person flies N miles per year from many different companies), and preventing transfers of that thing between people and/or using proxies.

I don't think that I have seen nonlinear consumption taxes implemented in practice anywhere; the largest nonlinearity I have seen is exemptions where some ways of circumventing the tax are explicitly permitted for small, limited quantities. For core aspects of carbon emissions - namely, emissions from burning fossil fuels either in cars or heating homes - that would essentially require individual registration of fuel purchases; IMHO that would be treated as quite invasive; for the airline example you mention, this would require shifting the airline pricing so that the price is dependent on which person will be flying (beyond mere name, since names are not unique), which would be a major change in all the process of how airline tickets are booked worldwide.

I was going to say that the administration of this might be difficult, so I completely accept your points above.

The reason I chose flights and home heating specifically was that they are some of the easiest to administer, since governments already track which unique individuals are buying which flights, and home heating is naturally tied to an address (although I suppose someone might own a second home, with the gas bill paid in their spouse's name).

For something like car travel, we may (unfortunately) reach a point where everyone's journeys are tracked, or at least where odometer readings have to be regularly submitted to the government. It wouldn't be too hard for the government to aggregate those numbers by registered owner, but it does assume that there is a fixed conversion between miles travelled and CO2 emitted, which breaks down if synthetic fuel becomes an option.

It's an interesting idea, but the rich and powerful run the world and basically don't pay taxes. You don't need environmental dress-up, you just need the rich to pay their taxes.

Wow, the world is pumping 40 gigatons per year excess CO2, which (at 100$/ton, god I hope we find a cheap way to remove carbon) is 4 trillion per year.

There are historically about 2 teratons of excess carbon in the air. Christ that's 200 trillion dollars.

Wow are we in trouble. Even if we only tried to get half of it out and get neutral, that is a massive amount of money.

But the thing is, globally, there does exist probably 10 trillion dollars we can devote to fixing the problem (4 to stop the current bleeding, 6 to start drawing down the existing "debt"). Hopefully we find something cheaper.

> 4 trillion per year.

For comparison, the Gross World Product[0] of 2019 was estimated to be 88 trillion, so a 5% global tax devoted to carbon removal would be sufficient.

Countries could even be given a quota, and they would get a rebate for every ton they came in under that quota, such that they would pay net zero tax if they were net zero on carbon emissions.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_world_product

It's worth noting that there's no international mechanism where countries can be "given a quota" unless they voluntarily agree to the quota, and there is no mechanism for enforcing compliance to that quota unless countries voluntarily choose to accept some consequences. It's not realistic to expect that such a tax would be paid across borders - by default, every country would pay net zero tax even if they are not net zero on carbon emissions; IIRC all the major emitters have explicitly refused to have climate solutions that involve significant wealth transfers from them to other countries, and there's nothing (IMHO even including extreme violence like WW3) that is likely to force them to do so.

It is somewhat realistic (though difficult) to have most countries agree that they will tax polluters under a comparable rules & rates. It's not realistic to expect that they will use that tax revenue on someone else's citizens instead of their own.

Also, 5% of gross product is a LOT. For a comparison, that is more than the global spending on education. I have a hard time believing that countries will choose to spend on carbon capture more than what they currently (or ever) invested in developing their citizens' skills.

Couldn’t agree more.It’s like asking individuals not to eat meat to stop climate change…

What about stopping companies fracking, mining coal, selling combustion engines first ?

Why not both :)

Because the meat fracking industry pays its proxies in underground beef, it’s hard to identify steakholders.

Because meat is healthy, not everyone is great at being g vegetarian for several reasons.

What you mean the rich and famous won't stop owning a dozen cars and a private plane, because of climate change? Not surprising. We hear stories all the time about airports being full of private planes at climate conferences. People didn't exactly carpool to g20

68% of Americans say they wouldn't pay $10 a month in higher electricity bills to combat Climate Change:

https://www.cato.org/blog/68-americans-wouldnt-pay-10-month-...

What politicians say they want to do about global warming is very, very different to what people say they will pay for.

IMHO politicians are quite well aware of that, so they say that what they want to about global warming is to express concern, make plans and perhaps subsidize some local industries which they might have subsidized just purely as an economic stimulus - because if they would actually require significant transfer of wealth for these issues or significant mandates (either direct or as hefty tax incentives) to change lifestyles, then the voters would simply vote them out.

France has ~1/3 the per capita greenhouse gas emissions of the US and is a rich country so it's certainly possible.

France uses nuclear for 70% of their electricity generation and petrol is ~$7 / gallon ( $1.9/litre ).

Politicians just need to be honest about the costs and people just have to want it.

Well, you don't get to say what people "have to want", they have their own free will, and for the majority USA to transition to e.g. transportation habits of France would be a major lifestyle change, which they could make if they were forced to, but which they quite explicitly do not want - so if politicians are honest about the costs, that makes it certain that the policies won't be adopted, because there is not a willingness to pay them.

I mean, $7/gallon is approximately double the current price, and if we made a poll across the USA asking "Would you be willing to double the gas prices in order to ...." then the vast majority would not even read past the beginning, they are certain that nothing that they have ever thought about climate change would justify that amount of change right now.

To add a little perspective, before Covid some 40%ish number of Americans were living paycheck to paycheck.

Yeah, some people are very much struggling to survive. They don't have it to spare.

Half or more of the above figure have an iPhone / Samsung smartphone with an unlimited data plan. It’s complicated and not as simple as nothing to spare. Plenty that could spare, including software devs making 100k+ a year, don’t care.

I used to live in the San Francisco Bay Area. Some people making nominally large salaries don't have a lot of discretionary funds available.

I believe a lot of our societal gridlock is currently rooted in the deficiencies of our built environment. I am trying to focus on how we make progress on that.

A lot of people are currently in a situation where they need a high paying job to cover "basic expenses" and it's killing them. We need to find a way out of that if we really want to solve the climate stuff.

That's what's so damn infuriating. Taxpayers are paying that now in subsidies/lack of taxes for non-renewables because of lobbying and corruption. Make it a fair playing field and renewables will get the investment instead without any noticeable rise in user fees.

This is good. This particular change has to be top down. The ability to put pressure on government and industry should be grass roots, not behavioral changes themselves.

Bingo. Fuck this gaslighting. The vast majority of pollution in general, and CO2 in particular, comes from industry, not individuals. Tossing trash everywhere and running gas through your bus-like SUV like a maniac is an asshole move, and your neighbors don't appreciate it, but it doesn't move the needle much on actual environmental issues. Big companies and big foreign nations are where the CO2 is coming from. They have a stranglehold on congress thanks to their money, so good luck forcing change. But in the meantime let's stop wringing our hands over "lifestyle changes". They don't matter.

> Bingo. Fuck this gaslighting. The vast majority of pollution in general, and CO2 in particular, comes from industry, not individuals.

Military (which I'd argue is in fact Industry) up until recently, actually; but somehow that gets swept under the rug. Moreover, when Industry loses a significant case in which they are forced to pay for their blatant environmental misconduct they can intimidate, and retaliate against the counselors [0] in some grotesque way to put a chilling effect on those who want to do the same.

I intermittent fast eat meat only 3 times a week and try to maintain a 5;1 plant to animal protein ratio, lowered my carbon footprint in many ways for 16 years now (from farming in large scale regenerative farms to living in towns where I don't need a car) and have been reducing my consumption more and more as I get older--it does nothing for me and I'm pretty utilitarian about my purchase and will prefer to buy used over new. In many ways I'm pretty sure my actions have made me (individually) carbon negative.

But, as you mentioned, the conclusion you realize after living this way is that Industry can essentially null all of the actions I've taken in a day of operation as it's activity in terms of GHG emission, pollution or wide-scale contamination of the environment. This is why I think Ecocide [1] should be enforced to all including corps as well as Governments and individuals (directors of investor's funds) and Hedgefunds who have benefited from these events. Anything short of this is political theater and will ensure that business as normal is maintained--COP26, Bilderburg et al are examples of how State and Cooperate power exempt themselves from all the things they decry are responsible for these impacts at scale.

With that said, I place greater confidence in the ingenuity of Humans to create solutions to these problems. Incentivizing this is what we should be doing instead of continuing to bail out failed business models from megacorps via infinite QE.

0: https://archive.md/F2UTs

1: https://choice.npr.org/index.html?origin=https://www.npr.org...

Exactly. But at the same time we can’t wash our hand at the grassroots level. We have to continue to be environmentally conscious and put pressure on industry.

There's the perennial problem with such polls in that people have serious doubts about whether incurring costs for environmental reasons will actually accomplish the objective.

An awful lot of environmental rules simply export the problem but do nothing to stop it.

There's no way I'm changing my lifestyle so a bunch of PH.Ds and tenured Profs can retire on the Costa del Sol.

This is pretty out of touch with academic reality.

What do we need to change this?

Education?

Behavioral Hacking?

More discussion ejection seat buzzwords?

Surplus Resources produced by cornucopia machinery?

Governments that are resistant to bribery and clan-think(aka human nature)?

Or a virus that drastically reduces economic dynamics and individual exertions? Can in a dysfunctional society and system, a virus be considered a valid policy, to prevent far greater dangers through suicidal economic policies?

Does the need of the many yet to come outweigh the need of those present?

Just doing the devils advocate here. In the longterm im guessing it needs cornucopia to kick the can of worms further down the road.

To change humanity, fix all the hardcoded brain-bugs and de-faulty heuristics, alot more has to happen. Just some dopamine-milk machine in the cellphone will not change moohmanity.

The thing that would change this would be clear, certain, imminent and obvious impact to local welfare, combined with trustworthy assurances that the desired actions will change that. If we look at e.g. the IPCC reports, then we see statements which effectively say "there will be a much higher probability of various bad events in the far future, most of them somewhere else, that are likely to have various unspecified very bad consequences to people in general, most of them in other communities; and by the way the changes are already irreversible", which fails all those criteria.

People will not be willing to make sacrifices as long as it's not clear (from sources you trust - experts may not suffice, as covid shows) what exact very harmful near-term consequences you and your community will face; how exactly the proposed sacrifice will change that; and how the coordination problem will be solved so that other large countries including those on the other side of the world also take that sacrifice, which is a key part of showing that the sacrifice will have an effect.

We need the technology.

... most importantly, all of the "world leaders" at the "climate summits".

The current divide on coronavirus measures seems fairly similar to me, just with the speed dial turned up.

Current climate chat is about social distancing and lockdowns. We need it to be about antivirals, vaccines, immunity etc.

Basically, how do we fix this, not what do we do to hide from it for a bit.

It is unsustainable to suggest that everyone just restricts their lifestyle forever in an endless loop.

Yes, it's a collective action problem which can't be solved by individual consumer activism. You need meaningful policies which internalize external costs. Of course you need to also need to work to eliminate rent seeking within the political system to make that possible as well.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com