For example, by buying a gas guzzler and not using it much you might lower the emissions from that specific vehicle. But supply and demand rears its ugly head: you're contributing to the increase of similar gas guzzlers' value in the market, which means that other people are more likely to maintain those vehicles in working order and resell them, instead of scrapping them or leaving them unused.
I think half the examples listed are used to teach people about second order effects. Yet the writer of the article seems to have taken them at face value…
Generally, the idea that people toss their cars in the garbage is wrong. They enter the secondary market and someone drives them either way. Scrapping them only happens when their useful lifespan is over.
Buying a newly made gas guzzler is a different story.
As for buying coalmines, typically mining rights are sold to miners as licenses that owners expect to get a percentage from. When the buyer turns out to be an environmental NGO the license gets revoked pretty quickly. This happened in the US earlier this year. These strategies will often run into implementation complexities.
We’ve got a couple more years before I have to buy another used car, so I still might win the argument.
https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Rolls-Royce-subm...
It travels thousands of miles from the well to refinery, where a chunk of it is burnt to power fractional distillation and separate out Sulphur, impurities, bitumen, kerosene and other stuff that would ruin your car. It's burnt to power catalytic cracking, to convert heavier compounds into something combustion engines can burn. Obviously t is consumed in engines of trucks and ships to deliver it to a petrol station.