Greed and Excess Drive the Climate Crisis, So Why Aren’t They Being Questioned?

> - People driving their kids to school is driving the climate crisis - People having enough to eat is driving the climate crisis - People taking nice vacations with their families and friends is driving the climate crisis

By my count, two out of the three are reasonably considered “excess” and are seemingly not being questioned as claimed by the headline.

It does seem to be the conclusion that people arrive at but don’t really want to say out loud. If we really want to save the climate we should all just kill ourselves.

"...if the top 10% of global emitters were to cut their carbon footprint to that of the typical EU citizen... that alone would cut global emissions by around one third." - p.208 The Climate Book (Greta Thunberg)

For better or worse, the wealthy are the thought leaders of society. Their values trickle down to the middle and lower classes. When we see them consume at a high rate (per capita), it sends a message that “what I can afford to consume is ok to consume”. So the masses end up throwing away hoards of cheap single use plastics because it’s convenient and not expensive.

The issue with mass consumption by the wealthy is how it influences the behavior of the more impactful middle and lower classes.

In the Steve Jobs biography I was originally shocked that he and his wife had hours long debates about whether or not to use a drying machine (vs hanging laundry outside). For a long time I never saw what he was fighting for, but now it makes sense to me.

> Let’s redo the headline: - People driving their kids to school is driving the climate crisis - People having enough to eat is driving the climate crisis

There is huge range between excess and shortage. There are people in developed world who do not drive their kids in SUVs. There are people in developed world who walk their kids to school. Good urban design / spatial planning is better for live and environment.

> we will do nothing about climate change

We will do nothing. This attitude is just looking for excuses. CO2 emissions per capita in Austria are half of those in USA.

Also most energy use is by your avg consumer heating cooling and consuming. Yachts and private jets are marginal.

I disagree. A solution to the climate crisis needs to face up to the fact that we simply can't continue to consume as we have, if we want a world that's livable for current, much less future generations. It's not that goddamn hard to see.

I find this quite ironic given the astronomical levels of greed of the mainstream churches.

It's more accurate to say, good luck telling the faux affluent they need to cut back on the mindless and excessive consumption.

For example, we know the negative impact of factory farming. We're also aware that too much animal protein has health consequences. And yet The West- as unhealthy as ever - can't help itself.

How exactly was that dream going to happen with the global north constantly exploiting the global south anyway? (Asia seems to be doing just fine these days, so I don't know what you're talking about there.)

Maximize profit then stop what?

Why this rather than a tax to achieve your desired externalities? The problem with this kind of policy is it's very arbitrary - some bureaucracy decides what is and isn't allowed. It also usually comes with a subtext of attacking a particular segment of society that you aren't part of.

If we can remove carbon from the atmosphere or offset it, than a tax equal to that expense during production and used to offset should achieve the outcomes you want. (Ignoring how many programs are poorly built for correctly achieving this real offset).

It doesn't work, because "enough" here would have to be something like, maybe everyone lives in a small apartment in a city, is vegan, and doesn't travel much or at all.

Ten mil is way higher than that. It's probably more like a 50k or lower income with no wealth.

For me and for a lot of people I know, this would be a significant downgrade and I'd rather compete to maintain or improve my quality of life.

I don't have ten mil, but if everyone lived like me, we would be buggered.

The idea that capitalism should go to a point and then be stopped is a pretty standard one from Marx. He greatly admired capitalism but believed once it made people rich it would no longer be needed and the workers would naturally take over through revolution. That’s not to say you’re wrong just because you agree with Marx, but rather you should consider why you are so attached to this idea. Marx’s ideas are a type of religion dressed up to look scientific via “historical materialism”. It’s appealing to believe that time is under humanity’s control rather than something outside of humanity, but there’s strong reasons to believe that is false (the universe will last much longer than humans will).

> IMHO we need a cure that isn't worse than the disease.

Agreed, but you need to realize that one of the symptoms of the disease is the destruction of global civilization as we know it. That's not something we're going to see tomorrow, or in 5 years, but in 10-20 years, if we continue on with the status quo, I would say it's quite likely.

> I think it could satisfy both hard-core capitalists AND environmentalists

Unfortunately not. All the things you mention (air travel, billionaires, etc.) are things that are literally responsible for accelerating the destruction right now.

As far as "draconian" goes, we had 50 years to get something done. We're down to about 5 years before we start seeing the first tier of real consequences now. Draconian is pretty much where it's at for the next several decades, if we're thinking realistically.

My “walk away” number is also $10M (in 2018 dollars, based on when I concluded that target).

Trouble with climate is my carbon footprint would likely go up in retirement rather than down, from the time and resources available to travel. Walking around my town and puttering around waiting to die isn’t my ideal retirement; doing that while having the money to do 10x more fun things is worse not better.

(Side note: I don’t expect to ever retire with $10M in even then-current dollars unless we quickly go Weimar in inflation terms.)

I was thinking about this in the context of wealth inequality and the "existence of billionaires". I don't think that the common refrain of simply attempting to "tax billionaires out of existence" is functional or reasonable. People work hard, then they hit a really good idea and their company sky rockets in value. The notion that there is no ethical way to become a billionaire and that somehow all billionaires are inherently evil is, to me, very naive.

However, Elon Musk shouldn't exist. So how do we stop that? My proposal is a cap on revenue per employee before a company must go public, and a cap on individual ownership of any company. So for example maximum $5m per employee revenue before you have to list, then a single person or entity can own at most 10% of a company.

This means once you hit that figure, you have to list the company and cash out, and let other people step in and take not only responsibility but also share the revenue and ownership more equitably.

> maximize profit until you hit a certain point, then stop

This was explicitly the goal of early capitalist philosophy. Adam Smith envisioned a world where growth came to an end as societies expanded to fill their "economic space".

Smith misinterpreted human desires and motivations; enough is never enough as long as our potential future adversary is also accumulating wealth. Economic arms races ensure there will never be enough.

I like it. One way to do this is to create a personal consumption budget based on what a normal life would look like if the resources were equally shared and everything was done in a sustainable way. The rich would have to come down many steps of the ladder (and pretty much everybody reading this would be classified as rich) and the poor would be able to go up a bit. I don't think it could be done with 8 billion people though, but doing the math on this is super complex and probably would be years worth of work.