There are many thing people could do, eat less meat, smaller homes, electric cars, green energy, no flights etc. but the vast majority of people does exactly nothing.
"Electric cars" is less likely tho because having a car at all is a money drain.
Policy changes are needed to address this problem. It’s a political problem that needs a political solution.
How much % of the world's population would have to do those things, for the graph to show a reversal of the trend? 10%? 50%? Everyone?
How does enforcing emissions regulations result in less productive cars?
Cars move about 1.5 people per trip on average. A big pickup or SUV is not any more productive doing this task than a mid sized car.
Even if you don't take it as prescriptive, it would be dumb not to take it as descriptive (i.e. what the other player will do in a situation)
Don’t worry about that, just recycle more!
It is about time we stop blaming the individual at the bottom of the ladder for the problems of society. And let me preempt you: society isn’t made up of individuals, but it is much greater than the sum of its parts.
Or to put it another way - which of those things is under our control? If one can do something more, then why not? Because billionaires? The climate doesn't blame anyone, it just exists; being to blame or not, doesn't matter when we're all in the same boat together.
I’m the first to recycle, so you’re preaching to the choir. What I’m saying if we could do better than self-flagellating. Or rather, there is nothing our self-flagellation will achieve in the end.
We keep focusing on things that are easy to measure like how much meat does one person eat, rather than the real numbers that are effectively immeasurable. Am I a worse person for eating beef, yet not using LLMs nor driving a car, than a vegan would might do all those things? Only for my conscience to know. In the end, it all amounts to hypocrisy, and squabbling among the plebes, while the rich keep polluting the planet.
Consumer demand doesn't determine whether to build coal vs solar vs nuclear. Public policy does. No new oil/gas/coal plants, period, and start working to shut down the ones we have. Electricity generation is the source of about a third of all CO2 emissions.
Consumer demand doesn't determine whether we do carbon capture, or reforestation. Those require public policy.
Eat less and different meat with a smaller footprint. Mostly poultry, eggs, also more organ meats, etc. Also combat fertiliser runoff, etc.
The methane output of a field of cattle isn't that dramatically different from a forest with deer, decomposing wood, etc. Methane is also a potent but temporary actor and tackling it primarily just buys us very little time which will be used as an excuse to keep pumping co2.
However we grow a good bhunch of the feed for that cattle and for ourselves with fossil fuel based fertilisers. We need to quit that. If we get rid of both that 8% co2 output for fertilisers and get rid of the manure as well because we ditch meat too much...
Well we'll solve a lot of related problems by drastically reducing the world's population with a gigantic famine.