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I have read similar perspectives before[1], and I am not sure how I feel about them. On the one hand, much of the industrial pollution /is/ in response to consumer demand and reducing personal consumption has some impact on that. But on the other hand, it seems very clear that by and large the public will never change consumption patterns to be more environmentally friendly ( sometimes because they cannot financially, and often because they do not care ). So it seems systematic changes are necessary.

[1] https://orionmagazine.org/article/forget-shorter-showers/

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The data seems to disagree on this point. A 10% rise in the price of gasoline, for instance, will cut consumption overnight by 2%, rising to 5% over the next 5 years or so as people make longer term adjustments.

There are a surprising amount of substitutions people can (and, as measured, do) make to their habits when the prices go up. Overnight they may consolidate trips, drive the more efficient car they already own, or just not make a marginal trip at all. Over 5 years they may consider buying a more efficient car, or living closer to work, or any of a large number of possible solutions that you only think about when the price is affecting you directly.

People do change their habits in response to price signals. The trick is actually raising the prices (eg via taxes on environmentally bad things). After that you don't really need to do much convincing.

"the public will never change consumption patterns to be more environmentally friendly"

Gas / oil / coal / food are not free. In fact the poorer you are, the more expensive they are relative to total lifestyle.

The financial markets are pretty messed up. The newspaper interest rate is 0.025% or whatever, but it doesn't matter. The real world interest rate for poor people is 29.99% credit cards and loansharks and rent-to-own scams. If that were fixed, so poor people could buy house insulation and solar panels at bank level interest rates instead of loan shark level interest rates or no operating financial markets at all...

"So it seems systematic changes are necessary."

We don't have the political organization at this time to do anything other than mess things up worse than they are currently. The same folks who can't provide a modern medical system, a sensible K12 or higher ed system, can't do foreign policy without killing millions of innocent civilians, can't run an economy to the benefit of more than 1% of the citizens, if, given more power over environmental issues, are just going to find a way to make the rich richer, the poor poorer, and kill a bunch of proles all while telling us its for "our" own good. One has to be pragmatic, screwing up is the only thing they've done for a couple generations. Given that historical record, its very hard to support .gov intervention beyond the "put a green ribbon imported from a Chinese factory on my car to raise awareness" level of action.

> The financial markets are pretty messed up... The real world interest rate for poor people is 29.99% credit cards and loansharks and rent-to-own scams.

Yeah, turns out there's a heck of a risk premium involved with making unsecured non-recourse loans to people who don't make all that much money. This sucks, of course, but what in God's name do you expect to happen instead? Banks willingly losing billions a year on bad loans? We do have charities in this country, but banks aren't them.

> If that were fixed, so poor people could buy house insulation and solar panels at bank level interest rates instead of loan shark level interest rates...

Poor people buying home insulation? I thought we called it the Weatherization Assistance Program. (Part of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.) If that didn't work out, why not, and what exactly do you think will work out? (And anyway, do poor people generally own a house, or rent?)

I thought banks already tried loaning money to people who couldn't pay it back. It produced the recent housing bubble and crash.

Reducing consumption is a much, much more effective strategy than divestment. If half the people halve their carbon consumption then global carbon use goes down a quarter. If half the investors stop investing in fossil fuel companies then those companies that are publicly traded will only see their stocks go down a tiny amount.

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