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Comment by DeepYogurt | Hacker News Reader

> But it is us who are actually performing the "consumerism". It is us who buys tons of garbage and then throw it out.

If only we could collectively incentivize more efficient lifestyles.

I agree, I think a carbon tax that puts a price on the damage people do day to day with their behavior is the only thing that’s going to work on a meaningful scale. The needed changes are too painful to make without pushing hard on peoples’ wallets.

Carbon taxes end up being a regressive tax on the poor (not entirely, but marginally), especially given that poorer folks are often forced to commute longer distances and live in less well insulated and modernized homes.

An approach that focuses on decreasing the price of clean technology, rather than one that just raises the price of dirtier tech and assumes later rebalancing would be a much more effective approach, with possibly still having carbon taxes for corporations, but not individuals.

It doesn't have to just be a tax, the government could make it revenue neutral and use the revenue to provide an offsetting subsidy for cleaner tech.

You can't really live "efficient" being poor.

Depends on your poorness. Poor in India or Africa live extremely efficiently.

Poor people are responsible for way less in terms of carbon.

Not really in my experience. I live in a country that buys old cars from the rich. We have many "ohh, my lungs" cars here.

The same with appliances. People are too poor to buy A+++ electronics.

If you meant poor enough so I go hunting... then yes.

Here's some data:

https://ourworldindata.org/co2-by-income-region

I'm sure there is some nuance there, but by and large, wealthier people produce more CO2.

Certainly. Wealthier people may be more likely than the poor to drive Teslas instead of smoke-belching old bangers, but they also tend to fly more, heat and air-condition their huge houses, use many more gadgets and appliances that generate CO2 during both manufacture and use, etc.

It is us who collectively decide not to collectively incentivize more efficient lifestyles.

The outlook is bad if "survival of a large portion of all humans" isn't itself the incentive.

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