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Comment by Dumblydorr | Hacker News Reader

Personal choice is only about 5% of the change needed to mitigate climate change. Individuals can not choose most things, such as steel and cement and plastic production, they can't enact a carbon tax, they can't close down coal plants or raise capital for nuclear or renewables. Can individuals educate millions of women in the third world or change how refrigerants are managed? Look at drawdown.org, you will see the majority of reductions will be on elected officials and corporations.

The most developed world individuals can do, as you say, is reduce their own footprint in minimal ways and VOTE!!

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This does not really apply to individual Americans. The American carbon footprint boils down to driving and meat. Individual decisions made by super-consumers can be impactful.

Impactful but not sustainable nor scalable. Climate change as we face it is a tragedy of the commons. We are using a negative resource without pricing in that externality. Individual action does not solve a tragedy of the commons; this is a very well established economic theory. I would almost call it a fact.

Without a tax on the resource, all you’re doing is leaving more of it for the others to abuse. The same happens with fishing, rhinos, etc etc.

Individual action is a moot point: we must solve this collectively. Everything else is a polarising distraction.

You're still not correct...you're saying eating plant based diet has essentially zero footprint, which is untrue, especially with food waste. And you're saying driving/transportation choice alone is sufficient, when we know that even if they bought an EV or used a train, those transportation regimes still incur carbon emissions in their production and operation, though admittedly less LOCAL emissions (great!) and potential for lower future emissions as the grid cleans up (great!).

These individuals still can not choose zero-carbon heating/cooling (which is probably 1/3 of American's footprint, which you neglected to even mention), they can't choose how their infrastructure is produced (steel and cement, big time emissions there), they can't choose the actions of their American government, which spends a lot of carbon emissions on its internal activities as well as its foreign incursions.

So no, you really can't "boil down" to zero net emissions as an American unless you stop using heating, cooling, roads, transportation of any kind except walking/bikes, and if you completely stop supporting the US govt and its activities.

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