Comment by JohnMakin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by JohnMakin | Hacker News Reader

There seems to be another propaganda/disinformation campaign going on in "eco" circles online, which I call the "personal responsibility" myth. One of the main themes of this "campaign" (if it even is one) is to put all of the onus on making changes beneficial to the climate on the consumer rather than pressuring our representatives and businesses to make better decisions.

My counterargument to these types of things is that if every single person took every single action to reduce their carbon footprint they possibly could, the global economy would simply collapse, and probably very quickly. Large scale, systemic change and likely a massive reduction in consumption is needed - I personally think it unlikely/impossible in today's geopolitical and domestic climate. Then, these types will just start calling you a "doomer." It's all so seemingly scripted I always feel like it's coming from somewhere because it is so insanely counterproductive and predictable.

The other issue with "personal responsibility" is that even if the economy doesn't collapse, unless you get almost everyone on board, it's basically a form of Jevon's paradox.

For every steak you don't eat, someone else quite literally will just eat two.

If you stuff yourself into a small apartment, in the absence of regulation, that's just leaving someone else more space to build in the countryside. And so on and so forth.

You can't fix negative externalities by just not doing them, decreasing the demand and then hoping someone doesn't do them at the now reduced cost, they need to be priced in.

> if every single person took every single action to reduce their carbon footprint they possibly could, the global economy would simply collapse

This is very hard to believe, and makes the reader believe you think economic systems and societies are a bunch of discrete and discontinuous processes. Their efforts, just by taking inertia into account and limited ability for people to change their behavior immediately would send signals progressively to businesses and governments, allowing a good chunk of the system to adapt over decades. A lot of businesses would definitely go bankrupt, but generally econ people are aware of that and think it's a natural process (Schumpeter isn't new).

What you I mostly see in econ circles is just standard pigouvian discourse I believe, nothing too scary: if externalities aren't priced, people have no "real time" incentive to change behavior.

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