> Corporations are responsible for something like 70% of global emissions.
Corporations produce goods and services that people consume. I think it is intellectually lazy to attribute all the blame of pollution to the producer side of the economic relationship rather than the consumer side. The people consuming the polluting goods and services usually derive most of the economic benefits, the producers and people along the value chain capture some value, and everyone not involved in the transaction (especially future generations) get to suffer the externalities without having the chance to prevent the transaction between producer and consumer.
Many people do not regard climate change as a priority and do not use it to influence their voting or buying decisions. E.g. in the march 19 2022 economist yougov poll of 1500 US adult citizens, out of 14 important topics, the issue regarded as "very important" by the largest group of people is "jobs and the economy" (65%) -- tied dead last is "climate change and the environment", which only 43% of the surveyed population regard as very important.
I am not optimistic that effective public policy and regulation to seriously address global warming can be rolled out until there is relatively wide support from the voting public to regulate things like human population growth & rationing of scarce resources. Politically I don't think any politician could dream of stating that they are in favour of a policy of population control, it'd kill their political career. I don't suggest we try to debate it now in this thread, it tends to lead to incredibly toxic discussions. In western democratic capitalist societies the social contract often seems to value individual rights and freedom over the needs of the collective -- at some level this seems fundamentally incompatible with "limits to growth" where one generation might need to leave enough resources for subsequent generations.
Corporations produce goods and services that people consume. I think it is intellectually lazy to attribute all the blame of pollution to the producer side of the economic relationship rather than the consumer side. The people consuming the polluting goods and services usually derive most of the economic benefits, the producers and people along the value chain capture some value, and everyone not involved in the transaction (especially future generations) get to suffer the externalities without having the chance to prevent the transaction between producer and consumer.
Many people do not regard climate change as a priority and do not use it to influence their voting or buying decisions. E.g. in the march 19 2022 economist yougov poll of 1500 US adult citizens, out of 14 important topics, the issue regarded as "very important" by the largest group of people is "jobs and the economy" (65%) -- tied dead last is "climate change and the environment", which only 43% of the surveyed population regard as very important.
I am not optimistic that effective public policy and regulation to seriously address global warming can be rolled out until there is relatively wide support from the voting public to regulate things like human population growth & rationing of scarce resources. Politically I don't think any politician could dream of stating that they are in favour of a policy of population control, it'd kill their political career. I don't suggest we try to debate it now in this thread, it tends to lead to incredibly toxic discussions. In western democratic capitalist societies the social contract often seems to value individual rights and freedom over the needs of the collective -- at some level this seems fundamentally incompatible with "limits to growth" where one generation might need to leave enough resources for subsequent generations.
https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/joqdn4nhky/econToplines.pdf