>If we can get a carbon cap and trade system in place, I'd be ecstatic.

Most western countries do have one in place so it can happen in California too.

>I just think it's naive that people think it's big corp lobbying congress to keep that from happening. People would freak out.

I am not too familiar with your local situation. What I was trying to say is that every time this is presented as an individual decision and sacrifice instead of as a communal one, it discourages change.

>I was celebrating when gas prices exploded in CA this last year, assuming more people would switch to renewables. Literally the opposite happened. The gov't started mailing out checks to people to help them afford gasoline.

The last year has been a bit of an exception because of the war and inflation. The EU has felt it even more I think despite being less dependent on private vehicles.

All those trucks and personal vehicles you're seeing around you already follow environmental and safety standards that make them more expensive and emmit less.

If vehicles that were cheaper but worse for the environment could be made and sold legally they would be, but a communal democratic decision has been made to limit the legal limits on emissions for new vehicles.

The responsibility is too often put on the individual to do the right thing, and it distracts from the actually significant decisions that need to be made on a political level.

The significant change can only happen as a communal democratic decision. By us choosing a government that's willing to set stricter limits on emissions, introduce carbon emissions trading and requirements on blended fuels. Many parts of the western world don't even have a useful public transportation system that people can use to reliability get to work and everywhere else they need.

This problem cant be solved by righteous individuals going out and buying an expensive electric car, recycling or going vegan.

It's a communal problem that requires a communal decision, and as you can see in the article you posted, the emissions.have been going down successfully, just not fast enough.

There are companies and think tanks out there that want to put the responsibility on you, the individual, to discourage you from voting in a way that would potentially decrease their profit, but increase the profit of other upcoming industries and be better for all of us.

Nobody's talking about stopping the economy.

People are complaining that huge damage is done to the environment for the sake of squeezing out every little last percentage point of economic growth.

Climate change will probably have a far bigger negative effect on the economy than the changes that we need to do to limit climate change.

The issue is the tragedy of the commons.

Agreeing to certain restrictions on emissions we will all benefit long term, but short term anyone that ignores the restrictions will benefit personally.