If we can get a carbon cap and trade system in place, I'd be ecstatic. I just think it's naive that people think it's big corp lobbying congress to keep that from happening. People would freak out.

When I'm making these statements, I'm not saying that "this is the result of individual decisions" it's just that all these individual decisions affect policy.

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. It's ridiculous. Everyone wants it both ways. They want carbon tax/trade, but they also want low gas prices. You can't have both.

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

I mean. I look around. Where I live, the main source of GHGs are from personal vehicles, gas stoves, and animal agriculture. All of which there are already very reasonable alternatives to, that people just don't want. There are some "big economy" things there, but they aren't nearly as big as just people driving gasoline fueled cars.

Obviously that's not the same everywhere, but when i sit and look very hard at the problem, blaming some ephemeral "economy" or marginal economic growth isn't whats causing the problem. It's every day human decisions. It's shit I've given public comment for. Nothings changing because even most people in these threads don't realized the impact if things they consider essential to their lives.

Each of is going to work every day is the economy. It’s not the stock market.

If we stopped the economy, food wouldn’t be on shelves, electricity would stop coming out of outlets in your house, people would die of starvation, heat stroke, and frigid temperatures. The economy is a living thing, not some ivory tower fiction, and it’s how we survive as a society right now.

We need to change the way we do things, but blaming a nebulous economy is naive. We are the economy. Everything productive we do is the economy.

Right, so I'm having trouble in my neighborhood meeting trying to get safe bicycle infrastructure put in, which is constantly being blocked people preserving street parking, or switching from gas stoves and heating equipment to electric (even though the electric is in large part still GHG based), but you're only asking people to turn their front yard into fucking farmland, and convert the worlds largest economy into one built on subsistence farming.

I honestly feel like your arguments are so naively idealistic that you'd have a hard time convincing your neighbor that it's feasible, much less an entire city.

This argument are in the same vein of the cultural revolution, and that didn't end well.

"Doing something" is a vague and nebulous term. People will have to give up tangible things they don't want to. Fighting climate change isn't all puppy dogs and rainbows. It's living in a walkup apartment instead of a house, it's trading a cheeseburger for a veggieburger, and it's riding an ebike in the rain instead of driving.

I already do most of those things. Most people I meet that promote "doing something" about climate change, suddenly say, "well not that!" when I start talking about the high GHG emissions from common everyday "necessities" they feel they can't or shouldn't have to part with.

I know. It's hard problem, primarily a coordination problem, but also a problem of energy. It's solvable, but when push comes to shove, people don't want to change.

I live in liberal SF and people won't even increase density, much less give up their precious automobiles to cut their carbon footprint. It's a much more difficult problem to solve. Most of the people who say they care about climate change won't even give up beef, much less ride an ebike.

The climate is incredibly important. Our "made up" system of trade is also incredibly important. A collapse of either of them would leave most of us dead or impoverished.

> How do you measure the economy?

My ability to get food for some form of labor at the grocery store is a pretty good starting point.

I don't have a farm, so I'm wholly dependent on other people halfway across my country to grow my food for me. I trade my labor indirectly for that food. That's the economy.

You do realize that if the economy stopped billions of people would die, right?

I'm all for lowering emissions, I've been supporting serious climate change legislation for my entire adult life, but pretending the global economy isn't a serious and important thing misses the point.

Step 1: Understand the reference

Step 2: War

Step 3: Be Alfred Nobel???

Step 4: Profit!