gad-fly wrote: ↑July 19th, 2020, 10:06 pm
Greta wrote: ↑July 14th, 2020, 8:17 pm
We know that fossil fuel companies and investment banks - the most powerful corporate entities on Earth - have an interest in maintaining the status quo, and have a history of stymying sustainable developments and pushing for ever greater populations and consumption.
In the meantime, regular people can help sustainability (and their health) by reducing their consumption of meat. There are many other ways to lower one's environmental footprint, such as repairing rather than throwing away, are minimising use of cars and planes, but those are not in the thread's scope.
It is futile to blame investment bankers. as is to blame farmers, manufacturers, and fossil fuel extractors. What they have in common is The Profit Motive as the driving force. Public interest will always play a minor role. Given a choice between cattle ranching and planting soy bean, a farmer would pick what offers a higher return on his labor. That cattle would emit methane leading to global warming is a side concern, since discharging methane to the atmosphere is free. On the other hand, a carbon tax would raise his cost, and perhaps reduce his return even if beef becomes more expensive. In turn, the consumer would be induced to eat less beef. The same story goes with plastic producers who can be allowed forget about plastic garbage in the ocean, hillside, and river course.
What should be done is to charge real cost from cradle to grave, and let the wallet vote.
Indeed. Unfortunately investment banks, fossil fuel companies and their media minions will not permit the true cost of pollution to be me by the producers of the pollution. Instead those costs are gifted to the masses.
In Australia, we first tried to implement a carbon tax in 2007 but the Murdoch media - with their strong business associations with fossil fuel companies - has removed all Prime Ministers who have even spoken about taxing emissions, let alone proposed serious policy. Howard was removed after taking a carbon tax into the 2007 election. Then Kevin Rudd was removed for trying to bring through a bill that would have done as your said. Julia Gillard was hounded incessantly, and unfairly, until she too left the scene.
That opened the way for strong coal advocate, Tony Abbott, who even went so far as to remove the science ministry (he was also a fundamentalist Christian). However, we was so imcompetent that even Murdoch could not save him. That opened the way for middle-of-the-road conservative Malcolm Turnbull, whose interest in a carbon tax also lead to his demise. This paved the way fro strongly pro-coal Prime Minister Morrison, who enjoys VIP treatment by the Murdoch press, and is popular despite his obvious corruption and failures, including refusing to speak to former fire service commissioners who tried for months to gain an audience to warm him of the dangers, and then a billion animals were lost, many human lives and dwellings, and huge tracts of wild areas and arable land destroyed.
But since he remains staunchly pro-fossil fuels and anti-renewables, the Murdochs have lifted him up again, lionising him for his response to the latest financial crisis after lambasting the Labor Party for doing exactly the same thing during the GFC.
Meanwhile, so much wilderness is being destroyed that, by the time we embrace renewables, it will be too late. Too late to take advantage of innovation, too late for the animals made extinct, and too late for destroyed ecosystems.