I believe the root of the problem lies at the level of the individual. Specifically, the misalignment of incentives between the individual and other people due to tragedy of the commons.
A lot of individuals don't care about climate change only because they happen to live in a cold country, and it won't impact them much. They don't care about people living in hotter countries. I have spoken to such people on HN.
A lot of individuals may say they are happy to pay a carbon tax, but I remember reading some research that when push comes to shove, in practice they don't actually want to pay it, it's only a survey phenomenon. Instead they want other taxpayers to fund the transition, whether it's people on higher incomes or corporate taxes. Again, selfishness. If I am the one causing the problem, I either don't want to solve it, or I want someone else to pay to solve it.
Corporations that pollute want to continue to pollute because they are staffed with such individuals that are responding to those exact same incentives. The corporation is just a collection of selfish individuals with misaligned incentives.
Propaganda and misinformation created by corporations do play a role, but they're not the whole story. The most useful level of analysis (in terms of explaining why we are where we are) is incentives operating on individuals.
> A lot of individuals may say they are happy to pay a carbon tax, but I remember reading some research that when push comes to shove, in practice they don't actually want to pay it, it's only a survey phenomenon.
No, this is yet more corporate propaganda, misinterpreting science as usual.
People support spending their money on climate change, as you increase the amount of money the level of the support goes does down.
This shouldn't be particularly suprising.
But, this only matters if you make the unwarranted assumption that the average person would lose money with a carbon tax, which isn't the case.
So since we already have a majority when it will cost them money, we only get more support if they're getting money back.
Basically everyone has a carbon tax already, even China. They just had to rename it and hide it because 'tax' is too scary a word for people to cope with, particularly Americans.
A lot of individuals don't care about climate change only because they happen to live in a cold country, and it won't impact them much. They don't care about people living in hotter countries. I have spoken to such people on HN.
A lot of individuals may say they are happy to pay a carbon tax, but I remember reading some research that when push comes to shove, in practice they don't actually want to pay it, it's only a survey phenomenon. Instead they want other taxpayers to fund the transition, whether it's people on higher incomes or corporate taxes. Again, selfishness. If I am the one causing the problem, I either don't want to solve it, or I want someone else to pay to solve it.
Corporations that pollute want to continue to pollute because they are staffed with such individuals that are responding to those exact same incentives. The corporation is just a collection of selfish individuals with misaligned incentives.
Propaganda and misinformation created by corporations do play a role, but they're not the whole story. The most useful level of analysis (in terms of explaining why we are where we are) is incentives operating on individuals.