• RustyEarthfire@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Effective systemic change requires changing the systems, not individual people or companies. If we want less virgin plastic or gasoline burning, it needs to be less profitable to extract oil, process it, and sell it to people who want it, otherwise somebody is going to do that.

    • SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      There has to be a hard limit on the amount of CO2 that can be extracted, and let that limit go down each year. Then use permit auctions or carbon coins or whatever to determine who can extract, or import. It’ll automatically make plastic and gasoline more expensive and alternatives cheaper in comparison.

      Of course there’ll be lot of “but the economy” and “our competiveness”. If the last half century is anything to go by, economy wins. So that means fundamental chances to the economy. To the way money works, how loans use interests and drives growth before anything changes. For a lot of people that’s almost physically impossible to even contemplate. Usually this changes as the current system deteriorates, but that can take a while.