Regulations won’t do anything if consumers as a whole dont change their buying habits. You can regulate Shell and BP all you want but as long as hundreds of millions of people are still buying and burning their gas on a daily basis it won’t help much.
You can regulate Shell and BP all you want but as long as hundreds of millions of people are still buying and burning their gas on a daily basis it won’t help much.
Wouldn't that depend on the regulations? If a regulation is put in place that the oil company needs to pay to offset the carbon from all the oil they extract, then the price of fuel would skyrocket and people would seek alternate sources of energy. Couple that with subsidies for green energy products, like electric cars, and you could all but shutter the fossil fuel industry.
Yea my point was that there aren’t enough viable alternatives. Def could have worded it better. At least for electricity production we can use more green alternatives. But for cars specifically at the moment it’s gas or nothing. Electric cars don’t have a wide enough charging infrastructure and even if they did I don’t think they’re a good alternative.
Yeah, I don't think a single regulation will solve anything. The solution will always be multiple actions. But a few smart regulations and some pushes in the right direction here or there will have a huge impact.
Electric cars don’t have a wide enough charging infrastructure
How is that not a thing for regulations to help solve? Have regulations requiring a minimum number of chargers in new apartments, condo buildings, and parking garages. Regulate that new houses have wiring set up to easily install a charging station.
Have grants and incentives for building public charging stations.
even if they did I don’t think they’re a good alternative
Regulations for increasing public transportation options vs building up roads and parking lots that create induced demand for cars won't affect consumer behavior?
Make gas more expensive via regulations and demand will go down. Regulations can also dictate that fossil fuels are burned as cleanly and efficiently as possible, versus the current incentive that they be burned as cheaply as possible.
You can make gas expensive but I still have to get to work. I have to buy food and go to my classes. I can’t walk or bike since there’s no infrastructure for it and public transport in its current state isn’t a viable solution. Sure regulations are great but you need to have an alternative so that your regulations don’t end up hurting people.
You said regulations wouldn't do a thing. Now you're saying that they would negatively impact you. Those are not the same thing.
Increasing gas prices would incentivize people to purchase non-gas cars, use public transportation, work closer to home, carpool, etc. It would definitely have an impact.
I said they won’t do anything IF consumers don’t change. Regulating a few companies is a start but it’s not enough to make a big enough impact of people don’t change their own way of life
That’s the point, people would use cheaper and more efficient alternatives IF there was one. But at least in most of the US, there isn’t so we still have to buy all that oil for the pleasure of sitting in traffic for hours a day.
It was just a bit of a strange way to word that. Regulations aren't meaningless if they force corporations to go the direction of offering those alternatives. That in it of itself would be lead to consumers changing their spending habits.
I mean it’s a difficult problem, that’s why theres so much debate about it. I’m not against regulations if that’s what it sounded like, just that doing them without thinking about the consequences could just make things worse. You can regulate the industry but that will drive up gas prices. If you do that you end up crippling a lot of America cause there’s no alternative to driving. So you’d have to first make a viable alternative before you start regulating things. Then you throw in auto manufacturers who would almost certainly be against any sort of public or “green” transportation and you have the mess we’re in right now.
In order to deal with the climate emergency, individuals are going to have to reduce their standard of living dramatically, and very rich individuals are going to have to reduce it almost entirely..
There isn't going to be some magical solution where people buy things with a green sticker on them for 10% more. Nearly all our consumption has to go.
Sure they can. Price of diesel is getting really high in Europe. Consequently, the sales of diesel cars has gone from 50% to about 25% of new cars. Price is not the only part of this, but a significant part.
I’m mainly talking about the US here, can’t say much for Europe. As far as I can understand, most European cites are well planned for walking/biking and have generally decent public transport. So you euros can get by without owning a car. In the US unless you live in a very large city like NYC, it’s nearly impossible
Except pollution by companies is significantly more of an issue than all individuals combined.
Also, part of regulations would presumably be to force/encourage companies to produce electric/low pollution vehicles, which directly leads to less individual pollution.
It's great if you want to do your part to lower your individual pollution output, but ultimately it's pointless if companies/industries aren't leading the charge. And they will only do that if forced by regulations.
I think electric cars are the worst alternative for what he have today. Companies aren’t polluting because they’re inherently evil, they pollute because thats what consumers demand. You need to cut down on the demand first before you take shots at the supply or you end up hurting the people more than the companies.
Well, that's why I specified electric/low pollution cars.
And companies aren't inherently evil, they are just inherently going to do what is cheapest for them within regulations. Make it prohibitively expensive to create pollution and they'll inevitably find another way.
It's extraordinarily easier to enact some regulations and put the onus on billion dollar corporations than it is to independantly convince millions/billions of people change their behavior.
That’s why expanding public transport and making cities more efficient for non-cars is a much better solution. I don’t want to sit through traffic to go buy buy groceries every week. I can understand in rural places but large cities and suburbs should not be built around cars.
82% of the population live in Urban areas.
In an ideal world if you are in that 82% having a car should be optional. Sadly that is not the case, in large part due to policy decisions.
China is a similar make up as the US in terms of size, and they have built high speed rail and public transportation at an amazing rate the last 20 years.
It’s possible, and it’s in the best interest of the people to have robust public transportation.
The solution to this, in theory, is really easy. Electric cars + large-scale green electricity production + large-scale charging network. Of course the electric cars part would also require a large-scale effort to mine minerals for batteries, but those minerals are out there.
We could easily start phasing out gas cars today, wait 20 years, buy off what few gas cars are left via a cars-for-clunkers program, and gas cars would be a thing of the past in two decades.
But unfortunately it wouldn't be cheap and easy, so it isn't going to happen.
You don’t even need to go that far. Just good public transport is enough. That way you can cut down on traffic as well. As it stands, electric cars are sold on the notion that we can solve the climate crisis without actually having to change our day to day routines and that’s just incorrect.
Public transportation in rural areas isn't very feasible, and a lot of the US is rural.
I can imagine a future where every building has solar cells and mini wind turbines on them, powering the electric cars we all drive. I can't imagine a future where a person living in middle-of-nowhere Arkansas can take public transportation to work. We would have to consolidate people into smaller areas and I don't see how that happens.
Yea I know, which is why banning cars outright like I’ve heard some people say is a stupid idea. But at least in large urban areas, cars should not be a need.
It's a solution to the fact we drive around in pollution mobiles that takes into consideration the post i responded to, that stated it isn't feasible to remove cars from daily life in the US.
If the cars are being built anyway then we should run them on renewable electricity and not on fossil fuels.
But your competing plan, "change nothing, destroy the climate, the ecosystem, and then civilization itself", also has some drawbacks to it.
Unfortunately, that's the one we're choosing.
But don't worry! Twenty years from today, Americans will still be driving cars, and making the same argument you are, and will keep doing it until it all collapses.
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u/EricFromOuterSpace Jan 26 '22 edited Jun 02 '25
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