There's one thing I disagree with: the notion that we should voluntarily stay "within our share" in order to not be forced to do it.
I tried for years to avoid flying. I guess I stayed on the ground for about a decade It was a royal pain, because e.g. visiting the UK (where I have close relatives) from Norway is really, really painful by surface travel. It shouldn't be: it's close, after all, and there used to be ferries. But they all got closed down due to cheap flights (more recently than you'd think).
"Voluntarily" reducing your carbon footprint will usually run into this obstacle. It means taking a lot of costs and inconvenience on yourself, which wouldn't have been there if we'd been forced (or rather, used our collective decision mechanisms to decide) to share these costs fairly. Concretely in my case, there might have been a ferry from Bergen again.
That's why I welcome legislation. Even "oppressive" legislation that I wouldn't go for myself, like banning meat. I wouldn't go for it, but I'd respect it if it was passed, because I realize we have to make these decisions together, consciously, rather than individually and according to our personal guilt levels.
This is what's missing. Thunberg and co are raging at the politicians, but politicians are probably more willing to accept big changes than the public is. They're as bold as the public allows them to.
We need to get together and establish what our duties are. Maybe we'll let some get a bigger share of the carbon budget. Maybe we'll let the rich buy themselves a bigger share of those resources, just like they currently get to buy themselves a bigger share of everything else. But whatever we decide: the important thing is not your personal decisions, but that you accept that contra Bush the elder, your way of life IS up for negotiation.
The biggest impact on climate is industry.
No eating meat, or not flying is a drop in the bucket.
I think meat industry was estimated at 3%.
Politicians are picked by big business and that's why there is a resistance to deal with the issue systematically.
Also sad truth is that N America and Europe are reducing their footprint while China and India are happily growing on heaps of burning plastics.
This is global problem and we don't have tools to deal with it globally. Give money to China to reduce the emissions, they will take it and put up a front of them doing something. The horrible truth is that we can barely do anything about the global warning. All we are really doing is watch this tragic play called "The tragedy of the commons" slowly playing out as we seep coke through paper straw from a plastic cup.
The thing to remember here is that NA and EU can afford to reduce their emissions since they consume Chinese/Indian products in the first place. If more things had to be manufactured in-house, the local western emissions would be higher.
So on top of that, China and India (and other developing nations) need to be properly incentivized to switch to more friendly technologies. China saw this with their massive coal usage causing intense smog and moving quite a bit to solar (note: haven't checked what the current status of that is so if it's changed I could be wrong)
Well, it's certainly the case that voluntarily performing these actions increases market demand.
Consider for example the enormous proliferation of vegan food. I don't know about Norway, but Sweden has stuff everywhere, in rural village supermarkets for example.
It certainly helps that a lot of activists skew towards the higher income end of the spectrum.
I tried for years to avoid flying. I guess I stayed on the ground for about a decade It was a royal pain, because e.g. visiting the UK (where I have close relatives) from Norway is really, really painful by surface travel. It shouldn't be: it's close, after all, and there used to be ferries. But they all got closed down due to cheap flights (more recently than you'd think).
"Voluntarily" reducing your carbon footprint will usually run into this obstacle. It means taking a lot of costs and inconvenience on yourself, which wouldn't have been there if we'd been forced (or rather, used our collective decision mechanisms to decide) to share these costs fairly. Concretely in my case, there might have been a ferry from Bergen again.
That's why I welcome legislation. Even "oppressive" legislation that I wouldn't go for myself, like banning meat. I wouldn't go for it, but I'd respect it if it was passed, because I realize we have to make these decisions together, consciously, rather than individually and according to our personal guilt levels.
This is what's missing. Thunberg and co are raging at the politicians, but politicians are probably more willing to accept big changes than the public is. They're as bold as the public allows them to.
We need to get together and establish what our duties are. Maybe we'll let some get a bigger share of the carbon budget. Maybe we'll let the rich buy themselves a bigger share of those resources, just like they currently get to buy themselves a bigger share of everything else. But whatever we decide: the important thing is not your personal decisions, but that you accept that contra Bush the elder, your way of life IS up for negotiation.