> that could be: give away solar panels and two way heat pumps to low-income families, tax the profits of oil and gas companies, enforce right to repair, remove tariffs on chinese car makers if they create jobs in europe, fund train networks to get tickets cheaper than flying, invest in renewable energy to make electricity cheap. theres a lot of options. all of them will lead to some inflation and public debt but there are easy ways to offload that to the rich.
The problem is that most of these (and potentially all of these) ideas sound good, but achieve very little. Some (e.g. right to repair, sadly) will achieve almost nothing at all. This would be a scatter-gun approach at best; at worst, it creates the impression of doing something while actually doing very little.
I don't know what the best solution is. Arguably a genuine carbon tax (one that taxes large producers for the previously-externalised costs of greenhouse gas production, while providing tax cuts to the general population) is the single most effect means of enacting real change. However, Australia demonstrated that even a scheme that results in real, substantial income tax cuts while generating measurable, real reductions in emissions is vulnerable to a scare campaign by a committed, ultra-right attack dog politician.
I strongly suspect that our only potential way out of this now is via geoengineering, and that's fraught with dangers. I am also worried that a lack of government interest in climate change will eventually induce a highly wealthy individual to undertake geoengineering privately, without oversight, scientific input or regulation. But I cannot see the world stopping this any other way, other than by reversing the effects of climate change via nuclear winter.
The problem is that most of these (and potentially all of these) ideas sound good, but achieve very little. Some (e.g. right to repair, sadly) will achieve almost nothing at all. This would be a scatter-gun approach at best; at worst, it creates the impression of doing something while actually doing very little.
I don't know what the best solution is. Arguably a genuine carbon tax (one that taxes large producers for the previously-externalised costs of greenhouse gas production, while providing tax cuts to the general population) is the single most effect means of enacting real change. However, Australia demonstrated that even a scheme that results in real, substantial income tax cuts while generating measurable, real reductions in emissions is vulnerable to a scare campaign by a committed, ultra-right attack dog politician.
I strongly suspect that our only potential way out of this now is via geoengineering, and that's fraught with dangers. I am also worried that a lack of government interest in climate change will eventually induce a highly wealthy individual to undertake geoengineering privately, without oversight, scientific input or regulation. But I cannot see the world stopping this any other way, other than by reversing the effects of climate change via nuclear winter.