A nearly global lockdown barely made a dent in CO2 emissions. And yet your individual actions are supposed to matter?

You are absolutely correct. The fix for global warming is heavy investment into renewables and nuclear energy. Change can only happen at a global scale, not from individual consumer actions. Plus, taking these kinds of actions will create jobs and grow the economy. It’s a perfectly sane capitalistic solution.

Think about it. Solar energy is free, while digging for oil is a very expensive endeavor. It’s only lasted so long because it’s deeply embedded in our culture and the big oil businesses are resistant to change. The problem with capitalism is that when you don’t introduce factors for change (I.e. competition), companies get lazy and uninventive.

Big investments in wind and solar and use the excess energy (since the sources are not constant) to split water into hydrogen and use the existing gas pipelines to cart hydrogen around the globe as an additional fuel source. Easy. But that’s not something your average consumer choosing between an SUV and a Prius will ever accomplish.

That's why it's so important that governments in coordination with one another take big and rapid steps to eliminate C02, methane, and other global warming emissions. Individual actions are not nothing but only collective actions can solve this problem. Now there should be many incentives to go solar for individuals but that's not close to enough. The thing is that there's very little downside to any of this except for oil and gas companies. By doing so, you eliminate most forms of pollution. Pollution costs millions of lives worldwide per year. 25-30% of American children have a form of asthma or breathing problems exacerbated by pollution. Quality of life is much better with clean air. Who would not want that? Moreover, there are vast economic advantages to going green. I saw a calculation that putting 30 solar panels on my roof would save me $13,000 over the life of the panels. You can actually add a few extra and sell power back to the grid. In one of the sunniest states in the union, there are very few houses with solar and government does almost nothing to speed the conversion. A lot less money would be in the hands of tyrants in Russia, the Middle East, and elsewhere. The number of green jobs added per year already dwarfs that of carbon-based industries. So, you gain green jobs, you improve quality of life, you keep your children from suffering from asthma, you starve tyrants of easy money, and you improve the environment.

You're completely correct about individual actions. Unless governments and businesses get on board too then it's going to be impossible.

Preventing climate change is going to much need much more fundamental change than recycling trash.

Good summary for the Green New Deal (and measures like it in other countries) needs to be passed. Thanks for posting.

You’re wrong.

**takes self-satisfied sip of coffee through paper straw, knowing I’ve made a difference**

zxczxcv wrote:

Individual actions are not nothing

You may be technically correct, but your individual action has virtually no practical impact. Look, the average American emits 16 tons of CO2 a year. The world emits 1100-1200 tons of CO2 each second. Even if you were to cut your emissions to zero and somehow kept it at zero during your entire teen and adult life, you'd delay the consequences of global warming by less than a second.

And that estimate is being generous. You know what happens if some people start using less gas? The price of it goes down, which would encourage other people to use more gas since it's no longer as expensive. So your impact wouldn't just be negligible, it would also be temporary.