Why are you doing these things? I have it on good authority that:
So I should start doing those things mentioned, not as a way to minimize the dangers of Climate Change, but to better position myself for when the government regulations come out?
I don’t think you are misinterpreting what the OP is saying, no.
I believe there are climate change denialists.
Explained on post #160. But I will notice here the typical misguided opinion of followers of FOX news and conservative social media friends.
That one part of it, another reason that is very important is that consumer power then does guide a lot of changes that the government can make.
This is exactly the same argument as “If you think tax rate should be higher, go ahead and make an extra payment to the IRS!”
There are lots of people who feel strongly about the issue, but resent taking the initiative themselves when others continue to behave irresponsibly and benefit from it. Why would I spend $40,000 on an electric car when my neighbor is free to (and can afford to) drive his 20-year old SUV that only gets 15 mpg?
The only way to make a large change is to even the playing field for everyone, and force ourselves to share the burden. There just aren’t enough people who will voluntarily take the burden.
I don’t know what you mean by this.
Why would you base your actions on what OTHER people are doing?
There’s a level of “preaching to the choir” here … I think the average SDMB poster is already living an environmentally conscience lifestyle
This is important … We the People AND the government need to make these changes together … the individual has a part to play, the government has a part to play and the international community has their part … together we can solve the problem …
Because what is rational to do when acting individually is not always the same as what is rational to want everyone to be forced to do. This is Economics 101. Prisoner’s Dilemma stuff.
The classic example is the smoking paradox. Suppose you work in an office with 40 people and all of them, including you, smoke. You really love smoking. You write fan letters to Phillip Morris and sing smoking songs. Why, you like smoking so much that you figure the value, to you, of smoking a cigarette is a buck.
The thing is, you DON’T like smoke being in your eyes, that hurts. You don’t even like the smoke from your own smoke being in your eyes. To you, the irritation of that is worth about a negative 25 cents.
Everyone in your office feels the same way, with the same values.
If there is no rule against smoking in your office, the rational thing for you to do is always to smoke. No matter how much smoke is in the air, smoking will increase your utility by 75 cents - a buck up for the joy of smoking, and 25 cents down for the smoke in your eyes. The problem you face, of course, is that it’s also rational for everyone else in the office to smoke. In fact, smoking is ALWAYS the rational choice, no matter how many other people are smoking. (Do the math.) You’re always ahead by smoking.
Of course, this inevitably means all 40 people will smoke, and so everyone will suffer a negative utility of -9 bucks - plus $1 for the joy of their own cigarette, minus $10 for the smoke of 40 cigarettes. If you individually choose not to smoke, you are worse off; you’re down $9.75, since you save 25 cents of irritation but lose a buck’s worth of delicious nicotine. It is always in your best interests to smoke.
Okay, let’s now change the game; it’s put to a vote; should smoking be banned in the office? Note that it is an open concept office, there will be smoke detectors, and the penalty for smoking far exceeds your utility (you get fired.) Now what do you do? Rationally, you will vote to ban smoking. Even though the rational decision when you were acting on your own was to smoke, the rational decision if you know everyone will act in concert is to vote to make it impossible for anyone, including yourself, to smoke. You will increase your utility from -9 to 0.
This is, basically, the logical issue behind this entire thread. Acting individually to reduce carbon emissions does very, very little. It’s often not rational. However, it is, at the same time, perfectly rational for the same person to want political action to take place whereby EVERYONE has to do something.
This applies to a great deal of public policy. Back in the day, if you were walking a dog and it had to take a dump, you just left the shit behind on the sidewalk. This isn’t that long ago - when I was a kid in the 70s and 80s dog shit was everywhere. It was irritating as hell but for any one individual dog owner leaving your dog’s shit behind was the rational choice, since it’s super convenient and it is very unlikely you will personally step in your own dog’s shit. But collectively we decided to prohibit such things, through fines wayyy higher than people are willing to pay. Now you almost never see dog shit on the sidewalk. What did not make sense individually made perfect sense collectively. People are better off now. (If you want to step back in time, go to France, where laws against leaving dog crap around are very recent and are almost never enforced; there is dog shit absolutely everywhere in major cities.)
Taxes? Same thing. I, personally, would be much better off individually if I paid no tax. But if there was no rule about paying taxes there’s be no government and I’d be a slave to some marauding warlord. I heartily approve of the law that forces me and everyone else to pay tax because I am better off for it, even though if it was an individual choice I would clearly be better off NOT paying tax.
I base my actions on the consequences of my actions. Why would ANYONE take an action that has an economic cost to them, and by itself provides negligible benefit to himself/herself or to the world? That’s the root cause of the Tragedy of the Commons. That’s why it takes an agreement between a lot of people to make a change.
Though of course, I already live as “green” as I can, but not to the point where it incurs a lot of cost to me. So I bike most places, but not to the extent that I’m spending all my free time going places. I have a Honda Fit, not a Tesla. We use the air conditioning as little as possible (still haven’t used it this year), but not paid a fortune on ultra-efficient cooling systems. etc.
Thank you for typing this. But I disagree with this here. You are not factoring in the costs of the cigarette nor the health costs of smoking that cigarette. So this premise that you’ve constructed is already flawed.
I dispute this. If I like to smoke, and it’s easier to smoke in the office instead of going outside, why would I vote to ban smoking in the office? That makes no sense.
Who knows? Ask the people who buy electric cars.
But, there are economic incentives to being conservative with such things. Gas costs money, so a gas guzzler is hard on your wallet as well as the earth. AC costs money to run.
I think you missed the point of the analogy. Tell you what, change the analogy to eating beans at lunch, and farting in the office.
Because you would rather smoke outside than to deal with the smoke inside, but, even if you are not smoking inside, unless it is banned, you are still dealing with the smoke.
There are people with more resources than the bare resources needed for survival, and people make decisions with those resources. They may not use them to maximize their personal utility, instead deciding to gain a personal fulfillment utility out of spending their resources in a socially conscious way.
Why would I want to fart in the office? That makes even LESS sense.
That’s an assumption made that I disagree with. I wouldn’t rather smoke outside than deal with smoke inside. In terms of the flawed analogy, I assign a value of $50 to not having to walk outside and smoke. Therefore, I come out ahead by staying in the office and smoking.
The analogy is flawed because it is using made up numbers and unfounded assumptions.
While I agree with this, I want to ask a question in the spirit of the current conversation: How is it socially conscious when it has little to no impact on the environment? What is socially conscious about it?
It really reeks of desperation when someone focuses on nit-picking an analogy.
Yes, because this is the first thread in the history of the message board where someone had their flawed analogy pointed out to them :rolleyes:
And you focus on the one that you can find fault in, and not the other two (taxes and the Tragedy of the Commons, which is not just a concept but comes from an actual example). And it’s such a basic concept in economics that I’m surprised anyone needs an analogy to understand it.
I focused on the one that he detailed in the post. If there are some other flawed analogies that you’d like to submit, feel free.
Your points here are completely irrelevant. Try reading it again. If it makes you feel better, assume the cost of the cigarette and health costs are worked into the utility valuations (because they are.)
Or, you know, take Economics 101. Or look up the wikipedia entry on “Prisoner’s Dillemma” and go from there.
If you just don’t want to learn, well, I can’t force you to.