If the top 10% of CO2 consumers reduced their footprint to the EU average global emissions would decrease by a third
It’s not politically viable, but the richest people need to reduce their carbon emissions.
If we had global regulations where the top 10% of emitters would cut their CO2 footprint to just the European average than global CO2 emissions would decrease by a third. That seems like a great start.
The top 10% of emitters are roughly people who have $80k in assets, high consumption lifestyles, travel a lot, etc.
Since we don’t want to modify our behavior we are gambling on some future technological solution to reduce emissions. Gambling that they will work and will work on a huge global scale. That there will be little unforeseen consequences.
In terms of a carbon tax wealthy people will not consume less, but rather the poor people. This will have a negative impact on the poor people who are not the main emitters.
Scientific reticence is a big problem where scientists won’t say publicly what they say privately. That is, around the local pub and with each other they will say sea level rise will be closer to a meter whereas publicly they say 0.4. They do this since they need to be absolutely sure what they are saying publicly or nervous of blowback. One potential idea is that the scientists should include the nuances and footnotes in the reports.
