A Conservative Policy Solution to Slow Down Climate Change?

[Riggerjack]

tom’s went bankrupt? when?

yup. 2019
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toms_Shoes

Demand side solution. You somehow get people to demand that products and services are CC friendly far beyond current levels. I'm curious how, this is your territory @Riggerjack.

Well, the first step would be a prototype. Until it's real, nobody cares. The prototype will have the problems of prototypes. The first Tesla roadsters shipped without a working transmission. Obviously, that wasn't enough to slow down Tesla.

In this strategy those on the higher end of the economic spectrum are automagically(market) more likely/able to pay a premium for this.

Yes. Manhatten luxury real estate runs about $1700/ft2. and comes with a disease load, and security risks that many are uncomfortable with. I'm not talking about something your average MD can afford, at this stage.

The inherent weakness to this is that those on the lower end just want shelter, food and the ability to better their lot. They probably will not pay a premium for CC friendly economic activities.

Really? Who are these people you speak of? Are they the homeless folks with smartphones, or the folks in trailer parks splurging on name brand clothes from Walmart? Who do you know, who isn't here on this forum, that is uninterested in better products for virtue signaling on instagram? And why do you think they would be a problem?

Those on the upper economic spectrum are only willing to go so far (see every comment on articles in mainstream media about @jacobs ERE).

See those same people's comments on hobby farms or 50 cent's bling. People lust after status symbols. This is a status symbol that is very difficult to fake, and the expense is part of the appeal. (see early adopters of solar panels on suburban roofs, for how this looks in practice.)

The impact on climate change is limited to the demand created. This may or may not (I predict not nearly) be enough to fix the problem, by the numbers.

This sounds like a visualization problem to me. If one's solution doesn't work, it's probably not going to appeal very much. One could correct for this with a better product, or by going supply side (force adoption of unappealing solutions. This thread seems full of those ideas. )

Secondary question. Are these mutually exclusive? Can we use demand side solution to begin to bring people together to demand (ha!), a global supply side solution?

I wouldn't say they are mutually exclusive, but I don't know how one could really help the other. One cannot obey one's way to innovation. When Authority cannot come up with an appealing solution, I don't know how much good simply "demanding better results" is going to do, but it is clear how much good that method has done, so far.

When billionaires spend their own money on some Eco project, people cheer. When millionaires in Congress do the same with tax dollars, there is a different reaction. And if/when that project fails, the reaction is also different. (see ECO Domes I and II, vs Solyndra)

[classical_Liberal]

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[classical_Liberal]

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[Alphaville]

yup. 2019
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toms_Shoes

huh? again, nothing about bankruptcy. it says that they changed their charity model is all.

[Hristo Botev]

What's the connection between housing costs (i.e., 7w5's comment about getting housing costs down to $170/mo.) and CC? Is it that laws, tax policies, etc. in the US just encourage bigger homes, generally, requiring more materials, more to heat/cool, etc., so a bigger ecological footprint? There're plenty of homes, apartments, and condos where I live that are small and well insulated that I'd think would check the small footprint box--but, $170/mo. ain't going to get it for you. Why is the $170/mo. number important to CC?

[Riggerjack]

The trouble with the shoe analogy is that the people who bought the shoes already wanted them. Tom's provided them a solution they felt provided them additional value for the money -- social status via virtue signaling. Insofar as we can keep consumption to its current degree, yes, we can maybe get creative and produce products from 100% recycled parts, promise to plant trees, or buy carbon offsets.

This is exactly how we solved past environmental issues. The old refrigerants created holes in the ozone layer. Okay, let's create an equivalent product without the issue, and phase out the old ones. The critical part of the success is that no one had to give up refrigerators.

On the other hand, if you believe consumption is the problem, and it must be reduced, then it gets more tricky. We cannot simply substitute for an equivalent but more ethical product. We would need to convince people that they don't need the product in the first place. There are huge cultural pressures preventing that attitude from being adopted. Harnessing the power corporations wield may be difficult since such a shift would probably hurt the bottom line.

Same answer I gave CL above. If your solution is unappealing, your options are limited to varying uses of force. You seem to start by eliminating the possibility of an appealing solution. Why is that? Is it just easier to assume you need force compliance? Because in my experience forcing compliance is very inefficient. Trying to improve efficiency by inefficient methods is at least counter-intuitive...

Maybe technology can solve all problems given sufficient time and resources. I think we've run out of time for that to happen. A cultural revolution is a necessary ingredient, and it needs to happen now. Greta toured the world trying. People gladly marched in the streets. And then they went back to living as they always have. Flight shame didn't catch on -- okay maybe a little bit in parts of Europe, but again, they could substitute with trains and still get what they wanted.

I think you and I agree on what needs to happen. I just think the "cultural revolution on existing infrastructure" path goes places most people are unwilling to go, for very good reason. Myself included.

[Riggerjack]

huh? again, nothing about bankruptcy. it says that they changed their charity model is all.

Scroll down. Creditors took over the company in 2019.

Not that it is important. I was only interested in Tom's as an example of the cash value of a marketable virtue signal, and how it can make $$, even if the underlying company is not competitive, how that virtue signal moves markets, and how much total public good can come from a much more limited new product line.

[classical_Liberal]

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[Hristo Botev]

OK, that makes sense. Thanks for clarifying.

I guess I'm just running up against the idea that using annual spending as a measure for your individual footprint seems a bit wonky to me. The measure should be in consumption, no? As in how much gas, water, electricity, plastic, cardboard, etc. your household consumes in a year. I can see how overall spending is some sort of a rough guestimate/appoximation of your consumption level (i.e., I spend $500 on a pair of leather shoes once in a lifetime, vs. you spending $50 on private label Wal-Mart shoes 20x in your lifetime). But when you break it down to individual line items, like housing, the wheels of the guestimate seem to fall off. E.g., I can spend $150K on a poorly insulated 3,000 sq.ft. McMansion in the exurbs, 50 miles from town, paying almost nothing in property taxes. Or I can spend 2x or 3x that for 1,000 sq. ft. in town with very high property taxes, but everything I need is within walking distance.

[Mister Imperceptible]

I am not a civil engineer, but, instead of bailouts, why don’t we start building Roman-style aqueducts? You know, sustainable infrastructure? RJ?

[7Wannabe5]

@jacob:

I know you have every workable plan covered in your Tinker Toy set, but some of us are slower and/or more erratic figuring it out for ourselves.

@MI:

I got kicked out of my camper even though I owned the land. The only way around this is to buy land that already has some kind of shack grandfathered in. Otherwise, you are pretty much forced to build something to current code at least 720 sq. ft , even though happiness is maximized at 350 sq ft/ person and maybe you want to live by yourself and the planet is frying. Maybe I need to go to India to fetch my next husband.

@c_L:

Right. Up north the townships post signs advertising that they are a “zoned community.” This is true even in townships that have many vacant houses. That is one of the reasons why I was arguing that it can be a good deal to be part of a bigger project like Paul Wheaton is running. It’s a large hurdle to jump on your own.

Similarly, how is it ever going to compute with most people that the needful level of reduction is approximately half the current poverty line in the U.S. The zoning codes and other similar real estate practices are clearly meant to discourage underclass presence in general community. Nobody thinks about old semi-retired, extremely frugal pumpkin ladies or THE PLANET.

[Alphaville]

Scroll down. Creditors took over the company in 2019.

Not that it is important. I was only interested in Tom's as an example of the cash value of a marketable virtue signal, and how it can make $$, even if the underlying company is not competitive, how that virtue signal moves markets, and how much total public good can come from a much more limited new product line.

AAAH ok. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-toms ... SKBN1YV1PT

company is not broken though, he took the money to start something else or something... in any case are you generally talking about this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpAMbpQ8J7g

[jacob]

@HB - Spending is obviously not a perfect proxy for the actual individual footprint which would require detailed resource tracking from the well-head to the landfill and atmosphere. However, given that your spending eventually (quickly!) ends up in the hands of those who use it in the general and thus average economy where the impact numbers ARE known (because they're used to calculate the inter/national footprint), it gauges your contribution within the current economy.

While it wouldn't give the correct result for "there", it is therefore good anywhere between "here" and "there" as long as it's regularly updated. Insofar "there" is ever achieved the zoning codes would have been rewritten long ago. Current zoning is of course part of the inertia and written by the RE developer industry which tends to pull in the wrong direction.

And for sure, once you get in the neighborhood of 1/4 of the average consumer, your budget pie chart looks nothing like the average. I spend way more than 1/3 on housing related expenses for example.

[7Wannabe5]

@Hristo:

Spending is actually a pretty good proxy for energy burn. For instance, the higher property taxes you would pay in the city are also representative of energy burned to cover the services provided. Even spending on direct human services; such as a massage breaks down into business expenses for the provider.

However, the accounting does start to get more wonky the lower your spending goes.

My budget for housing is only $170 because I also have a car which I depreciate at $100/month. I bundle transportation and housing, because there are limits to where I can live in my extended region without owning a car.

[classical_Liberal]

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[Mister Imperceptible]

Funny I was just going to bring up the money I pay my massage therapist. Because I think carrying that logic to it’s conclusion means I should let my massage therapist starve to death. Going back to all in the world that is inextricably linked. My income is someone else’s spending. Better to build an aqueduct that carries water with gravity. Create rather than destroy.

[classical_Liberal]

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[Hristo Botev]

@Jacob, 7w5, CL: Agree overall spending makes sense as a proxy; and it has the added benefit of being something everyone can calculate pretty easily (I wouldn't know where to start to track my actual consumption/footprint). And I'm guessing that bigger the time span you stretch it out (monthly, vs. quarterly, vs. annually, vs. multi-year), the better of a proxy it becomes (e.g., only that way will it factor in the lower consumption of my 1 pair of $500 shoes vs. your 20 pairs of cheap, $50 shoes).

The (perennial) problem is how do you make ERE-level spending a status symbol? I can drive a Nissan Leaf, or stick solar panels on my roof, or by Tom's (ha!), or any number of other things I can buy to signal that I'm "doing my part," thereby using peer pressure to shame those who aren't. But flying under the radar with stealth wealth or whatever "Millionaire Next Door" mindset isn't going to get us where we need to be. If the US were China we'd have some sort of social credit system to manipulate how folks behave, but how do we use good-old-fashioned Western capitalism to "sell" anti-consumerism? We need some guerilla marketing tactics to make anti-consumerism in vogue; how do we "brand" ERE?

[jacob]

Referencing the engineering course the way these calculations are done is that one sets up matrix, T^a, for a given action, a, where each entry T^a_ij is the conversion of resource i into resource j for the action. Multiple actions would show e.g. how oil (maybe that resource #436) is transformed into pork meat (maybe resource #741) through a number of actions. Mathematically this is done by multiplying different action matrices. It's a beautiful thing.

What's clever here is that market capitalism actually provide the marginal cost of all the resources at a given time. If you look at the vector of resources before and the vector of resources after an action or multiple actions, you can calculate the change in dollar cost.

The change in dollar cost is thus a measure of the resource transformation from a given set of actions. Your personal spending is a set of actions. Your spending is thus a measure of your resource transformation within the current economy. It would NOT be a measure of the resource transformation within a different economy.

Point being ... trying to game the rules or talking about how they're incomplete is already taken into account by the model. It should be used with an understanding of its limits. In short, it should be treated like an engineering tool.

[Mister Imperceptible]

@c_L
Yeah the same as my point that even if I want to keep my housing expenses low I have to not-so-stealth camp my RV. We are essentially asking that the elites stop enforcing policies that pump up the value of their land. Yet as soon as possible more affordable living means people will make more babies and fill up that land.

Hm.