this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2023
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I feel like this point is missing the big picture: people create the demand, and companies supply what the market demands. Like or hate "the free market", this is essentially what it is. If there were magically 1/10th the number of humans on the planet, we would expect those companies to have 90% less emissions. It's not that some of these companies aren't bad actors, and have actions that are at times immoral, it's that they are amoral actors in a market economy that is only responsive to consumer demand.
The example I like to give is that companies' race to the bottom on quality. They're responding to human behavior, where if an item on Amazon is $6, and another very similar item is 10 cents cheaper, the cheaper item will sell 100x more. This is a brutal, cutthroat example of human behavior and market forces. It leads to shitty products because consumers are more responsive to price and find it hard to distinguish quality, so the market supplies superficially-passable junk at the lowest possible price and (with robust competition) the lowest possible profit margin.
People create the demand, but it is up to the manufacturers to decide how the product is manufactured.
They are the ones that decide to increase pollution by 10% in order to save a couple of cents per product.
The free market is never going to address Climate Change. We need to force corporations to see pollution as a bad thing. By heavily taxing any sort of pollution created.
This would inevitably make things more expensive. But rather a bad economy than humanity going extinct. Since there is no point to an economy if there aren't any humans to enjoy it.
I'll just start by saying we're in agreement on this. The market doesn't price in externalities. But to your first point, it's literally the market (i.e. people) deciding they aren't willing to pay 10% more for manufacturing that costs more but reduces pollution.
If there are two competitors in a market, company A and company B:
Company A produces a product using the cheapest legal manufacturing that pollutes more, and company B does the same thing but cleans up their act for a 10% increase in cost, company B's market share will shrink, and they will eventually fail or be absorbed by a wildly successful company A. This is people voting with their wallets, and the companies are behaving rationally. We're essentially vilifing companies for responding to consumer behavior in aggregate. Obviously this is addressed through legislation and regulation which creates a level playing field for all competitors with environmental regulations everyone adheres to equally.
I feel like YOU are missing the point. Even tho you say exactly why this matters the most.
Yes market respond to demand. Compa oes DGAF whether they pollute, only that people buy. That's why the ONLY solution is that all these companies are regulated to pollute less. If everyone has to, then they are still equal and people won't buy a cheaper alternative that happens to be more polluting.
Hell, I'd go as far as to say that it only matters if the top 5-10 countries do it. If China, USA, and India don't do this, the entire world is fucked and there is nothing to be done by anyone else.