Comment by neuronexmachina
8 years ago
It's basically the Tragedy of the Commons on a global scale. The atmosphere is a huge public good, and climate change is a huge negative externality. It's relatively beneficial to the individual person, and even the individual country, to ignore the problem, even if it ultimately harms the population as a whole in the long run. That's why so many people prefer to ignore the problem or pretend it doesn't exist, rather than actually confront the issue.
Yep.
If I have a pile of coal, and you want electricity, I can sell you coal for a good price. I make a profit, you get energy, we both lose a tiny bit due to increased global warming. The other 7 billion people in the world each lose a tiny bit to global warming and get zero direct benefit from our trade. It is rational for me to keep selling you coal, and for you to keep buying it, while we can keep the game rolling and push the costs onto everyone else.
It's be beneficial for everyone else if they banded together and prevented us from trading without paying them appropriate compensation.
If you're feeling particularly misanthropic / politically foolish, repeat similar argument about living in society with high per capita greenhouse gas emissions. Suppose you and a partner decide to have children. Maybe everyone else in the world should band together and demand compensation/regulation for the global environmental impact due to population growth in these countries. Some things we currently regard as individual freedoms are not logically compatible with constrained resources/constrained pollution sinks.
Very interesting idea