Comment by tonyedgecombe
20 hours ago
It’s an inconvenient truth that the better off don’t want to face up to. Your environmental impact is going to be correlated to your consumption. More spending == more damage.
Something to bear in mind when you are being told environmental damage is being caused by the poor or some foreign country.
There are some scenarios where it’s a coordination problem. People could drive light fuel efficient vehicles if so many other people weren’t driving large, heavy, dangerous ones, for example.
Those large heavy vehicles are incentivized by loopholes in regulations because politicians were afraid of affecting "domestic jobs" as US automakers weren't even trying to compete with JP fuel-efficient imports.
Yeah, apparently it was originally to try to stop the rules from killing Jeep, which was having a hard time. New ones that allow more emissions for bigger vehicle footprints are also a big issue since it encourages larger vehicles.
There's not much point in being better off if you don't use that money for a holiday to Japan.
After all most of us work hard so that we can buy things.
As I said more spending == more damage:
https://iere.org/how-tourists-affect-the-environment/
You could work less hard and buy less things, spending the time and energy you save by working less hard on more enjoyable things than buying more stuff.