Yeah, how about we shut down large swaths of national economies. That's produced nothing but positive effects for all involved over the last couple of years.
Keep in mind, there are a (relatively) small number of ecomonies and peoples causing the majority of the damage / side effects. The others can continue as they have been.
The current model isn't sustainable. Something *must* change. There can be no actual change without change.
The point is, the economies in question (i.e., the over-contributors) need to change and all we're talking about is getting back to normal. In what reality is a normal that's so deadly so normalized and worshipped?
Something people don't seem to understand is that when it comes to externalities there are economic activities whose benefits exceed the downsides of the negative externality and activities whose negative externality by far exceeds its benefits. The latter makes everyone poorer except the person doing it but that person isn't even getting a reward that is worth the effort, he is just not losing out.
If you internalize a negative externality everyone will get wealthier simply because people only ruin the environment when it is actually worth it. People always say how fossil fuels were necessary for the industrial revolution but that only means that its benefits exceeded its negative externalities and therefore a pigovian tax would actually help it.
No, the others can't "continue as they have been" if things change.
Most of those countries "not causing a problem" accept a great deal of food and fuel imports from the "over-contributors", never mind goods, services and financing. They literally cannot support their populations without these imports. If the global economy comes screeching to a halt as major players scale down and just see to their own needs, many of the minor players literally starve in the dark. Just look at the impact of the Ukraine/Russia wheat supply disruption on North Africa/The middle east for a tiny example of what a global disruption would look like.
The current model can be made sustainable with time, proper policy and technological advancement. If for whatever reason we can't manage that, we're screwed.
People say "growth can't continue to infinity", and technically they're right. Problem is we know what no economic growth looks like. It's some form of feudalism, where powerful entities hoard all the wealth and we all rent the rest. The only attempt at something other than that was 20th century communism, and that... didn't work to say the least. So either we make history by creating the first ever successful re-distributive economic system, on a global scale, or we keep doing what we've been doing for centuries and hope technology and enlightened democracy can save the day.
My vote's on the latter, at least it has an overall positive track record.
> The current model can be made sustainable with time, proper policy and technological advancement. If for whatever reason we can't manage that, we're screwed.
Given history, the human psyche, as well as "progress" to date...then I'm betting on the fact that there are better odds of oil and water mixing.
We'd have a better chance 100 or 200 years ago when the masses we comfortable with and embraced sacrifice. Now it's all about comfort sans any sort of sacrifice. In addition, there's a destructive symbiotic relationship with those expectations and how leaders lead and how political parties think (i.e., short term, at best).
Climate change aside, the current model in the USA simply isn't sustainable. Infant mortality rate, obesity, mental health, gun violence, opioids...the list goes on and on. Covid was an opportunity to adjust course. Maybe even pivot. But we didn't have the will and our commitment to "back to normal" (which is corrupt and problematic at best) is stronger than ever.
We can't get off the sofa. How we gonna face climate change?
As far as technology solutions, we're headed for some form of The Matrix. The masses will be comfortable and consumption and pollution will be far less.
> They literally cannot support their populations without these imports.
That's no accident. It's by intent. Those countries can't develop their own healthy local economies when most everything is shipped in.
Look up clothing donations to Africa. Long to short, there was no way to have say a local cotton + clothing economy when free clothing was been dumped on a given economy.
>Problem is we know what no economic growth looks like. It's some form of feudalism, where powerful entities hoard all the wealth and we all rent the rest.
Powerful entities keep growing and getting a bigger share of the economy so we have to grow it just to not become poorer? Isn't it strange that no growth is considered the same thing as a shrinking standard of living? In any sane theoretical economics model, a lack of growth shouldn't mean a reduction of living standards, it should mean a continuation of our existing very high living standards which also precludes any form of automatic runaway wealth accumulation.
I have read a short anarchist book and I have seen the argument that it is the state that causes the problem but I am not fully convinced that just having a government is the problem but rather something the government does that is invisible to the naked eye. Subsidies are a classic example. Everyone drives because the road is free, nobody wants to pay the fully internalized costs of buses because the subsidy exposure of a car for every potential bus passenger is greater. The bus has to be subsidized to the same degree as the bus to compete! Those subsidies are paid for by taxes which decouples the amount of subsidies received from the amount of effort put in and the amount of labor paid into the system through taxes. This disconnect is most likely the problem when it comes to government activity. You can build a business and receive subsidies proportional to the size of the company while someone else has to pay for the subsidies.
Now, transportation is important but it only serves as an obvious in your face example where the subsidy structure is visible and how competition demands subsidies.
The real question is whether there are state subsidized factors of production. If they exist, then every other industry will have to ask for an equal level of subsidies to continue doing business.
The food industry is a classic industry where doing without a subsidy is unthinkable. The question is, why does food production need a subsidy in the first place? Can't farmers just be obligated to overproduce food on their own and pass this on as higher food prices, why does the government have to pay?
It has most likely to do with land as running a farm is impossible without it. If the land is leased, the farm is under intensive pressure to produce profitable crops rather than a surplus or the farmer won't be able to pay the lease. How is land subsidized? The military complex and police forces are in charge of protecting the country and enforcing property laws. How much can the owner of the land charge to the farmer? At least as high as the subsidy paid on land by providing free protective services plus the quality of the land itself. The latter subsidy might be paid by nature rather than the government but the government could tax this difference and remove the positive externality.
But even if production has succeeded, distribution must still happen and it can only happen through trading via the national money system which is practically speaking a monopoly. If you start out with no money, how do you get more money? By borrowing it for interest. That interest rate forces another profitability pressure on the farmer, he simply cannot produce food for everyone without a subsidy if that interest rate itself originated from a subsidy. Competing borrowers might be borrowing to buy land which receives subsidies thereby outcompeting farmers. There is also the fact that the money system is free but it generates massive amounts of costs for the economy. Printing physical bank notes costs money, providing bank accounts and branches costs money, providing loans costs money and accepting electronic payments require specialized terminals which cost money, opening a shop and providing goods every day aka widespread acceptance also costs money beyond the goods themselves.
What this means is that the holders of money get to sleep while everyone else without money must toil and keep moving and stay active. The subsidy isn't paid out in money but in real terms but the lender can now step in and market these subsidies as if he provided them, he can turn them into cold hard cash by charging interest. Thus the lower bound on interest on money that borrowed from another is somewhere between 3%-5% and the only way it is lower in practice is because banks create new money through loans rather than lending on existing deposits via CDs. If interest originates from subsidies then wealth accumulation must be automatic.
> The question is, why does food production need a subsidy in the first place?
Short answer, it's how politicians buy votes. Subsidies get the votes of the farmers. Lower food prices get the votes of the masses.
To your point, if politicans don't have the backbone to reduce such subsidies, and the masses don't have the will to demand it...how are we going to address a problem 100x as big?
Trains could replace a large portion of trucking and short haul flight. Food production can be much more localised in many places, and supply chains which see products circumnavigate the world several times will end themselves the second they have to pay for externalities.
The remained can be covered by already mentioned mechanisms.
