These are NOT pure “work through market mechanisms” precedents but there’s 10x more market thinking in them than socialists would like.
These are NOT pure statist models either, but 10x more statist than pure marketist types would want.
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I think neither side gets this. “Not business as usual” and “not governance as usual” means 10x of *both* mechanisms stressed like crazy. Like trying to run a passenger sedan on rocket fuel while adding more traffic signs.
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Action like this is possible. We have an existence proof. It will just be remarkably unpleasant to everybody despite their favorite mechanism being not just used, but 10x more intensely than they are used to.
But there’s good news: there’s one way this is easier than Covid.
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Covid has been a weird collective action problem, one aimed squarely at America’s weakest point: minor constraints on individual freedom that utterly destroy the sense of self of 1/3 of this country 🙄
Fortunately climate action does not call for that type of constraining
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Stopping a virus unfortunately at least for Americans requires individuals to act in highly socially disruptive ways (masks, distancing).
Fortunately, decarbonizing the economy largely requires action from institutional leaders on backend matters, not last mile/last inch.
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- Cities electrifying bus fleets
- automakers shifting to EVs
- Utilities switching to renewables
- CEOs okaying WFH, killing commute
- Real estate devs, urban planners driving densification
All this on a war footing only requires coordination among 1000s, not billions of people
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Calcs like those of David McKay in withouthotair.com show that solutions require consumption cuts which means coordination by regular people (doing less premium mediocre :)).
We should make gains where we can of course, but this contradicts your
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BUT... they’re not wrong about one thing. If action is warranted at all, it does mean changing business as usual. There is no gentle acceleration of a non-disruptive current tendency that meets the urgency-of-action constraints. You might as well do nothing if you insist on that.
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Yes, but I strongly suspect they won't happen via voluntary participation but more through upstream forcing of choices. You can't choose to drive a gas-guzzling truck. I can't see "wear a mask" type imperatives bearing more than a tiny fraction of the decision-making load
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I agree that full coordination isn't going to happen, but there is value in moving many people a small way just as there is value in few large movements. They are interconnected too.
fwiw, I very much hope that forcing of choices won't happen until we are in actual war conds.
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tbh, covid gave me more hope than despair. The number of people who wore masks, stayed home, etc was way higher than I thought possible in US. It's not sticky without clear and present danger, but gives some clue to the level of coordination we'll get in a tangible climate crisis
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Yeah especially globally and in poor countries with low enforcement capacity. In India mask compliance is apparently really high. The US is a weird but important non-compliance outlier. Any mass coordination would be nice to have but not something I'd bet on for extended periods.
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I think it's mostly a function of how obvious the danger is. Public coordination during wars shows this. I think the rapidity with which gains will be made if bad scenarios actually come to pass is massively underestimated. It'll get ugly, but action will feel reasonable.

