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Why billionaire Tom Steyer argues capitalism is the best tool to fight climate change | Calling for more regulation to stop global heating, Steyer says we must stop letting people "pollute for free" (www.salon.com)
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[-] qaz@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

He's arguing that if pollution was priced in, the market would optimize to find ways to reduce it. Which is true, except that:

  1. This regulation is never going to actually be implemented without major loopholes.
  2. The market will optimize for loopholes instead.
  3. A large amount of ways to “reduce” pollution only works on paper (e.g. carbon credits)

It's not exactly a novel idea, it makes sense in the theoretical scenario where we would have effective regulation. Which is also precisely the problem to begin with.

this post was submitted on 29 May 2024
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