“A really inconvenient truth”

by | Dec 1, 2007


Wonkette has been pondering the just-out McKinsey study on how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  The study, she says…

…kinda found that the biggest reductions could come from individuals reducing their own carbon footprints, and that there aren’t very many incentives to do so.

Yeah, you read that right. The biggest reductions wouldn’t come from carbon sequestration or moving to more sustainable energy forms, but from doing things like turning off your lights. With only modest costs and small amounts of innovation, we could reduce carbon emissions in this country by 28 percent in fairly short order. Of course, it would require actual, visible sacrifices on the part of consumers who don’t even bother looking at the “Energy Star” stickers when buying cheap computers because they don’t care, which means that the computer manufacturers don’t bother.

They recommend a public education campaign and tax credits and stuff. You know, the same stuff that hasn’t worked in the past.

Yup, that’s about the long and the short of it. Over to you in Bali, David…

Author

  • Alex Evans

    Alex Evans is founder of Larger Us, which explores how we can use psychology to reduce political tribalism and polarisation, a senior fellow at New York University, and author of The Myth Gap: What Happens When Evidence and Arguments Aren’t Enough? (Penguin, 2017). He is a former Campaign Director of the 50 million member global citizen’s movement Avaaz, special adviser to two UK Cabinet Ministers, climate expert in the UN Secretary-General’s office, and was Research Director for the Business Commission on Sustainable Development. Alex lives with his wife and two children in Yorkshire.

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