this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2023
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Idk what's going on but I can't reply to the people who replied to my comment so I'll do it here.
According to this data, approx 50 billion tCO2 per year are emitted worldwide by human action.
https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector
2t/CO2 per year per person X 6b people= ~12 billion tCO2/year.
Or about 25% is done by BILLIONS of people every year.
Regulations are the only way because corporations have a death grip on society. Even if we reduced individual emissions by 50% as people are saying that's only a 12% difference in emissions, versus 35% if corporations halved their emissions. Creating laws to reduce individual emissions would go over like a lead balloon, and a lot of the cause of individual emissions, if I had to guess, is due to the circumstances around their lives. Availability of public transportation, cost of goods and how their goods are produced, etc. However, corporations have a direct choice in doing these actions.
If you regulate corporations you have a much larger overall affect that if you were to make laws limiting consumption. It's simply more practical in many many ways to force corporations to hit emissions goals than it is to force people. What are you going to do if people emit too much? Fine them? Good luck they're already broke. Jail them? I think we can both agree how that would go. There are many multitudes fewer corporations than there are actual people, so managing and controlling their output is easier from a governmental standpoint.
It's companies making vehicles that emit high amounts of CO2, it's companies making ecological disasters on a global scale, it's companies who are being given tax cuts that could instead go towards fighting this issue. Planning for people to individually emit less isn't as feasible as controlling the source of emissions itself.