Towards a sustainable social system
Unfortunately, a sober look at the facts reveals that The majority of us humans have a selfish disposition. Altruism is usually limited to our immediate social group. Even if one or two people set a good example with the best of intentions, our society is not constructed like an ant colony. We citizens are hardly in a position to take ourselves back as individuals in the interests of the greater whole. Our society doesn't work like that, and our economy certainly doesn't work like that.
Our economy will never voluntarily decarbonize at the required pace
Capitalism = selfish accumulation of money, and money = emissions. This is why our economy will never voluntarily decarbonize at the required pace, because the laws of competition prevent this. Investing in such a transformation means (initially) a competitive disadvantage compared to competitors who are still avoiding it. This applies both at national level and in an international context. In addition, our economic system is geared towards growth and profit maximization, and per se shies away from investments that counteract this goal. This behavior is in the DNA of our capitalist system, so to speak.
"Since our democratic system necessarily relies on mass approval,
our politicians will never (be able to) set a CO2 price
that would be able to reduce emissions to the extent
and at the speed required.
That's just how our systems work."
Do we perhaps simply have a problem with knowledge?
It is simply naïve to believe that we only need to inform people more intensively about the catastrophic situation in order to finally bring about a change in behavior that is beneficial to the common good. Within politics, the economy or our society, we do not have a problem of knowledge, but we simply have a problem of implementation - caused by our capitalist economic system, which is calibrated for growth and profit and inherently shies away from investing in climate protection. It is primarily a problem of the laws of competition. Because in this system, the market participant who behaves in a way that is useful for their selfish pursuit of profit rather than for the common good has an advantage.
Effective climate protection is not possible within the existing monetary system
All these interdependencies consistently prevent effective climate protection. We therefore need a paradigm shift - a system of guard rails within which we citizens can move freely, but within the necessary planetary ecological limits. Effective climate protection is not possible within the existing monetary system. A CO2 price that would actually be able to guarantee this is illusory because it is not politically feasible, and because it would also be completely unfair to low-income earners.
Furthermore, the rebound effect significantly hinders the functioning of such a money-based system. We only need to take a sober and honest look at the history of failure of all our previous efforts to reduce emissions quickly to know where we are heading within our economic system, which is programmed for higher, faster, further. Of course, we have achieved some success in the past, but far too slowly and far too little to adequately address the crisis. And there is no indication that the chosen measures could change this any time soon. Our current economic system is programmed for self-destruction. We must finally acknowledge this honestly and switch to a system that consistently assigns things their ecological value and, through a fair quota system for emissions that are still possible, enables us to use only those resources and distribute them to each individual citizen that are actually still available to us as a society.
The ECO climate currency concept describes what such a model could look like at EU level.
Find out more at: ww.saveclimate.earth
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