VOX: Your Poverty Saves The Environment
Vox’s recent advice for reducing your carbon foot print is simple – be poor.
Vox, citing a recent study, explained that climate change just doesn’t fit in with “the individual-choices frame” and suggested that the most effective ways an individual can reduce their carbon footprint included ditching your car, flying less, going vegetarian and not having children:
If you want to reduce your personal carbon emissions, godspeed. It’s not that big a mystery how to do it: Fly less, drive less, and eat less meat. (And choose not to have a kid if you like, though not having a kid for that particular reason strikes me as sad.)
Vox admits that their bleak view of life choices is unrealistic, and suggests a tax on the “consumptive choices of the wealthy” as a more effective way to re-engineer human behavior in their desired fashion:
The obvious and most direct approach to addressing the role of individual choices in climate change is to tax the consumptive choices of the wealthy. For now, and for the foreseeable future, carbon emissions rise with wealth. Redistributing wealth down the income scale, ceteris paribus, reduces lifestyle emissions.