10 Nov '15 17:08>11 edits
Originally posted by googlefudgeThe only think I see that would be effective against climate change is governments, apart from trying to go renewable, is to take far more direct action by forcing manufactures, utility companies etc. to do what they can to reduce carbon footprint.
Changing tax rates, and cap and trade, are utterly ineffective and inadequate for
dealing with climate change.
.
For example, and this has been one of my ideas for a long time, government could make a law saying that all new cars manufactured for now on must be able to do a minimum of x number of miles to the gallon of fuel (or, if that is too simplistic, which I think it probably is, some sort of more complex carbon-footprint-based equivalent ) else they simply are not allowed to be manufactured. Then that x can be gradually (to give them time and thus a chance to adapt ) incrementally increased to force all car manufactures to make their cars ever more energy efficient. Any manufacturer that can't or refuses will simply go out of business so to leave his competitors to fill that niche. Obviously the speed of the increase of that x must be continually adjusted according to constant feedback so it is neither too fast so as to stop most manufactures from keeping up nor too slow so to fail to make them adapt as fast as they feasibly can. One effect this could have in the medium run is to gradually force manufactures to make all their cars have some kind of super-energy-efficient diesel-electric engine.
Similar laws can be applied to just about anything that is manufactured that has a carbon-footprint.