The aftermath of Hurricane Dorian again reminds us of how catastrophic climate change is to our world. 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang believes that people respond to incentives. Incentives need to be given to combat climate change, towards a greener economy since fear of the Earth becoming uninhabitable isn’t enough for corporations to decrease their carbon footprint. Farmers would be taught more sustainable practices. Yang plans to introduce a carbon tax at $40/ton initially but later increase it up to $100/ton. He would use a portion of this tax to set up measures for cleaner energy with the other portion going towards his plan for universal basic income. He believes that when people are less worried about their primary responsibilities (e.g food, shelter etc.) they will make more of an effort to focus on climate change. This all sounds great but it’s easier said than done, the question is if he is actually elected will he enforce these plans?
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2019/democrats-climate-town-hall/andrew-yang-climate-change
People do respond to incentives. In this case, he seems to want to implement negative incentives to help combat climate issues. I believe he should attempt to find other incentives that help global health while also giving positives to those effected. This will likely make implementation of such regulations see more success.
ReplyDeleteI read on social media recently a quote that said that we do not need every person perfectly conserving energy and recycling, we simply need some people doing a small amount of conserving. If every person in the world would turn off the lights, television, fans, air conditioning when they are not using it, our consumption would decrease significantly.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Nick. People do respond to incentives, however most people would respond better to positive incentives. I believe that the US should implement positive and negative incentives for firms to reduce their carbon footprint. I also believe that we should have incentives for large universities to take the cans that are disposed of and recycle them. There are many small things that every person could do that would result in a notable decrease in our carbon footprint.
I would agree with Nick. I feel that positive incentives will give companies a reason to help sustain our environment and so why not reward those that are compliant with being environmentally friendly
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