It's easy to imagine many proposals that don't restrict access to washing machin...

CountSessine · on Dec 22, 2016

We generally have the mechanisms to implement binding international agreements about these things

Binding? Name one that doesn't involve nuclear weapon proliferation.

dispose13432 · on Dec 22, 2016

>For example a per capita progressive CO2 tax would be one

You can't Carbon tax people by income (because people don't pollute directly). You'll target polluters.

So you go to Apple and tell them that they emitted so many kg of CO2, pay ... tax,

Which will undoubtedly find its way to rising phone prices, which means (poor) people don't get nice things.

fulafel · on Dec 22, 2016

There are several alternative ways to address this, for example products bought by consumers might account toward their CO2 emissions. Or just apply the CO2 tax to companies directly.

Anyway, let's not get lost in the details, I was just offering a trivial counterexample against the claim that

> Any proposal that significantly reduces energy usage almost certainly involves telling a large portion of the world "no, you don't get a washing machine"