Quote:If everyone would refuse to do the right thing until anyone else does too, we wouldn't get very far, is it? Apparantly, some people have really good excuses;)I don't think you understand the economics at work here. This is just basic elasticity. Unless you can control the demand curve (market power), you can't control anything else. "Do the right thing" is meaningless, so long as there are more than a tiny few people in the economy who don't share your beliefs - they will not just contribute their share of the problems, they will take advantage of your altruism to their own benefit.
Only if producers would be prepared to drop the prices, hoping customers would return. Since those wouldn't (knowing the problem would also return if they did), production would have to be scaled down to 10%, which in turn would increase prices, possibly driving away even more customers. That's basic capitalism, not?
The Jevons Paradox basically says that if your production becomes more efficient, it will not result in using less resources, because consumption will grow. We are talking about decreasing consumption here, so I don't think this Paradox applies. Maybe you are implying that the remaining 10% customers could consume and pollute as much as the previous 100%? That would be quite a feat, seeing what we do now.
Boycotting works. And in a 'free market' system, you don't even need to reach 90% cooperation. Especially in economic weak periods like this, a few extra % market loss can be devastating for some companies. The current crisis is quite good, really, from a certain point of view.
Boycotts are also not particularly useful for targeting the products that contribute the most pollution - basic stuff like energy, oil, mining, metals, chemicals, and so on. A boycott of those products would require the participation of almost the entire economy to be successful, not just consumers, but downstream producers as well. These are low-visibility products that are elemental to almost everything the economy does. How would you successfully boycott them? The informational costs alone would be staggering. And, in the case of producers, the 10% "boycott breakers" would soon be able to purchase 100% of capacity - because they would crush their competitors out of business with cheaper inputs.
-Jester