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It seems to me we're stuck in an international prisoner's dilemma with climate change policy. Economies that defect and disregard environmental consequences will grow more quickly in the short term, especially so if other major players cooperate. So there is a perverse incentive that becomes increasingly impactful as scarcity increases. Poorer economies will have an extremely strong incentive to defect and ignore ecological consequences.

Measures like this will proliferate through an economy in proportion to how angry that population is. If your average voter feels like they can't even afford their groceries (whether or not this is actually true, in fact, is irrelevant), they will get angry at any administration that passes any GDP-hampering policy, and will support any administrations attempts at stripping away these policies.

I don't know what the solution is, but its clear that, from a game theory perspective, there will be large defectors to any kind of international cooperative agreement.


Solar and wind are cheaper in most of the world, TCO on EVs is lower too.

So, paying more to poison your children may not win in the market.

This is mentioned in the article:

> But the EPA's own regulatory impact report says limiting emissions for cars and trucks is expected to generate more than $2.1 trillion in net benefits over the next 30 years, including $820 billion in fuel savings and $1.8 trillion in public health and climate benefits.

> I don't know what the solution is

I’m, of course, interested in an optimistic answer, but I think it’s clear that there is no solution. Humans are, by and large, really stupid and really selfish. You will never get enough of them to care more about each other (and, in this case, each other’s grandchildren), than care about their own immediate wants.

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