Well, there you and I disagree. The consumer is not all about the lowest price, far from it.Kmarion wrote:
It is not ALL about consumer responsibility. I really don't get how you can excuse the manufacturer or the governments that are charged with the responsibility of regulating them. Maybe the goals set were unrealistic. There is no reason to think that the self serving consumer would have better results.
You say it's wrong for us to criticize them for excessively polluting to make our products and then you say only the consumer can make them change.. wtf? It's not like we aren't also pressuring companies at home.
I said the percent of energy coming from coal. China should probably diversify more seeing as they are at 70% coal and growing rapidly.
The consumer is all about the lowest price .. for the most part. If left up to the person who cares most about the bottom line there will never be a meaningful change. That is reality.
I'm not just making this up off the top of my head - it's a massive campaign with a lot of data supporting it. It was all dreamed up by a load of advertising execs doing charity work for WWF. My dad was amongst them and I got roped in to helping make some of the presentations for it. During the course of that I became fascinated by how strong all the market research was supporting this. They also focused quite heavily on carbon trading and one of the ideas that had a lot of support was carbon neutral labelling which would supposedly make it easier for the consumer to make a snap decision - but I had little faith in that, because I have little faith in the whole carbon trading system. I think it's bollocks and open to abuse. But the fact remains that the market research for the concept was extremely compelling and conducted over a massive survey group and again, there is precedent for this sort of idea being exceptionally successful, Fairtrade products being the obvious example (people prepared to spend more because they think their money is going to a good cause, allowing 3rd world farmers to earn a decent wage) - organic produce is another example (people prepared to pay more because they mistakenly believe it's better for the environment or themselves (which is nonsense)).
Consumers very rarely choose the lowest priced option. Lets take the example of painkillers. Nurofen are normal ibuprofen. they cost around £1.50. Unbranded ibuprofen (exactly the same stuff) costs around 20-40p for the same quantity. Yet Nurofen massively outsells unbranded ibuprofen. Why is this, if consumers only buy the cheapest option?
If the bottom line for the consumer is price, how do you explain the successes of all these products that offer nothing extra other than a fancy label?