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Buying up coal would raise the price of electricity. That's essentially a flat tax. You punish the poor of the world who use minimal amounts.
by robotcookies 11y ago
Buying up coal would raise the price of electricity. That's essentially a flat tax. You punish the poor of the world who use minimal amounts.
- melling 11y agoIsn't that what people claim is happening when you make people pay for more expensive renewable energy?
- adventured 11y agoRenewable energy is paid for by rich people, so long as you don't force economic adoption to occur too fast (eg shifting from coal to solar/wind). There's a reasonable economic adoption curve, if you stay on it, then the rich primarily subsidize the shift - if you move too fast, and to the extent you do so, you punish the poor too much. The rich pay for the shift through their higher taxes (government R&D, subsidies, etc), funding research at top tier universities, owning large corporations that do R&D or implementation (eg Musk / SolarCity, or Walton / FirstSolar and so on), buying big batteries for their homes, being first to adopt large scale home solar, building massive solar plants or wind farms (or being customers ala Buffett / Berkshire / Mid-American). This is similar to the way the rich subsidize most new technology until it becomes economical.
- SirWart 11y agoPlus, the world's poor stand to benefit so much from climate change!
- contravariant 11y agoYeah it'd make more sense to tax coal. That will still affect the price of electricity, but at least you'd have some money to mitigate those effects. Ironically it seems that rich people have the most interest in preventing that from happening.