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Carbon tax becomes a peculiar piece of legislation when viewed from Pirate Party's perspective (not necessarily that I agree with it, no ad hominem please). Acc
by friendzis 11y ago
Carbon tax becomes a peculiar piece of legislation when viewed from Pirate Party's perspective (not necessarily that I agree with it, no ad hominem please). According to Rick Falkvinge [1] legislation must:
* Be targeted at a problem
* Solve the problem
* Not create other problems in best case, worse problems in worst case
* Be evidence based
Carbon emission is considered a problem because it contributes to climate change. For carbon tax to be considered targeting a problem we must accept that climate change is a problem.
Does it solve a problem? At least not directly. Taxes on tobacco and alcohol do not eliminate consumption, prohibition in US created a Mafia, jail-time for drug possession does not eliminate consumption, we have hard evidence confirming that.
Such tax hinders accessibility, though. Since at least transportation is fossil fuel dependant, more or less everything (commodities including: food, public transportation) will get more expensive, thus less accessible.
Do we have hard evidence (numbers, not general economic speculation) that x level carbon tax will lower carbon emissions by y?
[1]: http://falkvinge.net/pirate-wheel/principles/quality-legislation/ http://falkvinge.net/pirate-wheel/principles/quality-legisla...
- pzone 11y agoYou don't have to reduce carbon emissions to zero to solve global warming, you just have to discourage emissions to some degree. That is exactly what a carbon tax does. It directly solves the problem. Revenue-neutral tax is the key to dismissing the point about accessibility. You can take the tax revenue and mostly give it to poor people who are hurt the most by the tax.
- soared 11y agoBy your logic we should remove alc/tobacco taxes then? Global warming (in the long term) is more harmful than either of those.