4 ms·

The problem is that costs are subsidized by basically letting businesses destroy the environment. The solution should be simple: add lots of taxes, let the off-

The problem is that costs are subsidized by basically letting businesses destroy the environment. The solution should be simple: add lots of taxes, let the off-the-shelf cost of meat and gasoline reflect the real cost to our environment, make deforestation a crime, tax the shit out of all polluting industries and if a country is not participating add taxes on imports from said country, or ban those imports altogether. As long as the burning of fossil fuels keeps being dirt cheap, there's no incentive for innovation. You mentioned meat - if governments would tax the current CAFO practices in accordance to the destruction of the environment and of our health, the consumption of meat would go down because of the price, but that meat would end up being raised with sustainable farming practices, on organic grass, locally grown, as that would prove to be the cheaper way to raise meat and so it would have a higher quality.

sounds 10y ago
Great suggestions! We've basically imposed the "taxes on imports from said country, or ban those imports" on North Korea, with the result that they use the worst of environmental practices: • Inefficient small coal-burning fireplaces in outlying areas. (Pyongyang is better.) • Regulatory environment where factory and vehicle emissions are not even close to a priority. • Unsafe nuclear testing. Ok, so that was my straw man :) Hopefully it illustrates something more universal, namely: Many countries lack the internal political will to put meaningful environmental clean ups in place. Even something as simple as the tax you proposed to pay for environmental clean up of disaster areas is impossible due to politics. Until we have de-politicized the topic, that probably won't change. New clean tech is one great way of accomplishing this.
- tomp 10y ago
  > Many countries lack the internal political will to put meaningful environmental clean ups in place. Even something as simple as the tax you proposed to pay for environmental clean up of disaster areas is impossible due to politics. The point isn't changing other countries. The point is giving competing green technologies a fighting chance. I don't care whether Saudi Arabia suffocates in cheap oil or builds a hi-tech green energy paradise. That's their choice. But I don't want the local green energy startups and organic farms be driven out of business by cheap Saudi-Arabic oil. Same with China - I think it's fundamentally unfair that local businesses have to abide to many regulations (e.g. environmental, safety, hiring) that Chinese companies don't need to, yet they are able to compete in the same market offering lower prices. I think that the current implementation of free trade is a fundamentally failed and morally wrong model.
  - lukeschlather 10y ago
    The point where your narrative breaks down somewhat is that when you look at pollution per capita, the US is far worse than China. This is even without accounting for the fact that most of the benefits of Chinese pollution, if there are benefits, end up in the USA. China's population is 4.3 times that of the USA, but they only burn 1.3 times as much coal. In other words, the average American burns nearly 4 times as much coal as the average Chinese person. http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Energy/Coal/Consumption-per-capita http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Energy/Coal/C...
    - izzydata 10y ago
      Is that really a fair comparison though? If the United States managed to become as populated as China it wouldn't have the luxury / potential to use as much energy per person as it does now and would become more like China.
- yongjik 10y ago
  1. According to Wikipedia, North Korea emits 3.0t CO2 per capita as of 2011. US emits 17.0t per capita. One could almost make the claim that economic sanction is working. :/ 2. The problem is to change the behavior of billions of people, and many will find it inconvenient (to varying degrees). Of course it's gonna be political. These days I end up regarding anyone proposing "de-politicization" with suspicion, because "getting the politics out of it" is a great way to ensure that whatever solution we can apply is delayed by years. 3. The same for geoengineering. I know some people are sincere, but in many cases it sounds too much like "There must be a unicorn technology that will solve the problem without us paying the price. If it's not there yet, we just have to wish it harder."
  - mod 10y ago
    A more likely claim would be that living primitively causes fewer emissions. Emissions are a byproduct of our progress (thus far).
DannyBee 10y ago
"The problem is that costs are subsidized by basically letting businesses destroy the environment. The solution should be simple: add lots of taxes, let the off-the-shelf cost of meat and gasoline reflect the real cost to our environment, make deforestation a crime, tax the shit out of all polluting industries and if a country is not participating add taxes on imports from said country, or ban those imports altogether. " This will either lead to: your country (and many countries) becoming a massive failure or war. Leading people isn't done solely by smacking people repeatedly and saying "no don't do that", or taking money out of their pockets every time they do. This mechanism doesn't work if you do it to everyone, and in fact, if you look at oppressive governments, even they tend to have at least one class of people who can do whatever they want or are paid well or whatever, and use that class to keep others in line. Leadership instead is often convincing people to be dragged along with you in a direction they may not want to go. It has to actually be palatable to people to do so. There are other problems. What makes you think people won't emigrate to the places which don't do this crazy plan? What makes you think the leaders of those places won't end up with tons of power because they have a near-unlimited set of people who want to live there, tons of money, and a happy populace? If they gang up with other countries, what makes you think they won't just take over your country, and if you've pissed off the populace enough, that your populace won't want that to happen? This "simple" solution just ignores all the politics, etc involved, because it thinks they don't matter. But they do.
- Daishiman 10y ago
  What do you mean? You're discarding the solution as something completely impractical when the reality is that import tariffs and taxes are very effective at controlling certain behaviors and mitigating the second-order effects of certain economic activity. Recycling, sin taxes, environmental regulation and control for polluting industries. They are not 100% effective but they are clearly way more effective than the alternative of doing nothing. We don't live in a black and white world where people either accept prohibition passively or defy it just because. There are cost-benefit relationships to doing these things and reasonable economic policy is about striking the balance that allows the most beneficial results.
  - 10y ago
PrettyButUgly 10y ago
"add lots of taxes" - How incredibly naive. Any tax money would be wasted. Some people would pay more, some corrupt people will find a way to spend that tax money, and almost nothing else would change. Well maybe, you'll make it so poor people can't drive or cool their houses in the summer, but the middle class and up won't change their behavior. I wish you "just tax it" people would hold your electives accountable for spending before you throw more money at them.
- RodericDay 10y ago
  As far as this scenario is concerned, it doesn't matter that the tax money is wasted. The point is to discourage consumption.
  - oogali 10y ago
    Discourage consumption by who? People without money? You're busy looking up, and forgetting there's a class or two of people below you that would be [disproportionately] affected by your policy.
    - RodericDay 10y ago
      If you think everyone should have access to some meat, you can take some of that tax money and use it to subsidize a minimal amount of meat consumption for low-income families.
      - craftkiller 10y ago
        That's a scary thought. Think of it this way: in a corrupt society the wealthy upper class can do whatever they want and get away with it. If we continue controlling behavior like this through tax then we'd have the same behavior as the corrupt society: wealthy people do what they want and poor people can't do anything... The difference is you'd be codifying this into law. Instead of being 'corrupt' behavior we can work to abolish, it would be the acceptable expected behavior. Maybe that isn't corruption at all, and we've been wrong this whole time. Maybe right and wrong are malleable enough to sway under money. Maybe we need corruption to survive as a species. I don't know.
ewzimm 10y ago
That idea about all pasture-raised, grass-fed beef isn't even possible. Current pasture-rased beef is 9% of global cattle. Grazing, mostly beef, occupies 60% of the world's pastures. So we would only need to move the grazers to 666% of the world's pastures to build our sustainable future! One of the main causes of global warming right now is grass-fed beef because it requires so much land. In South America, it's common practice to burn down the rainforest to feed herds of cattle, which is why we end up exterminating thousands of species per year. They're eating straight through some of our biggest carbon sinks and annihilating biodiversity.

sounds 10y ago

Great suggestions! We've basically imposed the "taxes on imports from said country, or ban those imports" on North Korea, with the result that they use the worst of environmental practices: • Inefficient small coal-burning fireplaces in outlying areas. (Pyongyang is better.) • Regulatory environment where factory and vehicle emissions are not even close to a priority. • Unsafe nuclear testing. Ok, so that was my straw man :) Hopefully it illustrates something more universal, namely: Many countries lack the internal political will to put meaningful environmental clean ups in place. Even something as simple as the tax you proposed to pay for environmental clean up of disaster areas is impossible due to politics. Until we have de-politicized the topic, that probably won't change. New clean tech is one great way of accomplishing this.

tomp 10y ago
> Many countries lack the internal political will to put meaningful environmental clean ups in place. Even something as simple as the tax you proposed to pay for environmental clean up of disaster areas is impossible due to politics. The point isn't changing other countries. The point is giving competing green technologies a fighting chance. I don't care whether Saudi Arabia suffocates in cheap oil or builds a hi-tech green energy paradise. That's their choice. But I don't want the local green energy startups and organic farms be driven out of business by cheap Saudi-Arabic oil. Same with China - I think it's fundamentally unfair that local businesses have to abide to many regulations (e.g. environmental, safety, hiring) that Chinese companies don't need to, yet they are able to compete in the same market offering lower prices. I think that the current implementation of free trade is a fundamentally failed and morally wrong model.
- lukeschlather 10y ago
  The point where your narrative breaks down somewhat is that when you look at pollution per capita, the US is far worse than China. This is even without accounting for the fact that most of the benefits of Chinese pollution, if there are benefits, end up in the USA. China's population is 4.3 times that of the USA, but they only burn 1.3 times as much coal. In other words, the average American burns nearly 4 times as much coal as the average Chinese person. http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Energy/Coal/Consumption-per-capita http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Energy/Coal/C...
  - izzydata 10y ago
    Is that really a fair comparison though? If the United States managed to become as populated as China it wouldn't have the luxury / potential to use as much energy per person as it does now and would become more like China.
yongjik 10y ago
1. According to Wikipedia, North Korea emits 3.0t CO2 per capita as of 2011. US emits 17.0t per capita. One could almost make the claim that economic sanction is working. :/ 2. The problem is to change the behavior of billions of people, and many will find it inconvenient (to varying degrees). Of course it's gonna be political. These days I end up regarding anyone proposing "de-politicization" with suspicion, because "getting the politics out of it" is a great way to ensure that whatever solution we can apply is delayed by years. 3. The same for geoengineering. I know some people are sincere, but in many cases it sounds too much like "There must be a unicorn technology that will solve the problem without us paying the price. If it's not there yet, we just have to wish it harder."
- mod 10y ago
  A more likely claim would be that living primitively causes fewer emissions. Emissions are a byproduct of our progress (thus far).

DannyBee 10y ago

"The problem is that costs are subsidized by basically letting businesses destroy the environment. The solution should be simple: add lots of taxes, let the off-the-shelf cost of meat and gasoline reflect the real cost to our environment, make deforestation a crime, tax the shit out of all polluting industries and if a country is not participating add taxes on imports from said country, or ban those imports altogether. " This will either lead to: your country (and many countries) becoming a massive failure or war. Leading people isn't done solely by smacking people repeatedly and saying "no don't do that", or taking money out of their pockets every time they do. This mechanism doesn't work if you do it to everyone, and in fact, if you look at oppressive governments, even they tend to have at least one class of people who can do whatever they want or are paid well or whatever, and use that class to keep others in line. Leadership instead is often convincing people to be dragged along with you in a direction they may not want to go. It has to actually be palatable to people to do so. There are other problems. What makes you think people won't emigrate to the places which don't do this crazy plan? What makes you think the leaders of those places won't end up with tons of power because they have a near-unlimited set of people who want to live there, tons of money, and a happy populace? If they gang up with other countries, what makes you think they won't just take over your country, and if you've pissed off the populace enough, that your populace won't want that to happen? This "simple" solution just ignores all the politics, etc involved, because it thinks they don't matter. But they do.

Daishiman 10y ago
What do you mean? You're discarding the solution as something completely impractical when the reality is that import tariffs and taxes are very effective at controlling certain behaviors and mitigating the second-order effects of certain economic activity. Recycling, sin taxes, environmental regulation and control for polluting industries. They are not 100% effective but they are clearly way more effective than the alternative of doing nothing. We don't live in a black and white world where people either accept prohibition passively or defy it just because. There are cost-benefit relationships to doing these things and reasonable economic policy is about striking the balance that allows the most beneficial results.
- 10y ago

PrettyButUgly 10y ago

"add lots of taxes" - How incredibly naive. Any tax money would be wasted. Some people would pay more, some corrupt people will find a way to spend that tax money, and almost nothing else would change. Well maybe, you'll make it so poor people can't drive or cool their houses in the summer, but the middle class and up won't change their behavior. I wish you "just tax it" people would hold your electives accountable for spending before you throw more money at them.

RodericDay 10y ago
As far as this scenario is concerned, it doesn't matter that the tax money is wasted. The point is to discourage consumption.
- oogali 10y ago
  Discourage consumption by who? People without money? You're busy looking up, and forgetting there's a class or two of people below you that would be [disproportionately] affected by your policy.
  - RodericDay 10y ago
    If you think everyone should have access to some meat, you can take some of that tax money and use it to subsidize a minimal amount of meat consumption for low-income families.
    - craftkiller 10y ago
      That's a scary thought. Think of it this way: in a corrupt society the wealthy upper class can do whatever they want and get away with it. If we continue controlling behavior like this through tax then we'd have the same behavior as the corrupt society: wealthy people do what they want and poor people can't do anything... The difference is you'd be codifying this into law. Instead of being 'corrupt' behavior we can work to abolish, it would be the acceptable expected behavior. Maybe that isn't corruption at all, and we've been wrong this whole time. Maybe right and wrong are malleable enough to sway under money. Maybe we need corruption to survive as a species. I don't know.

ewzimm 10y ago

That idea about all pasture-raised, grass-fed beef isn't even possible. Current pasture-rased beef is 9% of global cattle. Grazing, mostly beef, occupies 60% of the world's pastures. So we would only need to move the grazers to 666% of the world's pastures to build our sustainable future! One of the main causes of global warming right now is grass-fed beef because it requires so much land. In South America, it's common practice to burn down the rainforest to feed herds of cattle, which is why we end up exterminating thousands of species per year. They're eating straight through some of our biggest carbon sinks and annihilating biodiversity.