4 ms·

Put a tax on carbon & market forces will solve everything. We'll have cleaner cities, and hopefully won't need to worry about runaway climate change. Yeah, som

Put a tax on carbon & market forces will solve everything. We'll have cleaner cities, and hopefully won't need to worry about runaway climate change. Yeah, some rich people will suffer, but that's OK they are rich and won't stop being rich when their industries are forced to change.

specialist 10y ago
My understanding (reading, friends of friends) is that most of industry is on board with a carbon tax. Among other reasons, businesses need predictability. But as always there's a few defectors who screw it up for everyone else, eg Koch brothers.
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guelo 10y ago
If you tried to tax carbon market forces would run a massive disinformation and propaganda campaign. Market forces would spend massive amounts on campaigns electing anti tax legislators. If a tax was passed they would sue, obstruct, and lobby for years and decades constantly trying to water it down and kill it. Market forces are stronger then our democracy. We are doomed.
- gdubs 10y ago
  I would have thought this, but conservatives are actually starting to make a case for a Carbon Tax. See the most conservative voices in the Wall Street Journal today, for instance. They'll want complete regulatory rollback in return, which will leave it to the left to decide whether it's a worthwhile trade off. Personally, I think it is. What happened with Washington State's Carbon Tax proposal is a bad omen though. Had bipartisan consensus but fell apart due to fighting between the left and the left.
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ars 10y ago
> Put a tax on carbon & market forces will solve everything. Unless you can get India and China onboard you will solve nothing. You will just end up moving more manufacturing to those countries. Total CO2 emitted will not change.
- codecamper 10y ago
  Yup, it's got to be a global tax. Tax the sources: coal, oil, and gas producers forced to collect a tax on top of everything they sell. Money used to protect rainforest & other ecologically important places, fund clean energy research, and maybe even to install solar, wind, storage, and car charging points.
- philipkglass 10y ago
  The West could prevent emissions arbitrage with CO2 tariffs on imports set at the same cost per ton as the domestic carbon tax. Something like: goods produced abroad need to have a CO2 audit chain with proven integrity for imported goods to be CO2-taxed at the manufacturer's claimed emissions intensity. Otherwise the importing country assumes an unfavorable (high) default CO2 intensity for goods produced abroad and taxes are high. That wouldn't necessarily prevent high emissions linked to domestic-only consumption-and-production in China, India, and other developing nations, but it would be a powerful incentive as long as those countries have a lot of trade with the developed world. And it would probably tend to make developing nations' domestic-production-for-domestic-consumption activity cleaner by accelerating adoption (and pushing down costs) of lower-carbon technologies starting in export driven industries.
  - ars 10y ago
    That wouldn't help. You can't "target" energy that way because it is fungible. The country would claim "all exports are made from the renewable energy, and all hydrocarbon energy is used for internal consumption". I suppose you could set import tariffs based on the entire country's energy balance, but then you disincentive any individual producer from doing anything. On top of that you can "wash" energy. Make solar cells using hydrocarbon energy, then import them to another country and claim "see, we are all solar" - but of course they aren't since the energy used just came from a different country. As free market perfect as it seem, a CO2 tax is impossible in the details unless it was truly global (which would never work since the incentive for a country to cheap is enormous).

specialist 10y ago

My understanding (reading, friends of friends) is that most of industry is on board with a carbon tax. Among other reasons, businesses need predictability. But as always there's a few defectors who screw it up for everyone else, eg Koch brothers.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

guelo 10y ago

If you tried to tax carbon market forces would run a massive disinformation and propaganda campaign. Market forces would spend massive amounts on campaigns electing anti tax legislators. If a tax was passed they would sue, obstruct, and lobby for years and decades constantly trying to water it down and kill it. Market forces are stronger then our democracy. We are doomed.

gdubs 10y ago
I would have thought this, but conservatives are actually starting to make a case for a Carbon Tax. See the most conservative voices in the Wall Street Journal today, for instance. They'll want complete regulatory rollback in return, which will leave it to the left to decide whether it's a worthwhile trade off. Personally, I think it is. What happened with Washington State's Carbon Tax proposal is a bad omen though. Had bipartisan consensus but fell apart due to fighting between the left and the left.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

ars 10y ago

> Put a tax on carbon & market forces will solve everything. Unless you can get India and China onboard you will solve nothing. You will just end up moving more manufacturing to those countries. Total CO2 emitted will not change.

codecamper 10y ago
Yup, it's got to be a global tax. Tax the sources: coal, oil, and gas producers forced to collect a tax on top of everything they sell. Money used to protect rainforest & other ecologically important places, fund clean energy research, and maybe even to install solar, wind, storage, and car charging points.
philipkglass 10y ago
The West could prevent emissions arbitrage with CO2 tariffs on imports set at the same cost per ton as the domestic carbon tax. Something like: goods produced abroad need to have a CO2 audit chain with proven integrity for imported goods to be CO2-taxed at the manufacturer's claimed emissions intensity. Otherwise the importing country assumes an unfavorable (high) default CO2 intensity for goods produced abroad and taxes are high. That wouldn't necessarily prevent high emissions linked to domestic-only consumption-and-production in China, India, and other developing nations, but it would be a powerful incentive as long as those countries have a lot of trade with the developed world. And it would probably tend to make developing nations' domestic-production-for-domestic-consumption activity cleaner by accelerating adoption (and pushing down costs) of lower-carbon technologies starting in export driven industries.
- ars 10y ago
  That wouldn't help. You can't "target" energy that way because it is fungible. The country would claim "all exports are made from the renewable energy, and all hydrocarbon energy is used for internal consumption". I suppose you could set import tariffs based on the entire country's energy balance, but then you disincentive any individual producer from doing anything. On top of that you can "wash" energy. Make solar cells using hydrocarbon energy, then import them to another country and claim "see, we are all solar" - but of course they aren't since the energy used just came from a different country. As free market perfect as it seem, a CO2 tax is impossible in the details unless it was truly global (which would never work since the incentive for a country to cheap is enormous).