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Why wait for the free market fairies to magically fix climate change decades from now, when we can tax and mitigate the pollution that's destroying other people

by scarmig 10y ago

Why wait for the free market fairies to magically fix climate change decades from now, when we can tax and mitigate the pollution that's destroying other people's lives and property right now? That's a well understood solution within the scope of already known science, and economics can easily predict what happens when you tax something: use of it goes down.

stale2002 10y ago
The free market fairies can, and already ARE fixing the problem. It is thanks to them that we got our 30X decrease in solar prices, and made it even plausible to run the world on renewables. But sure, do a carbon tax and externalize the externalities. I am all in favor of making people pay for the damage that they cause, directly proportional to the cost of the damage. That is the most free market solution there is. But my original comment was not responding to someone who made a reasonable proposal for 50$ a ton tax on carbon or something. I was responding to someone making an outlandishly, crazy proposal. Climate change is a problem. But it is not a world ending problem. It is a reasonably sized problem that can be solved with reasonable solutions and we do not need to kill of half of the surplus population or ban all cars or go back to living on the land or anything. All we got to do is maybe make owning a car 20% more expensive, and then the market will figure it out, as it has been figuring it out and making a whole lot of progress for the last 20 years
- tempestn 10y ago
  I don't think you deserve the downvotes, and I agree with you that using taxes to price in the externalities of releasing carbon will help contribute to a solution. That said, I think you might be underestimating the problem. We've been trying for decades to get it under control, and as the article shows, the problem is rapidly accelerating, not improving, or even worsening at a steady rate. We also don't know what the effect of a rapid multi-degree temperature increase will be. It's possible that it could set off positive feedback loops that will make the problem much worse. Maybe it won't, but it would be nice not to take the risk. I agree that CO2 is very unlikely to end human civilization. But it could certainly make things much less pleasant than they need to be for a long time. In my opinion it's worth a significant amount of short-term pain to rein it in as much as possible.

by scarmig 10y ago

stale2002 10y ago

The free market fairies can, and already ARE fixing the problem. It is thanks to them that we got our 30X decrease in solar prices, and made it even plausible to run the world on renewables. But sure, do a carbon tax and externalize the externalities. I am all in favor of making people pay for the damage that they cause, directly proportional to the cost of the damage. That is the most free market solution there is. But my original comment was not responding to someone who made a reasonable proposal for 50$ a ton tax on carbon or something. I was responding to someone making an outlandishly, crazy proposal. Climate change is a problem. But it is not a world ending problem. It is a reasonably sized problem that can be solved with reasonable solutions and we do not need to kill of half of the surplus population or ban all cars or go back to living on the land or anything. All we got to do is maybe make owning a car 20% more expensive, and then the market will figure it out, as it has been figuring it out and making a whole lot of progress for the last 20 years

tempestn 10y ago
I don't think you deserve the downvotes, and I agree with you that using taxes to price in the externalities of releasing carbon will help contribute to a solution. That said, I think you might be underestimating the problem. We've been trying for decades to get it under control, and as the article shows, the problem is rapidly accelerating, not improving, or even worsening at a steady rate. We also don't know what the effect of a rapid multi-degree temperature increase will be. It's possible that it could set off positive feedback loops that will make the problem much worse. Maybe it won't, but it would be nice not to take the risk. I agree that CO2 is very unlikely to end human civilization. But it could certainly make things much less pleasant than they need to be for a long time. In my opinion it's worth a significant amount of short-term pain to rein it in as much as possible.