3 ms·

Well put. Likely best thing anyone can do for the environment right now is to vote for politicians that want to balance the budget. Deficits are artificially i

Well put. Likely best thing anyone can do for the environment right now is to vote for politicians that want to balance the budget. Deficits are artificially increasing consumption at the expense of our children's environmental and financial future. Furthermore, no one wants admit it but mass immigration is undeniably horrible for the environment. Not only does consumption of each immigrant increase by a factor of 20x by moving to a developed nation. It also drains 3rd world countries from the ambitious people it needs to develop into a stable and prosperous nation.

vkou 9y ago
The best thing we could do for the environment is to mandate a 20-hour working week. Or, alternatively, a crippling carbon tax, with the proceeds spent on carbon sequestration.
- sintaxi 9y ago
  Impossible to enforce.
  - vkou 9y ago
    Trivial. Mandate any time >20h/week to be overtime. Mandate overtime rates to be double. For salaried employees, the hourly rate is Annual/1000h. Construct a legal system wherein employees can easily sue employers for wage theft. Most employers will voluntarily cut their hours. Will this cause dramatic economic upheaval? Yes, absolutely. The uncomfortable truth is that we can't cut our carbon emissions without drastically changing our way of life. (And putting your wilted kale in the compost bin isn't it.)
    - cheepin 9y ago
      He was almost assuredly talking about enforcing carbon tax. Enforcing working hours limits has already been accomplished in many countries.
      - vkou 9y ago
        Enforcing a carbon tax is trivial, since fossil fuel extraction is centralized. It does, however, require heavy tariffs against goods imported from countries that don't have carbon taxes.
      - xapata 9y ago
        A carbon tax would be very easy to implement in most countries since almost all carbon is extracted from the ground by just a handful of major corporations.
    - sintaxi 9y ago
      Consumption wont decrease unless your goal is to just make everyone poor. Employers would simply double their work force and employees would have two jobs. Companies are always going to scale to meet market demands so if the goal is to benefit the environment this wont work. Deficits however are creating consumption despite a lack of market demand. That's why balancing the budget is so beneficial.
      - vkou 9y ago
        My goal is to reduce economic output. Of course that will make everyone poorer. Our climate can't support its entire population living at the level of wealth currently enjoyed by first world countries. It can't even support the population of first world countries living at the level of wealth currently enjoyed by first world countries. Electric sedans and solar panels are fine and all, but the vast majority of the crap we buy comes here on ship, and is hauled across the continent on gasoline trucks. We can either make everyone poorer by taxing goods that require transportation (Which is nearly all of them), or by forcing everyone to do less work. There is no other solution. Stopping deficit spending will slow down economic growth by single percentage points. It will also make everyone poorer - but by a much smaller margin. It also won't be enough. We are currently in a situation where we can't just be happy with stopping the rate of emission growth - if we want to avoid catastrophic warming, we have to drastically reduce carbon emissions. Not fifty years from now, not thirty years from now, but within the next decade. [1] We can reduce our GDP, or the climate can reduce it for us. [1] http://www.wri.org/sites/default/files/WRI13-IPCCinfographic-FINAL_web.png http://www.wri.org/sites/default/files/WRI13-IPCCinfographic...
        sintaxi 9y ago
        This is far to authoritarian for my taste.
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  You could double up fuel taxes. That would make commutes shorter.
  - vkou 9y ago
    It won't, though. You still need to get to work, and there's still going to be a shortage of housing near workplaces. The number of office workers that can, and will opt to work remotely, because they will spend an extra ~$3/day on commuting will be a drop in the bucket.
- lend000 9y ago
  Not a big fan of "mandate a 20-hour working week", but a carbon tax should be leveraged such that the tax can fund work to offset each unit of CO2 created, which compared to today's taxes, would indeed be crippling.
  - sintaxi 9y ago
    There are many ways we can benefit the environment without taxing and creating industry the free market can't support such as not borrowing our children's money in order to consume more. Why not do those things first?

vkou 9y ago

The best thing we could do for the environment is to mandate a 20-hour working week. Or, alternatively, a crippling carbon tax, with the proceeds spent on carbon sequestration.

sintaxi 9y ago
Impossible to enforce.
- vkou 9y ago
  Trivial. Mandate any time >20h/week to be overtime. Mandate overtime rates to be double. For salaried employees, the hourly rate is Annual/1000h. Construct a legal system wherein employees can easily sue employers for wage theft. Most employers will voluntarily cut their hours. Will this cause dramatic economic upheaval? Yes, absolutely. The uncomfortable truth is that we can't cut our carbon emissions without drastically changing our way of life. (And putting your wilted kale in the compost bin isn't it.)
  - cheepin 9y ago
    He was almost assuredly talking about enforcing carbon tax. Enforcing working hours limits has already been accomplished in many countries.
    - vkou 9y ago
      Enforcing a carbon tax is trivial, since fossil fuel extraction is centralized. It does, however, require heavy tariffs against goods imported from countries that don't have carbon taxes.
    - xapata 9y ago
      A carbon tax would be very easy to implement in most countries since almost all carbon is extracted from the ground by just a handful of major corporations.
  - sintaxi 9y ago
    Consumption wont decrease unless your goal is to just make everyone poor. Employers would simply double their work force and employees would have two jobs. Companies are always going to scale to meet market demands so if the goal is to benefit the environment this wont work. Deficits however are creating consumption despite a lack of market demand. That's why balancing the budget is so beneficial.
    - vkou 9y ago
      My goal is to reduce economic output. Of course that will make everyone poorer. Our climate can't support its entire population living at the level of wealth currently enjoyed by first world countries. It can't even support the population of first world countries living at the level of wealth currently enjoyed by first world countries. Electric sedans and solar panels are fine and all, but the vast majority of the crap we buy comes here on ship, and is hauled across the continent on gasoline trucks. We can either make everyone poorer by taxing goods that require transportation (Which is nearly all of them), or by forcing everyone to do less work. There is no other solution. Stopping deficit spending will slow down economic growth by single percentage points. It will also make everyone poorer - but by a much smaller margin. It also won't be enough. We are currently in a situation where we can't just be happy with stopping the rate of emission growth - if we want to avoid catastrophic warming, we have to drastically reduce carbon emissions. Not fifty years from now, not thirty years from now, but within the next decade. [1] We can reduce our GDP, or the climate can reduce it for us. [1] http://www.wri.org/sites/default/files/WRI13-IPCCinfographic-FINAL_web.png http://www.wri.org/sites/default/files/WRI13-IPCCinfographic...
      - sintaxi 9y ago
        This is far to authoritarian for my taste.
maxxxxx 9y ago
You could double up fuel taxes. That would make commutes shorter.
- vkou 9y ago
  It won't, though. You still need to get to work, and there's still going to be a shortage of housing near workplaces. The number of office workers that can, and will opt to work remotely, because they will spend an extra ~$3/day on commuting will be a drop in the bucket.
lend000 9y ago
Not a big fan of "mandate a 20-hour working week", but a carbon tax should be leveraged such that the tax can fund work to offset each unit of CO2 created, which compared to today's taxes, would indeed be crippling.
- sintaxi 9y ago
  There are many ways we can benefit the environment without taxing and creating industry the free market can't support such as not borrowing our children's money in order to consume more. Why not do those things first?