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If only we had a uniform, slowly ramping global $100/ton carbon tax. From the models I've seen it would fairly abruptly correct all of these "two methods are va

If only we had a uniform, slowly ramping global $100/ton carbon tax. From the models I've seen it would fairly abruptly correct all of these "two methods are vastly different in carbon emissions but otherwise fairly comparable" situations.

nasmorn 8y ago
abdolutely. Industry is known to lie about its ability to cope with even slight changes in price structure when asked. Even though things like tripling of oil prices mostly change if people buy v4 or v6 engines. A small yearly increase that that companies can price into their plans will absolutely not destroy our economy
adrianN 8y ago
The carbon tax should be tied to the price of extracting a ton of carbon from the atmosphere.
- deleted 8y ago
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- vidarh 8y ago
  In Norway there's taxation on drinks containers that is set high enough that it's cheaper to participate in a return scheme. The audited return/recycling/reuse rates are then used to provide a discount against the per-unit tax. I've always liked this scheme, because assuming you set the tax high enough for society to - as a fallback - take action to rectify the problem (e.g. hiring more people to clean up in this case), with a punitive margin on top, the tax provides a financial incentive to innovate to drive down the cost of acting responsibly. There is a collective return service you can participate in, but if you find a better alternative you're free to use it as long as you can demonstrate what your return rate is. Or you can pay the tax and leave it to the government, but your margins will be worse than the competitions, as the return scheme is cheaper. The general mechanism feels like it'd be adaptable to a lot of situations where you want to make sure it gets rectified, but also don't want to trust the government to dictate specific solutions - in this case it doesn't matter if e.g. the fallback solution is severely cost-ineffective; the more costly the fallback is, the stronger the financial incentive to find a better solution is.

nasmorn 8y ago

abdolutely. Industry is known to lie about its ability to cope with even slight changes in price structure when asked. Even though things like tripling of oil prices mostly change if people buy v4 or v6 engines. A small yearly increase that that companies can price into their plans will absolutely not destroy our economy

adrianN 8y ago

The carbon tax should be tied to the price of extracting a ton of carbon from the atmosphere.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
vidarh 8y ago
In Norway there's taxation on drinks containers that is set high enough that it's cheaper to participate in a return scheme. The audited return/recycling/reuse rates are then used to provide a discount against the per-unit tax. I've always liked this scheme, because assuming you set the tax high enough for society to - as a fallback - take action to rectify the problem (e.g. hiring more people to clean up in this case), with a punitive margin on top, the tax provides a financial incentive to innovate to drive down the cost of acting responsibly. There is a collective return service you can participate in, but if you find a better alternative you're free to use it as long as you can demonstrate what your return rate is. Or you can pay the tax and leave it to the government, but your margins will be worse than the competitions, as the return scheme is cheaper. The general mechanism feels like it'd be adaptable to a lot of situations where you want to make sure it gets rectified, but also don't want to trust the government to dictate specific solutions - in this case it doesn't matter if e.g. the fallback solution is severely cost-ineffective; the more costly the fallback is, the stronger the financial incentive to find a better solution is.