14 ms·

At the start, I thought these announcements and laws (eg Scotland) to ban ICE vehicles by 20XX were cheap politics. A promise Someone Else will deliver later, w

by netcan 8y ago

At the start, I thought these announcements and laws (eg Scotland) to ban ICE vehicles by 20XX were cheap politics. A promise Someone Else will deliver later, with credit due to you now. I've come around though. I think all the bastardized carbon accounting, market based solutions are on average quite bad. The idea of a neutral, "market decides" policy is a myth. These things are complex, and that compmexity is an opportunity for regulatory capture. For example, most European vehicle tax codes have been altered to reflect emissions. The upshot is that (1) new vehicles are 20% ish more efficient (2) older vehicles become uneconomical faster (3) people who drive older vehicles clear pay more tax. (4) Switching from a 10yr old ICE hatchback to a new one can easily save you $500 pa. Going from a new "efficient" ICE to an electric will save you a fraction of that. New car buyers pay less tax, old cars pay more. Vehicles hit junkyards faster. Manufacturers sell more cars. Over a decade we'll see a minor (maybe 20% at best) decrease in carbon emissions. Very little environmental juice for a lot of poor and middle class squeeze. A nice little sales boost for VW. There's a lot to be said for the simplicity of an outright ban. Ban ICEs. Ban commercial fishing. It worked for CFCs and market hunting. In retrospect, no one wishes we had split hairs with a complicated policy.

NickM 8y ago
I think all the bastardized carbon accounting, market based solutions are on average quite bad. I'm curious, do you think the whole idea of a market-based solution is bad, or do you just think that actual real-world implementations have been lacking so far? I mean, it seems to me that if you tax emissions strongly and uniformly enough, then at some point it has to have an impact. I think existing schemes have just been pretty weak. I agree that carbon taxes can potentially hit poor and middle class folks unfairly hard, but this can easily be solved via carbon dividend type schemes.
- admax88q 8y ago
  > I think existing schemes have just been pretty weak. Most existing schemes seem to have been cleverly designed to avoid hitting certain industries with large enough lobbying power. Taxing/banning/regulating specific polluters rather than pollution itself is just ripe for regulatory capture.
- ip26 8y ago
  It sounds like he's arguing not that the policies have been lacking oomph, but that the policies could never really hope to handle all the nuance. If you could only set up the incentives right, you'd get the right outcome, but maybe that's a perilous & incredibly difficult task.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  "I'm curious, do you think the whole idea of a market-based solution is bad, or do you just think that actual real-world implementations have been lacking so far?' My theory is that the people push for market based solutions the most are usually the same people that are against regulations and taxes so whatever they come up with will usually be very weak. They certainly won't support taxation of carbon emissions to the degree that's necessary for real behavior.
  - skookumchuck 8y ago
    I'm one of those people that push for market based solutions. I also support taxation to the degree that it is effective. So your theory is not supported by evidence. I also support the idea of reducing other taxes in concert, so the tax is revenue neutral.
- munificent 8y ago
  > it seems to me that if you tax emissions strongly and uniformly enough, then at some point it has to have an impact. One way to look at that is that you're saying any market-based solution strong enough to be effective is indistinguishable from an outright ban. We could, for example, discourage smoking by putting a $500 tax on each pack of cigarettes. But at that point, you may as well stop pretending and ban it outright. Another way to look at it is that bans are fair because they apply to all people equally. Taxes unfairly punish the poor who have less discretionary income. (A $100 tax on cigarettes would drive most of the working and middle classes to quit, but there are certainly a number of rich folks who would keep on lighting up because $100 means little to them.)
  - amluto 8y ago
    > One way to look at that is that you're saying any market-based solution strong enough to be effective is indistinguishable from an outright ban. I'm not sure I agree. I could easily imagine a range of carbon taxes applied to vehicles where most, but not all, users would switch to electric. There could easily be people who like taking long trips far from major roads and are willing to pay a large premium to do so. > Another way to look at it is that bans are fair because they apply to all people equally. Taxes unfairly punish the poor who have less discretionary income. (A $100 tax on cigarettes would drive most of the working and middle classes to quit, but there are certainly a number of rich folks who would keep on lighting up because $100 means little to them.) That's a fair point, but I'm not sure your example is all that compelling. If a small number of rich people are willing to pay $100 in extra taxes to smoke a cigarette, is that really so bad?
    - secabeen 8y ago
      The advantage of a ban is that you can also eliminate production and importation. If you have a legal path, that path will be diverted into the black market.
      - amluto 8y ago
        Black market cigarettes, sure. But black market cars? Cars are already individually registered and tracked by the states. You can’t just magic up an illegally imported car and get away with driving it for very long.
- netcan 8y ago
  I don't think the whole idea is bad. Market based public housing schemes can be quite good, for example. I do think that making stuff more market based to avoid "picking winners" is probably a bad idea. We know what the winner is here, more or less. The winner is non-ICE vehicles. We should be backing that, not 25% more efficient engines.
eanzenberg 8y ago
Unfortunately, production of cars (and consumerism in general) is extremely bad for carbon emissions and for the environment. Carbon emissions from the production of 1 car generally rival the lifetime emissions from the tailpipe [1]. If you have no choice but to replace an old car for new then sure, get a more efficient one. If you're replacing cars every 3 years like an average westerner, given the age of cars I see on the road, you are doing extreme harm. Old cars that are running should be incentivized to continue to be on the road, barring any other pollutant or smog issues. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/green-living-blog/2010/sep/23/carbon-footprint-new-car https://www.theguardian.com/environment/green-living-blog/20...
- ashleyn 8y ago
  Ironically, a big reason people buy new cars is because their old one failed emissions screening, and wasn't economical to repair.
  - abakker 8y ago
    I always wonder at this. I've seen those expensive repair bills and they're usually expensive relative to the value of the car to be repaired, but they're cheap relative to the cost of a brand new car.
    - bluGill 8y ago
      You can get a loan for a new car, you can't get a loan for repairs. If you manage money well this is rarely a problem, but if you don't then you have no savings to pay for the repairs. The other problem with repair is what else is wrong and what will that cost to repair. I've been told that there are people who trade their cars in when the tires are worn out - it kicks the payments down the road a month (they have to budget next month lower than this month, but it doesn't use cash they don't have) Remember, nearly anyone can get a car loan no matter how bad their credit is. Even a credit card has higher standards. Since we are talking about people who are bad with money it is at least believable.
dsfyu404ed 8y ago
>There's a lot to be said for the simplicity of an outright ban. Ban ICEs. Ban commercial fishing. It worked for CFCs and market hunting. In retrospect, no one wishes we had split hairs with a complicated policy. Bans are just as messy because what is and isn't subject to he ban results in just as much hair splitting as a complicated policy in the first place. When we "ban" things there are almost always trade-offs. It makes sense to allow market hunting in some cases (wild hogs, whitetail deer in some areas). There's a case to be made for allowing the use of lead paint in some industrial applications.
yholio 8y ago
> I've come around though. I think all the bastardized carbon accounting, market based solutions are on average quite bad. Carbon taxing works well when it's applied - but it's very hard to create the political consensus to impose it. For example, the high cost of fuel in Europe has driven cars to an average MPG equivalent of 45 versus the average of 33 in US. That's nothing to sneeze at, it's 40% more for a given amount of CO2 - and that's after the continous fuel efficiency improvements happening on both sides in recent decades: https://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/files/2012/09/fuel_economy_comparison.png https://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/files/2012/0... However, the EU fuel taxes are not actually carbon taxes, they are road taxes. Imposing the same tax on industry and power generation, as pure carbon taxes, would have immense political blow back. So I really wonder how do you think "ban all non-renewable electric stations and cement factories" would work if we can't even accept a 3-10% price increase on these products?
- walshemj 8y ago
  Don't forget US Gallons are smaller than "proper" imperial ones
  - atombender 8y ago
    OP is using US gallons, though.
    - tom_ 8y ago
      Are you sure? There are cars that are that efficient, but as an average? In real life?
      - atombender 8y ago
        I'm sure that they were using US gallons. Whether this is data is accurate is another matter. According to the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), Europe averaged 46 MPG (US gallons, "normalized to CAFE test cycles") in 2015 [1], compared to something like 37 MPG in the US. This NY Times article [2] summarizes the report, with some nice graphs. [1] https://www.theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/2017-Global-LDV-Standards-Update_ICCT-Report_23062017_vF.pdf https://www.theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/201... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/04/03/climate/us-fuel-economy.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/04/03/climate/us-fu...
ciconia 8y ago
> Switching from a 10yr old ICE hatchback to a new one can easily save you $500 pa. Going from a new "efficient" ICE to an electric will save you a fraction of that. Not true. From personal experience driving an electric costs one fifth the cost of fuel per km. That's an enormous saving.
- rootusrootus 8y ago
  A Prius gets around 55 mpg, which with gas at 3.25/gal and electricity at 0.11/kWh means a Chevy Bolt, for example, costs just a little over half what the electric does, per mile. The electric also has a significantly higher capital cost and depreciation rate. I wouldn't be at all surprised if over, say, five years, the Prius has a cheaper TCO.
  - philipkglass 8y ago
    This is sensitive to local costs of both fuel and electricity. In my part of Washington state I last paid $3.43 per gallon of gasoline but residential electricity is about 6.5 cents per kWh. It looks like in Denmark electricity prices were 0.30 EUR (0.35 USD) per kWh in the second half of 2017, while gasoline prices are currently 12.26 DKK per liter (7.15 USD per US gallon).
    - rootusrootus 8y ago
      Definitely it varies by location. The US national average price for fuel right now is 2.90, and the average cost per kWh for electricity is 0.12. Makes the running cost for the ICE vs EV even closer than my original numbers. I kinda leave the European prices out of the discussion because what they pay tends to be extremely distorted by local taxes. Based on a quick bit of TCO research, best I can tell is that without subsidies, EVs tend to have a TCO significantly higher than an efficient ICE vehicle. The market is young, obviously, and lots of EVs are aimed at people willing to pay a premium. A Model S, for example, has a TCO over five years of nearly 70 grand (!!). But, a Chevy Spark EV has a TCO of more like 20 grand, which is really showing how cheap they were due to GM dumping them at a loss and the big tax credit. A Prius is around 30K or so, for comparison. I want an electric, and will get one as soon as there is something in the right price range with the characteristics I'm interested in (sporty, decent looking, sufficient range, reliable, good ergonomics). The Model 3 isn't too bad but it's more than I want to spend on a first-run car, and I won't buy any car with a single touchscreen as the sole interface.
indemnity 8y ago
In my country (New Zealand) the fuel tax goes into the infrastructure fund which keeps roads maintained. It also funds public transport. We’re going go have to come up with creative solutions when most vehicles are electric.
- snowwindwaves 8y ago
  In NZ Diesel vehicles have to pay a tax per km driven but it is not paid at the pump. You buy a sticker that says what odometer reading you have paid up to. Get a fine if odometer reads higher than sticker. Same mechanism can work for electric cars
  - Taniwha 8y ago
    In fact electric cars did have to do that until a few years ago when the mileage tax was removed to encourage electric cars
jacquesm 8y ago
A side effect, intended or not, is that poorer people who can not afford new and more efficient cars end up paying more for the fuel and more for the tax.
skookumchuck 8y ago
Bans are economically inefficient because they allow for zero flexibility. There will always be cases where an ICE is more appropriate, and it's very costly to try to lobby for an exemption. A carbon emissions tax is the right solution. Just keep raising it until one gets the effect wanted - a wholesale switch to electric.
hueving 8y ago
>There's a lot to be said for the simplicity of an outright ban. Ban ICEs. Do this and a massive chunk of the population will die shortly after. There is no alternative to farm and transport food at the scale required for the modern population. Banning CFCs isn't even comparable because all of modern civilization wasn't built on them like it has been with the portable energy enabled by ICE. There is no viable electric-only solution for the freight rail network, the air freight network, or even the road freight network.
robben1234 8y ago
>Vehicles hit junkyards faster not really. They just migrate faster to Ukraine, Belarus and Russia.

by netcan 8y ago

NickM 8y ago

I think all the bastardized carbon accounting, market based solutions are on average quite bad. I'm curious, do you think the whole idea of a market-based solution is bad, or do you just think that actual real-world implementations have been lacking so far? I mean, it seems to me that if you tax emissions strongly and uniformly enough, then at some point it has to have an impact. I think existing schemes have just been pretty weak. I agree that carbon taxes can potentially hit poor and middle class folks unfairly hard, but this can easily be solved via carbon dividend type schemes.

admax88q 8y ago
> I think existing schemes have just been pretty weak. Most existing schemes seem to have been cleverly designed to avoid hitting certain industries with large enough lobbying power. Taxing/banning/regulating specific polluters rather than pollution itself is just ripe for regulatory capture.
ip26 8y ago
It sounds like he's arguing not that the policies have been lacking oomph, but that the policies could never really hope to handle all the nuance. If you could only set up the incentives right, you'd get the right outcome, but maybe that's a perilous & incredibly difficult task.
maxxxxx 8y ago
"I'm curious, do you think the whole idea of a market-based solution is bad, or do you just think that actual real-world implementations have been lacking so far?' My theory is that the people push for market based solutions the most are usually the same people that are against regulations and taxes so whatever they come up with will usually be very weak. They certainly won't support taxation of carbon emissions to the degree that's necessary for real behavior.
- skookumchuck 8y ago
  I'm one of those people that push for market based solutions. I also support taxation to the degree that it is effective. So your theory is not supported by evidence. I also support the idea of reducing other taxes in concert, so the tax is revenue neutral.
munificent 8y ago
> it seems to me that if you tax emissions strongly and uniformly enough, then at some point it has to have an impact. One way to look at that is that you're saying any market-based solution strong enough to be effective is indistinguishable from an outright ban. We could, for example, discourage smoking by putting a $500 tax on each pack of cigarettes. But at that point, you may as well stop pretending and ban it outright. Another way to look at it is that bans are fair because they apply to all people equally. Taxes unfairly punish the poor who have less discretionary income. (A $100 tax on cigarettes would drive most of the working and middle classes to quit, but there are certainly a number of rich folks who would keep on lighting up because $100 means little to them.)
- amluto 8y ago
  > One way to look at that is that you're saying any market-based solution strong enough to be effective is indistinguishable from an outright ban. I'm not sure I agree. I could easily imagine a range of carbon taxes applied to vehicles where most, but not all, users would switch to electric. There could easily be people who like taking long trips far from major roads and are willing to pay a large premium to do so. > Another way to look at it is that bans are fair because they apply to all people equally. Taxes unfairly punish the poor who have less discretionary income. (A $100 tax on cigarettes would drive most of the working and middle classes to quit, but there are certainly a number of rich folks who would keep on lighting up because $100 means little to them.) That's a fair point, but I'm not sure your example is all that compelling. If a small number of rich people are willing to pay $100 in extra taxes to smoke a cigarette, is that really so bad?
  - secabeen 8y ago
    The advantage of a ban is that you can also eliminate production and importation. If you have a legal path, that path will be diverted into the black market.
    - amluto 8y ago
      Black market cigarettes, sure. But black market cars? Cars are already individually registered and tracked by the states. You can’t just magic up an illegally imported car and get away with driving it for very long.
netcan 8y ago
I don't think the whole idea is bad. Market based public housing schemes can be quite good, for example. I do think that making stuff more market based to avoid "picking winners" is probably a bad idea. We know what the winner is here, more or less. The winner is non-ICE vehicles. We should be backing that, not 25% more efficient engines.

eanzenberg 8y ago

Unfortunately, production of cars (and consumerism in general) is extremely bad for carbon emissions and for the environment. Carbon emissions from the production of 1 car generally rival the lifetime emissions from the tailpipe [1]. If you have no choice but to replace an old car for new then sure, get a more efficient one. If you're replacing cars every 3 years like an average westerner, given the age of cars I see on the road, you are doing extreme harm. Old cars that are running should be incentivized to continue to be on the road, barring any other pollutant or smog issues. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/green-living-blog/2010/sep/23/carbon-footprint-new-car https://www.theguardian.com/environment/green-living-blog/20...

ashleyn 8y ago
Ironically, a big reason people buy new cars is because their old one failed emissions screening, and wasn't economical to repair.
- abakker 8y ago
  I always wonder at this. I've seen those expensive repair bills and they're usually expensive relative to the value of the car to be repaired, but they're cheap relative to the cost of a brand new car.
  - bluGill 8y ago
    You can get a loan for a new car, you can't get a loan for repairs. If you manage money well this is rarely a problem, but if you don't then you have no savings to pay for the repairs. The other problem with repair is what else is wrong and what will that cost to repair. I've been told that there are people who trade their cars in when the tires are worn out - it kicks the payments down the road a month (they have to budget next month lower than this month, but it doesn't use cash they don't have) Remember, nearly anyone can get a car loan no matter how bad their credit is. Even a credit card has higher standards. Since we are talking about people who are bad with money it is at least believable.

dsfyu404ed 8y ago

>There's a lot to be said for the simplicity of an outright ban. Ban ICEs. Ban commercial fishing. It worked for CFCs and market hunting. In retrospect, no one wishes we had split hairs with a complicated policy. Bans are just as messy because what is and isn't subject to he ban results in just as much hair splitting as a complicated policy in the first place. When we "ban" things there are almost always trade-offs. It makes sense to allow market hunting in some cases (wild hogs, whitetail deer in some areas). There's a case to be made for allowing the use of lead paint in some industrial applications.

yholio 8y ago

> I've come around though. I think all the bastardized carbon accounting, market based solutions are on average quite bad. Carbon taxing works well when it's applied - but it's very hard to create the political consensus to impose it. For example, the high cost of fuel in Europe has driven cars to an average MPG equivalent of 45 versus the average of 33 in US. That's nothing to sneeze at, it's 40% more for a given amount of CO2 - and that's after the continous fuel efficiency improvements happening on both sides in recent decades: https://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/files/2012/09/fuel_economy_comparison.png https://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/files/2012/0... However, the EU fuel taxes are not actually carbon taxes, they are road taxes. Imposing the same tax on industry and power generation, as pure carbon taxes, would have immense political blow back. So I really wonder how do you think "ban all non-renewable electric stations and cement factories" would work if we can't even accept a 3-10% price increase on these products?

walshemj 8y ago
Don't forget US Gallons are smaller than "proper" imperial ones
- atombender 8y ago
  OP is using US gallons, though.
  - tom_ 8y ago
    Are you sure? There are cars that are that efficient, but as an average? In real life?
    - atombender 8y ago
      I'm sure that they were using US gallons. Whether this is data is accurate is another matter. According to the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), Europe averaged 46 MPG (US gallons, "normalized to CAFE test cycles") in 2015 [1], compared to something like 37 MPG in the US. This NY Times article [2] summarizes the report, with some nice graphs. [1] https://www.theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/2017-Global-LDV-Standards-Update_ICCT-Report_23062017_vF.pdf https://www.theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/201... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/04/03/climate/us-fuel-economy.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/04/03/climate/us-fu...

ciconia 8y ago

> Switching from a 10yr old ICE hatchback to a new one can easily save you $500 pa. Going from a new "efficient" ICE to an electric will save you a fraction of that. Not true. From personal experience driving an electric costs one fifth the cost of fuel per km. That's an enormous saving.

rootusrootus 8y ago
A Prius gets around 55 mpg, which with gas at 3.25/gal and electricity at 0.11/kWh means a Chevy Bolt, for example, costs just a little over half what the electric does, per mile. The electric also has a significantly higher capital cost and depreciation rate. I wouldn't be at all surprised if over, say, five years, the Prius has a cheaper TCO.
- philipkglass 8y ago
  This is sensitive to local costs of both fuel and electricity. In my part of Washington state I last paid $3.43 per gallon of gasoline but residential electricity is about 6.5 cents per kWh. It looks like in Denmark electricity prices were 0.30 EUR (0.35 USD) per kWh in the second half of 2017, while gasoline prices are currently 12.26 DKK per liter (7.15 USD per US gallon).
  - rootusrootus 8y ago
    Definitely it varies by location. The US national average price for fuel right now is 2.90, and the average cost per kWh for electricity is 0.12. Makes the running cost for the ICE vs EV even closer than my original numbers. I kinda leave the European prices out of the discussion because what they pay tends to be extremely distorted by local taxes. Based on a quick bit of TCO research, best I can tell is that without subsidies, EVs tend to have a TCO significantly higher than an efficient ICE vehicle. The market is young, obviously, and lots of EVs are aimed at people willing to pay a premium. A Model S, for example, has a TCO over five years of nearly 70 grand (!!). But, a Chevy Spark EV has a TCO of more like 20 grand, which is really showing how cheap they were due to GM dumping them at a loss and the big tax credit. A Prius is around 30K or so, for comparison. I want an electric, and will get one as soon as there is something in the right price range with the characteristics I'm interested in (sporty, decent looking, sufficient range, reliable, good ergonomics). The Model 3 isn't too bad but it's more than I want to spend on a first-run car, and I won't buy any car with a single touchscreen as the sole interface.

indemnity 8y ago

In my country (New Zealand) the fuel tax goes into the infrastructure fund which keeps roads maintained. It also funds public transport. We’re going go have to come up with creative solutions when most vehicles are electric.

snowwindwaves 8y ago
In NZ Diesel vehicles have to pay a tax per km driven but it is not paid at the pump. You buy a sticker that says what odometer reading you have paid up to. Get a fine if odometer reads higher than sticker. Same mechanism can work for electric cars
- Taniwha 8y ago
  In fact electric cars did have to do that until a few years ago when the mileage tax was removed to encourage electric cars

jacquesm 8y ago

A side effect, intended or not, is that poorer people who can not afford new and more efficient cars end up paying more for the fuel and more for the tax.

skookumchuck 8y ago

Bans are economically inefficient because they allow for zero flexibility. There will always be cases where an ICE is more appropriate, and it's very costly to try to lobby for an exemption. A carbon emissions tax is the right solution. Just keep raising it until one gets the effect wanted - a wholesale switch to electric.

hueving 8y ago

>There's a lot to be said for the simplicity of an outright ban. Ban ICEs. Do this and a massive chunk of the population will die shortly after. There is no alternative to farm and transport food at the scale required for the modern population. Banning CFCs isn't even comparable because all of modern civilization wasn't built on them like it has been with the portable energy enabled by ICE. There is no viable electric-only solution for the freight rail network, the air freight network, or even the road freight network.

robben1234 8y ago

>Vehicles hit junkyards faster not really. They just migrate faster to Ukraine, Belarus and Russia.