8 ms·

Big Oil Doesn’t Like EV Subsidies, Just Its Own Giant Subsidy

118 points by _Microft 8y ago

village-idiot 8y ago
Nothing the Koch’s say should be taken seriously, they’re such consistent liars that if they told me what the weather was today I’d look outside.
- shard972 8y ago
  Not a fan of unfettered global migration then?
mmirate 8y ago
"Producers of good X want the government to subsidize them and not the producers of superior good Y" is just cronyism as usual ... ... not news. As long as government exists and has the powers to tax and to omit-to-tax, it will always be a force-multiplying vehicle of competition.
zxcvvcxz 8y ago
> the social cost of carbon, it amounted last year to $107 billion for energy-related emissions from oil and natural gas in the U.S. Within that, emissions from transportation — the biggest source in the U.S. and the only one still growing — enjoyed a free ride worth $59 billion. > The cost of the federal tax subsidy for EVs is $2 billion OK, except the latter is an actual subsidy given directly, while the former is some made up pie-in-the-sky napkin calculation towards something we don't like. Let's talk about the "social cost of tobacco" then. Or alcohol. Or how about the "social cost of fast food" leading to obesity? What about the "social cost of single motherhood?" No other social factor predicts crime and prison time nearly as well, not to mention lack of future educational achievement and lack of future economic output. If anyone wants to play the theoretical existential threats game, I'll trade an acknowledgement of "global warming" for an acknowledgement of single motherhood. Anyways I don't think it's sensible to compare theoretical future economic costs to real costs paid by taxpayers right now.
- sambull 8y ago
  The Romans tried democracy faster than we fell to the great filter.
- linkregister 8y ago
  I agree that men who abandon their children should be aggressively pursued by the state to remedy the situation of single motherhood. That's your point, right?
  - zxcvvcxz 8y ago
    Because only men are to blame for children out of wedlock? I've got news for you - women make choices too. They choose as well to partake in risky behaviors. They choose to act in ways that cast serious doubt in a man's paternity, destroying his incentive to stick around. Obviously someone has not had enough experience in human relations, particularly in places where the government will subsidize poor behavior.
- millstone 8y ago
  Global warming mitigation is not diverting resources from tobacco cessation. > I don't think it's sensible to compare theoretical future economic costs to real costs paid by taxpayers right now. "We should permit environmental destruction for economic gain benefitting today's taxpayers."
  - toomuchtodo 8y ago
    "Today's taxpayers" have been kicking the can down the road for half a century. The attitude should not be a surprise at this point.
  - zxcvvcxz 8y ago
    Keyword: theoretical. We are coming out of an ice age from over 10K years ago, and the rate of temperature increase has been slowing on that scale. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_temperature_record https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_temperature_record (Hint: don't worry so much about zooming into the 1970s to today, which is less than 0.01% of the time span of a larger trend.) Pollution is a problem, yes. Go to China and talk to them before you lecture me about paying carbon taxes in Any City, USA. But when it comes to this theoretical warming, we are likely to be a spec of noise in the overall trend of the planet doing its thing.
dbrower 8y ago
A better argument than imputed carbon offset is the oil depletion allowance, which is a pretty explicit subsidy for extraction industries.
- Lazare 8y ago
  Being able to amortize an investment over the productive life of an asset is a subsidy? Under what definition of the word?
  - danielharan 8y ago
    An easy way to favour an industry is to allow them to write off assets faster than they're actually used up. So while the amortization itself seems fair, many oil companies have lobbied for these types of changes, which together amount to hidden subsidies worth billions every year.
    - pas 8y ago
      Why does accelerated depreciation help a company? (It helps that they pay less tax initially, because they can offset more revenue, but then they are left with less expenses to offset revenue later, how does it help them? Or again the explanation is time value of money?) Also oil wells' production curve should match the depreciation curve, no? (You can extract more initially and it drops off, especially as the pressure lowers, you then have to inject extraction fluids, CO2 or brine or whatever, crack the surrounding rocks, and eventually it gets abandoned as a production well.)
      - danielharan 8y ago
        Yeah, it's time value of money. There are many kinds of subsidies, including direct to consumer. If you're interested, the IEA's old reports mentioned here would be the best place to start (many countries have since cut their subsidies, so there's progress): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies#IEA_position_on_subsidies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies#IEA_position_...
partiallypro 8y ago
Wow, what a weak argument. If you're using this method why aren't you including carbon emissions from EVs entire manufacturing process to mining of its materials to get the true subsidy cost to society? Economists already know about negative externalities but calculating their cost is incredibly difficult. Comparing a direct subsidy to a negative externality is just laughable.
- millstone 8y ago
  This but unironically. Yes, let's absolutely compare the total lifecycle cost of electric and IC vehicles, and price them accordingly. If you have a politically feasible proposal for this, by god, share it share it, the planet depends on it. If not: who cares what "economists already know" about accurate pricing of externalities? The existing zero price for CO2 emissions is wildly off. Say we radically lurch in the opposite direction, setting the price of CO2 much too high (a hilariously sci-fi premise). We foolishly over-develop technologies that mitigate CO2 emissions. What a catastrophe, we learned how to suck CO2 out of the air instead of further refining fracking. We built a better world for nothing!
  - awakeasleep 8y ago
    I agree with your point but find that “oops we built a better world” take really off putting. The “oops” there is “society collapses and is reorganized” and the collapse and reorganization of society is the exact thing we’re trying to avoid.
  - partiallypro 8y ago
    You assume there are no negative externalities to pricing CO2 too high? There would be a lot, including pushing more people into poverty. I don't deny that CO2 has a cost, but the entire premise of the article is that oil is "subsidized" because of CO2 emissions, but that is just bunk. You could argue that about literally every item, ever. From manufacturing to food production, to child bearing, to breathing. If you argue that oil is subsidized because of CO2 emissions, you also have to say so ever -everything- including EV and every point of the supply chain. You might accidentally be causing people to release less CO2 and replace it with something even worse. How you treat CO2 in a cap and trade method is up for debate, but again to claim oil is subsidized though CO2 emissions but EV isn't is nonsense. Lithium mining is -incredibly- dirty, batteries in landfills are -incredibly- toxic/flammable. If you think those too are a form of indirect subsidy then the EV subsidy is already high without the direct subsidy. And if you break it down to which has the biggest subsidy per kilowatt/hour, you might find they are not as far apart as you suspect...but the article doesn't measure that, so how would they know or even have the capability to write such an article?
torpfactory 8y ago
Here’s how I think about it: you may feel free to criticize, this is meant to get people thinking, not as an implementable policy. Draw a control volume around your business or product. If, during the creation, use, or disposal of your product or business, mass or energy crosses this boundary, you should be required to provide for any negative externalities caused by this material or energy. Of course, as usual with this approach, the magic is all in the drawing of the boundary, but hear me out. Under this framework, it may be a bit easier to see clearly what externalities we might wish to price. I sincerely believe that if we now shrink from this present task of properly pricing and managing these costs, human society will perish from this earth.
- awakeasleep 8y ago
  This makes sense. I wonder why we dont hear more people talk about this or anayze businesses this way. Sounds like it might even be interesting to the layperson.
  - dv_dt 8y ago
    One area describing this is the Circular Economy. There is a lot more discussion about it outside of the US. The US media seems indifferent at best. https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/circular-economy/concept https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/circular-economy/co... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_economy
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- semi-extrinsic 8y ago
  To paraphrase Johnny Depp: "... but that's called 'communism' and is frowned upon in most societies." Seriously, we have all the tech to radically reduce emissions starting now. But it costs businesses money to do it, and the future benefit is distributed across all humanity, so nobody does it voluntarily. We need governments to agree to force everyone to do something that benefits society, which stands in stark contrast to market capitalism.
NoblePublius 8y ago
Assuming half your taxes goes to the DoD and half the DoD budget goes towards protecting the oil trade, gas costs about about $30 per gallon if you make $150k: (40% to fed govt x .5 x .5 ) / 1000 gallons gas per year.
- creato 8y ago
  The first assumption is way off [1]. The second assumption also is suspect. It is probably more correct to say that half the DoD budget goes towards protecting all trade, not just the oil trade. Another (unstated) assumption is that oil fuels a lot more than just personal vehicle gas consumption. I don't know where that 1000 gallons of gas per year statistic comes from though. 40% in taxes to the federal government is also very high. The top marginal tax rate is 35%, and 150k isn't close to getting you into the top bracket, let alone by a significant enough factor to consider that an effective tax rate. Don't get me wrong, I strongly believe there should be larger subsidies to alternative energy sources to counteract the externalities of fossil fuels. I just think this particular estimate is wildly misleading. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Federal_Spending.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Federal_Spending.png
  - NoblePublius 8y ago
    You’re right. Trump cut my taxes.
djrogers 8y ago
I totally understand the point of view here, and likely agree to an extent, however calling the lack of a tax that has never existed before a subsidy is more than just a stretch, it’s an outright distortion. I also am not sure that carbon taxes would hit the wealthy in a manner as disproportionate as would seem to make the author happy - everyone drives, and low income earners tend to have older, less fuel efficient cars. In the same way that has taxes are regressive, so would carbon taxes be. The wealthy can simply avoid them by buying EVs and solar panels, while low income earners would be stuck with the tab.
- Jweb_Guru 8y ago
  > everyone drives That's certainly not true. In some areas of the country, yes. But carbon taxes would not be particularly regressive. And--frankly--the entire point of carbon taxes is to reduce the production of carbon dioxide. At some point you have to actually stop people from using it, whether or not it makes sense economically in the extremely near term.
  - djrogers 8y ago
    Fewer than 10% of US families do not have cars so it’s far more accurate to say that it’s true in most areas of the country.
- mrpopo 8y ago
  > calling the lack of a tax that has never existed before a subsidy is more than just a stretch, it’s an outright distortion. This is not correct, this is simply finally accounting for the negative carbon externality. Industries pay extra for all kinds of negative externalities, and without these regulations, markets are inefficient. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality
  - jdhn 8y ago
    I really dislike this argument because it implies that as soon as something is deemed "bad", a tax should placed on it.
potiuper 8y ago
All consumers will very shortly be paying the price for the fuel that is wasted using inefficient internal combustion engines as a disincentive compared to EVs. Also, consumers could capture the CO2 upon combustion themselves or may not ever transform the fuel they purchase into CO2 (gas leaking, etc.). Getting rid of the oil subsidies and enhancing those for non-carbon energy sources would be so much simpler and more effective than bickering over what would be the marginally least unaccountable tax for reducing the use of carbon based fuels. The day the government gets rid of subsidies for oil will be the first day I actually consider solar along with any tax rebates. This article is a written by a yuppie. Over the course of just a few weeks, a major fire can pump more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than California’s many climate change programs can save in 12 months.
DalekBaldwin 8y ago
> Using Yale economist and recent Nobel-prize winner William Nordhaus’s $31-per-tonne estimate of the social cost of carbon, it amounted last year to $107 billion for energy-related emissions from oil and natural gas in the U.S. Within that, emissions from transportation — the biggest source in the U.S. and the only one still growing — enjoyed a free ride worth $59 billion. But what is the net tax/subsidy in plain monetary terms? I just did a cursory bit of Wikipedia research so I may have gotten something wrong, but the article neglected this aspect completely: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies#United_States > On March 13, 2013, Terry M. Dinan, senior advisor at the Congressional Budget Office, testified before the Subcommittee on Energy of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology in the U.S. House of Representatives that federal energy tax subsidies would cost $16.4 billion that fiscal year, broken down as follows: > Renewable energy: $7.3 billion (45 percent) > Energy efficiency: $4.8 billion (29 percent) > Fossil fuels: $3.2 billion (20 percent) > Nuclear energy: $1.1 billion (7 percent) $3.2 billion in fossil fuel subsidies (including categories besides motor fuel), versus... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_taxes_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_taxes_in_the_United_State... > Federal fuel taxes raised $35.2 billion in Fiscal Year 2014, with $25.0 billion raised from gasoline taxes and $10.2 billion raised from taxes on diesel and special motor fuels. That's not counting state taxes, which are even higher: > The United States federal excise tax on gasoline is 18.4 cents per gallon and 24.4 cents per gallon for diesel fuel... On average, as of January 2017, state and local taxes and fees add 31.04 cents to gasoline and 31.01 cents to diesel, for a total US average fuel tax of 49.44 cents per gallon for gas and 55.41 cents per gallon for diesel. So about $80 billion in net taxes, which exceeds the estimated social cost of carbon from US auto emissions. Of course, fuel taxes go toward the maintenance of infrastructure for motor transportation, circling back and resubsidizing it, but electric vehicles enjoy the same benefits from that maintenance (as well as other subsidies for the generation of the electricity that powers them).
- lsiebert 8y ago
  You have to also look at the department of energy spending on wikipedia since they do fossil fuel development, which adds an additional half billion. So 3.7 billion per year, at least. But oil companies are also some of the main beneficiaries of things like the foreign tax credit, so you have to consider that as well.
lsiebert 8y ago
Getting away with carbon pollution, if it's a subsidy, is just part of the subsidies the fossil fuel industries get in the U.S. The 20 billion the United States provide each year in national fossil fuel subsidies is a real issue. (per 2015 see https://www.odi.org/publications/10058-empty-promises-g20-subsidies-oil-gas-and-coal-production https://www.odi.org/publications/10058-empty-promises-g20-su...). I see other numbers that are lower then 20 for different years (This says 8+ billion for 2016 https://newclimate.org/2018/11/14/brown-to-green-report-2018/ https://newclimate.org/2018/11/14/brown-to-green-report-2018...). I'd guess there are different ways of measuring subsidies, but all of the measures for fossil fuel subsidies I could find were multi billion per year while EV subsidies were only 2 billion over the entire lifetime of the program.
tomohawk 8y ago
Great use of NewSpeak, but the absence of a tax is not a subsidy. There is a pretty big subsidy for the non-Saudi companies that are part of ARAMCO, though. The Saudis wanted a bigger slice of the pie when the company was formed, but instead of just splitting the revenue along those lines, they worked out a deal where the Saudi government would tax the non-Saudi companies to an amount that would split the pie the way they wanted it. The American companies can write off that foreign tax. So American taxpayers are subsidizing the arrangement.
- pdpi 8y ago
  There’s a reasonable argument to be made that letting you get away with something with negative externalities, which then have to be dealt with by spending public money, is effectively the same as giving you that money directly.
  - tomohawk 8y ago
    Only if those "negative externalities" are illegal for everyone. In this case, they're perfectly legal activities. It's not a "break" or "subsidy" just because someone's allowed to carry on a perfectly legal activity. Look, if it is bad to use oil for fuel, then just tax it. But playing these word games is lame.
XalvinX 8y ago
In other news, bears shit in the woods.

118 points by _Microft 8y ago

Nothing the Koch’s say should be taken seriously, they’re such consistent liars that if they told me what the weather was today I’d look outside.

shard972 8y ago
Not a fan of unfettered global migration then?

mmirate 8y ago

"Producers of good X want the government to subsidize them and not the producers of superior good Y" is just cronyism as usual ... ... not news. As long as government exists and has the powers to tax and to omit-to-tax, it will always be a force-multiplying vehicle of competition.

zxcvvcxz 8y ago

> the social cost of carbon, it amounted last year to $107 billion for energy-related emissions from oil and natural gas in the U.S. Within that, emissions from transportation — the biggest source in the U.S. and the only one still growing — enjoyed a free ride worth $59 billion. > The cost of the federal tax subsidy for EVs is $2 billion OK, except the latter is an actual subsidy given directly, while the former is some made up pie-in-the-sky napkin calculation towards something we don't like. Let's talk about the "social cost of tobacco" then. Or alcohol. Or how about the "social cost of fast food" leading to obesity? What about the "social cost of single motherhood?" No other social factor predicts crime and prison time nearly as well, not to mention lack of future educational achievement and lack of future economic output. If anyone wants to play the theoretical existential threats game, I'll trade an acknowledgement of "global warming" for an acknowledgement of single motherhood. Anyways I don't think it's sensible to compare theoretical future economic costs to real costs paid by taxpayers right now.

sambull 8y ago
The Romans tried democracy faster than we fell to the great filter.
linkregister 8y ago
I agree that men who abandon their children should be aggressively pursued by the state to remedy the situation of single motherhood. That's your point, right?
- zxcvvcxz 8y ago
  Because only men are to blame for children out of wedlock? I've got news for you - women make choices too. They choose as well to partake in risky behaviors. They choose to act in ways that cast serious doubt in a man's paternity, destroying his incentive to stick around. Obviously someone has not had enough experience in human relations, particularly in places where the government will subsidize poor behavior.
millstone 8y ago
Global warming mitigation is not diverting resources from tobacco cessation. > I don't think it's sensible to compare theoretical future economic costs to real costs paid by taxpayers right now. "We should permit environmental destruction for economic gain benefitting today's taxpayers."
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  "Today's taxpayers" have been kicking the can down the road for half a century. The attitude should not be a surprise at this point.
- zxcvvcxz 8y ago
  Keyword: theoretical. We are coming out of an ice age from over 10K years ago, and the rate of temperature increase has been slowing on that scale. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_temperature_record https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_temperature_record (Hint: don't worry so much about zooming into the 1970s to today, which is less than 0.01% of the time span of a larger trend.) Pollution is a problem, yes. Go to China and talk to them before you lecture me about paying carbon taxes in Any City, USA. But when it comes to this theoretical warming, we are likely to be a spec of noise in the overall trend of the planet doing its thing.

dbrower 8y ago

A better argument than imputed carbon offset is the oil depletion allowance, which is a pretty explicit subsidy for extraction industries.

Lazare 8y ago
Being able to amortize an investment over the productive life of an asset is a subsidy? Under what definition of the word?
- danielharan 8y ago
  An easy way to favour an industry is to allow them to write off assets faster than they're actually used up. So while the amortization itself seems fair, many oil companies have lobbied for these types of changes, which together amount to hidden subsidies worth billions every year.
  - pas 8y ago
    Why does accelerated depreciation help a company? (It helps that they pay less tax initially, because they can offset more revenue, but then they are left with less expenses to offset revenue later, how does it help them? Or again the explanation is time value of money?) Also oil wells' production curve should match the depreciation curve, no? (You can extract more initially and it drops off, especially as the pressure lowers, you then have to inject extraction fluids, CO2 or brine or whatever, crack the surrounding rocks, and eventually it gets abandoned as a production well.)
    - danielharan 8y ago
      Yeah, it's time value of money. There are many kinds of subsidies, including direct to consumer. If you're interested, the IEA's old reports mentioned here would be the best place to start (many countries have since cut their subsidies, so there's progress): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies#IEA_position_on_subsidies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies#IEA_position_...

partiallypro 8y ago

Wow, what a weak argument. If you're using this method why aren't you including carbon emissions from EVs entire manufacturing process to mining of its materials to get the true subsidy cost to society? Economists already know about negative externalities but calculating their cost is incredibly difficult. Comparing a direct subsidy to a negative externality is just laughable.

millstone 8y ago
This but unironically. Yes, let's absolutely compare the total lifecycle cost of electric and IC vehicles, and price them accordingly. If you have a politically feasible proposal for this, by god, share it share it, the planet depends on it. If not: who cares what "economists already know" about accurate pricing of externalities? The existing zero price for CO2 emissions is wildly off. Say we radically lurch in the opposite direction, setting the price of CO2 much too high (a hilariously sci-fi premise). We foolishly over-develop technologies that mitigate CO2 emissions. What a catastrophe, we learned how to suck CO2 out of the air instead of further refining fracking. We built a better world for nothing!
- awakeasleep 8y ago
  I agree with your point but find that “oops we built a better world” take really off putting. The “oops” there is “society collapses and is reorganized” and the collapse and reorganization of society is the exact thing we’re trying to avoid.
- partiallypro 8y ago
  You assume there are no negative externalities to pricing CO2 too high? There would be a lot, including pushing more people into poverty. I don't deny that CO2 has a cost, but the entire premise of the article is that oil is "subsidized" because of CO2 emissions, but that is just bunk. You could argue that about literally every item, ever. From manufacturing to food production, to child bearing, to breathing. If you argue that oil is subsidized because of CO2 emissions, you also have to say so ever -everything- including EV and every point of the supply chain. You might accidentally be causing people to release less CO2 and replace it with something even worse. How you treat CO2 in a cap and trade method is up for debate, but again to claim oil is subsidized though CO2 emissions but EV isn't is nonsense. Lithium mining is -incredibly- dirty, batteries in landfills are -incredibly- toxic/flammable. If you think those too are a form of indirect subsidy then the EV subsidy is already high without the direct subsidy. And if you break it down to which has the biggest subsidy per kilowatt/hour, you might find they are not as far apart as you suspect...but the article doesn't measure that, so how would they know or even have the capability to write such an article?

torpfactory 8y ago

Here’s how I think about it: you may feel free to criticize, this is meant to get people thinking, not as an implementable policy. Draw a control volume around your business or product. If, during the creation, use, or disposal of your product or business, mass or energy crosses this boundary, you should be required to provide for any negative externalities caused by this material or energy. Of course, as usual with this approach, the magic is all in the drawing of the boundary, but hear me out. Under this framework, it may be a bit easier to see clearly what externalities we might wish to price. I sincerely believe that if we now shrink from this present task of properly pricing and managing these costs, human society will perish from this earth.

awakeasleep 8y ago
This makes sense. I wonder why we dont hear more people talk about this or anayze businesses this way. Sounds like it might even be interesting to the layperson.
- dv_dt 8y ago
  One area describing this is the Circular Economy. There is a lot more discussion about it outside of the US. The US media seems indifferent at best. https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/circular-economy/concept https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/circular-economy/co... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_economy
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
semi-extrinsic 8y ago
To paraphrase Johnny Depp: "... but that's called 'communism' and is frowned upon in most societies." Seriously, we have all the tech to radically reduce emissions starting now. But it costs businesses money to do it, and the future benefit is distributed across all humanity, so nobody does it voluntarily. We need governments to agree to force everyone to do something that benefits society, which stands in stark contrast to market capitalism.

NoblePublius 8y ago

Assuming half your taxes goes to the DoD and half the DoD budget goes towards protecting the oil trade, gas costs about about $30 per gallon if you make $150k: (40% to fed govt x .5 x .5 ) / 1000 gallons gas per year.

creato 8y ago
The first assumption is way off [1]. The second assumption also is suspect. It is probably more correct to say that half the DoD budget goes towards protecting all trade, not just the oil trade. Another (unstated) assumption is that oil fuels a lot more than just personal vehicle gas consumption. I don't know where that 1000 gallons of gas per year statistic comes from though. 40% in taxes to the federal government is also very high. The top marginal tax rate is 35%, and 150k isn't close to getting you into the top bracket, let alone by a significant enough factor to consider that an effective tax rate. Don't get me wrong, I strongly believe there should be larger subsidies to alternative energy sources to counteract the externalities of fossil fuels. I just think this particular estimate is wildly misleading. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Federal_Spending.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Federal_Spending.png
- NoblePublius 8y ago
  You’re right. Trump cut my taxes.

djrogers 8y ago

I totally understand the point of view here, and likely agree to an extent, however calling the lack of a tax that has never existed before a subsidy is more than just a stretch, it’s an outright distortion. I also am not sure that carbon taxes would hit the wealthy in a manner as disproportionate as would seem to make the author happy - everyone drives, and low income earners tend to have older, less fuel efficient cars. In the same way that has taxes are regressive, so would carbon taxes be. The wealthy can simply avoid them by buying EVs and solar panels, while low income earners would be stuck with the tab.

Jweb_Guru 8y ago
> everyone drives That's certainly not true. In some areas of the country, yes. But carbon taxes would not be particularly regressive. And--frankly--the entire point of carbon taxes is to reduce the production of carbon dioxide. At some point you have to actually stop people from using it, whether or not it makes sense economically in the extremely near term.
- djrogers 8y ago
  Fewer than 10% of US families do not have cars so it’s far more accurate to say that it’s true in most areas of the country.
mrpopo 8y ago
> calling the lack of a tax that has never existed before a subsidy is more than just a stretch, it’s an outright distortion. This is not correct, this is simply finally accounting for the negative carbon externality. Industries pay extra for all kinds of negative externalities, and without these regulations, markets are inefficient. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality
- jdhn 8y ago
  I really dislike this argument because it implies that as soon as something is deemed "bad", a tax should placed on it.

potiuper 8y ago

All consumers will very shortly be paying the price for the fuel that is wasted using inefficient internal combustion engines as a disincentive compared to EVs. Also, consumers could capture the CO2 upon combustion themselves or may not ever transform the fuel they purchase into CO2 (gas leaking, etc.). Getting rid of the oil subsidies and enhancing those for non-carbon energy sources would be so much simpler and more effective than bickering over what would be the marginally least unaccountable tax for reducing the use of carbon based fuels. The day the government gets rid of subsidies for oil will be the first day I actually consider solar along with any tax rebates. This article is a written by a yuppie. Over the course of just a few weeks, a major fire can pump more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than California’s many climate change programs can save in 12 months.

DalekBaldwin 8y ago

> Using Yale economist and recent Nobel-prize winner William Nordhaus’s $31-per-tonne estimate of the social cost of carbon, it amounted last year to $107 billion for energy-related emissions from oil and natural gas in the U.S. Within that, emissions from transportation — the biggest source in the U.S. and the only one still growing — enjoyed a free ride worth $59 billion. But what is the net tax/subsidy in plain monetary terms? I just did a cursory bit of Wikipedia research so I may have gotten something wrong, but the article neglected this aspect completely: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies#United_States > On March 13, 2013, Terry M. Dinan, senior advisor at the Congressional Budget Office, testified before the Subcommittee on Energy of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology in the U.S. House of Representatives that federal energy tax subsidies would cost $16.4 billion that fiscal year, broken down as follows: > Renewable energy: $7.3 billion (45 percent) > Energy efficiency: $4.8 billion (29 percent) > Fossil fuels: $3.2 billion (20 percent) > Nuclear energy: $1.1 billion (7 percent) $3.2 billion in fossil fuel subsidies (including categories besides motor fuel), versus... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_taxes_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_taxes_in_the_United_State... > Federal fuel taxes raised $35.2 billion in Fiscal Year 2014, with $25.0 billion raised from gasoline taxes and $10.2 billion raised from taxes on diesel and special motor fuels. That's not counting state taxes, which are even higher: > The United States federal excise tax on gasoline is 18.4 cents per gallon and 24.4 cents per gallon for diesel fuel... On average, as of January 2017, state and local taxes and fees add 31.04 cents to gasoline and 31.01 cents to diesel, for a total US average fuel tax of 49.44 cents per gallon for gas and 55.41 cents per gallon for diesel. So about $80 billion in net taxes, which exceeds the estimated social cost of carbon from US auto emissions. Of course, fuel taxes go toward the maintenance of infrastructure for motor transportation, circling back and resubsidizing it, but electric vehicles enjoy the same benefits from that maintenance (as well as other subsidies for the generation of the electricity that powers them).

lsiebert 8y ago
You have to also look at the department of energy spending on wikipedia since they do fossil fuel development, which adds an additional half billion. So 3.7 billion per year, at least. But oil companies are also some of the main beneficiaries of things like the foreign tax credit, so you have to consider that as well.

lsiebert 8y ago

Getting away with carbon pollution, if it's a subsidy, is just part of the subsidies the fossil fuel industries get in the U.S. The 20 billion the United States provide each year in national fossil fuel subsidies is a real issue. (per 2015 see https://www.odi.org/publications/10058-empty-promises-g20-subsidies-oil-gas-and-coal-production https://www.odi.org/publications/10058-empty-promises-g20-su...). I see other numbers that are lower then 20 for different years (This says 8+ billion for 2016 https://newclimate.org/2018/11/14/brown-to-green-report-2018/ https://newclimate.org/2018/11/14/brown-to-green-report-2018...). I'd guess there are different ways of measuring subsidies, but all of the measures for fossil fuel subsidies I could find were multi billion per year while EV subsidies were only 2 billion over the entire lifetime of the program.

tomohawk 8y ago

Great use of NewSpeak, but the absence of a tax is not a subsidy. There is a pretty big subsidy for the non-Saudi companies that are part of ARAMCO, though. The Saudis wanted a bigger slice of the pie when the company was formed, but instead of just splitting the revenue along those lines, they worked out a deal where the Saudi government would tax the non-Saudi companies to an amount that would split the pie the way they wanted it. The American companies can write off that foreign tax. So American taxpayers are subsidizing the arrangement.

pdpi 8y ago
There’s a reasonable argument to be made that letting you get away with something with negative externalities, which then have to be dealt with by spending public money, is effectively the same as giving you that money directly.
- tomohawk 8y ago
  Only if those "negative externalities" are illegal for everyone. In this case, they're perfectly legal activities. It's not a "break" or "subsidy" just because someone's allowed to carry on a perfectly legal activity. Look, if it is bad to use oil for fuel, then just tax it. But playing these word games is lame.

XalvinX 8y ago

In other news, bears shit in the woods.