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This is why taxing carbon is better policy than patchwork regulations.
by rory096 8y ago
This is why taxing carbon is better policy than patchwork regulations.
- quickthrower2 8y agoThis only helps if you can fully audit carbon released from burning rainforests etc.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago> This only helps if you can fully audit carbon released from burning rainforests Murder laws aren’t rendered useless by unsolved murders. A carbon tax makes sense even if only large-scale domestic production is initially covered.
- quickthrower2 8y agoAh sure. I wasn't making the point not to have a carbon tax. Just that it would help here unless carefully thought out. A bit like the biodiesel law.
- briandear 8y agoNot at all. That creates an effective subsidy on non-domestic production. Carbon tax on my factory in California? I’ll move it to Nairobi. Add a tariff? Then other countries retaliate and domestic companies can no longer sell their goods abroad. Domestic consumers would pay higher prices and the economy grinds to a halt due to reduced production from reduced international trade.
- JoeSmithson 8y agoAre there measures to combat global warming that you do support?
- icebraining 8y agoWhy wouldn't companies start producing less carbon intensive products? Seems to have worked pretty well with cars, which even with the recent dieselgate, are much more efficient than before. Currently there's an effective subsidy on air polluters; I can sue my neighbor who dumps waste on my land, but I can't sue the people dumping carbon in my lungs. Is that subsidy not concerning?
- bch 8y agoFive “why?”’s in practice.
- macspoofing 8y agoTaxing is half the story. The other half is returning this tax revenue back to the economy by offsetting other taxes. Where it breaks down is when progressives push to spend this tax revenue on their pet projects.
- briandear 8y agoWhy is this being downvoted? It’s factually accurate.
- ndnxhs 8y agoThe tax should be used for undoing the destruction caused to the environment.
- macspoofing 8y agoThis is the problemn and you illustrate it perfectly. If you propose a plan that introduces a carbon tax with the revenue returned back to the economy, progressives will attempt to kill it. For progressives, an environmental policy is only sound if it goes with massive government expansion. Nobody cares about the environment. It is always ideology first.
- village-idiot 8y agoNo. The point is not the revenue, the point is to eliminate the market distorting externalities. If anything, this is actually a free market solution.
- briandear 8y agoIf we tax “carbon,” are you going to lower my income taxes? I’ll support a carbon tax when you support eliminating capital gains and income taxes. Unless cutting taxes and spending is a part of this carbon tax plan, I will never support it. I already give over 50% of my money to governments, I’m not about to support even more.
- adwhit 8y agoWould you give up more to ensure your children don’t grow up in a dystopian nightmare? What if the necessary amount is 60% of your income? 90%? What if our only hope is to go back to a 18C standard of living? Unfortunately the planet doesn’t care if you have enough cash to pay rent once you account for your environmental externalities.
- chr1 8y agoMost people would gladly give up their income to ensure their children don’t grow up in a dystopian nightmare. The issue is that not everyone agrees on the way how exactly that money should be spent, and how nightmarish the future looks. What if we can learn how to control climate and have ice free arctic, green sahara and 21st century standard of living? While we need a way to penalize air polution (not just co2!), implementing that simply as 'extra money that government can spend on war' is not ideal.
- pjc50 8y ago> Most people would gladly give up their income to ensure their children don’t grow up in a dystopian nightmare. People who start off by making an "I'm taxed too much" argument might do this for their own children, but the whole point is that they're not willing to spend a single dollar to save someone else's children.
- paulie_a 8y agoConsidering Medicare and social security, that doesn't seem to be the case. The older folks basically said: our children can pay that. And kicked the can down the road because it won't be their problem.
- lacker 8y agoThe biggest problem with such a tax is that all countries would have to implement it. When the US is accounting for about 15% of global carbon emissions we can’t solve the problem just by reducing our own carbon emission.
- latch 8y agoThere's no single solution and there will always be a reason not to do something.
- richev 8y agoTrue, but leading by example would be a good start.
- jimmywanger 8y agoWhere are you getting your statistics from? According to a quick Google search, https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/science-and-impacts/science/each-countrys-share-of-co2.html#.W_jwyCeIbq4 https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/science-and-impacts/sc..., China is the highest emitter, followed by the US, which emits half as much CO2, and India emits half again as much as the US.
- rayvy 8y ago> The biggest problem with such a tax is that all countries would have to implement it. When the US is accounting for about 15% of global carbon emissions Hypothetically provinces/countries could be taxed relative to their emissions (albeit this would take some fantasy-like widely agreed upon criteria).
- bottled_poe 8y agoTrade sanctions are the usual mechanism to influence other governments. I don’t see why this situation would be any different.
- cmrdporcupine 8y agoOr in a more civil way, since it seems we have entered the era of tariffs wars, perhaps countries with carbon taxes should be slapping tariffs on imports from countries with none. Tie the tariff to some metric derived from a country's estimated CO2 emissions, subtracting some amount for % land mass in forests, reforestation efforts, carbon tax rates, deployment of renewables, etc. It would have negative economic consequences in the short term, I'm sure. But put in place by large importers it would directly motivate emission offenders to not play the game of lowest-common-denominator.
- quickthrower2 8y agoOK so every response to this comment is downvoted. I know its frowned upon to talk about downvotes but this seems a bit odd.
- jabl 8y agoCarbon taxing is, in some suitably narrow economic point of view, optimal, but it seems it's politically almost impossible to get it passed. The other popular large-scale technology-neutral suggestion, cap-and-trade, suffers from much of the same problems. E.g. the EU ETS is mostly a bureaucratic boondoggle that achieves nothing (the price is so low it doesn't have much, if any, effect). So what then? Well, performance standards may not be as neutral as a carbon tax/cap-and-trade, but they seem politically much more palatable: https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/11/16/18096352/climate-change-clean-energy-policies-guide https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/11/16/180963...
- johnchristopher 8y ago> This is why taxing carbon is better policy than patchwork regulations. I don't think so. We are way past the economic incentives or the market efficiency theories. Carbon emissions have to stop to save what can be, period. That means outlawing. See what's happening in France and Belgium at the moment with the "yellow jackets", a peek into the shape of things to come. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/16/gilet-jaunes-yellow-jackets-protesters-france-standstill https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/16/gilet-jaunes-y... and https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/24/french-gilets-jaunes-protests-turn-violent-on-the-streets-of-paris https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/24/french-gilets-...
- graeme 8y agoWho has the power to outlaw carbon globally? Those with energy have the power, and currently carbon is where our energy is. I don't see a ban working. Further, our whole systemis dependent on carbon. Millions (billions?) would starve without it, along with other downsides. Future impacts will be worse if we don't stop, but tell that to people suffering today. The advantage of a carbon tax approach is that it uses market incentives to encourage investments in alternatives. Hopefully, we are able to discover viable alternatives via this method, otherwise we're done for either way. A command and control shutdown simply seems impossible. Maybe carbon taxes are too, but I feel a tax and dividend approach could work, as everyone gets money from it. Or a proposal to tax carbon and massively cut income taxes. The yellow jacket protests you cite: 1. Didn't have any return of money to taxpayers. It was just a tax hike. 2. Would be even worse if fuel were banned
- johnchristopher 8y agoActually Diesel car are going to be banned pretty soon in some European countries. I do not entirely disagree with the principle that a hard tax carbon could alleviate the symptoms. But... No matter the solution, it's just too late for humanity to implement it globally.
- graeme 8y ago