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It's interesting that very effective technical solutions exist to the global warming. Yet, we are rejecting for political reasons the regulatory solutions that
by yholio 8y ago
It's interesting that very effective technical solutions exist to the global warming. Yet, we are rejecting for political reasons the regulatory solutions that would see them deployed on an industrial scale.
A 10% levy on beef produced with strong methanogensis would make producers scramble for solutions such as these, while having an almost negligible effect on consumer prices - if sufficient time is allowed before the tax comes into effect. The results, absolutely massive, displacing trillions of equivalent investments in energy generation and transportation.
- NikolaeVarius 8y agoWhen I hear ideas like this, I keep wondering what the backlash would be if there was a 10% levy on all internet based services/software to tax the energy use of data centers, laptops trying to run electron apps and compile react projects.
- Ensorceled 8y agoIf the levy was on data centres not consuming green energy sources, the backlash would be nil.
- jonas21 8y agoAgreed! In fact, many tech companies with large datacenters already use 100% renewable energy (or will soon). For example: [1] https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/environment/100-percent-renewable-energy/ https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/environment/100-per... [2] https://www.apple.com/environment/climate-change/ https://www.apple.com/environment/climate-change/ [3] https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/08/renewable-energy/ https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/08/renewable-energy/
- rakoo 8y agoA huge majority of the world's electricity emits tons of CO2 to be produced. Unless I'm mistaken, it seems datacenters would follow the same distribution
- radicalbyte 8y agoThat's actually an excellent idea: only the tax should be higher and just applied directly to the non-green electricity used. Oh and to the entire supply chain of the infrastructure (servers etc).
- wild_preference 8y agoElectron apps don't have the ethical issue of directly killing living things for our benefit. That's a good enough reason for a levy, imo.
- yholio 8y agoThe idea is to tax pollution at the source to influence behavior, as opposed to levies on random things.