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Nudging out support for a carbon tax

84 points by colinprince 7y ago

throwaway857384 7y ago
I think this sums it all up "but is controversial because it imposes costs on consumers." A carbon tax is a way for all of us (people) to deal with the problem, while the corporations that created and caused it get a 'get out of jail free' card.
- shawnz 7y ago
  > the corporations that created and caused it get a 'get out of jail free' card Not necessarily. It could make it easier for them to be outcompeted by competitors that don't rely as heavily on petroleum usage
  - funnybeam 7y ago
    Which is the whole point. Either reduce your polluting ways or lose business to a company that does.
- sokoloff 7y ago
  When an airline creates carbon emissions, they're doing it because the passengers want to go somewhere. When a car maker creates carbon emissions, they're doing it because people are buying cars. It seems eminently reasonable that end consumers will and should end up paying. If you impose a carbon tax, utilities that today create electricity from fossil fuels will have additional incentives that end customers feel to switch to non-carbon sources. It will also provide some small amount of back-pressure against the "no nukes" and "herp, derp, no cancer-causing windmills"
- Camas 7y ago
  Corporations don't exist in a vacuum. Consumers have also benefited short-term from environmental costs being ignored. Either way, I care much more about fixing the problem than assigning blame.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- adrianN 7y ago
  Corporations don't burn coal for fun, they satisfy demand created by people like you and me while trying to maximize profits. Without a carbon tax, corporations that manage to successfully externalize that cost have a huge competitive advantage.
  - ken 7y ago
    Companies don't pay taxes for fun, either. What I think that comment is referring to is the fact that corporations have a history of being really good at weaseling their way out of paying taxes, and the bigger companies are the best at it. A carbon tax, in particular, looks like it would be very easy for a multinational to escape. It's reason #{xyz} to move your facility across the border and out of American jurisdiction. If we can't get them to pay taxes already, won't a carbon tax simply be yet another tax which is disproportionately paid by small businesses and individuals, and not the actual biggest polluters, while driving more manufacturing jobs overseas to countries which don't have such laws?
    - amelius 7y ago
      I guess the solution here is to have customs duties based on emissions taxes paid in the originating country. This is not only needed to prevent corporations from moving their business elsewhere, but also to compete with existing/new corporations in foreign countries.
      - Pxtl 7y ago
        That's actually part of Nordhaus' recommended carbon pricing policy. (Nordhaus wrote the book on carbon pricing and won a Nobel prize in economics for it). The idea is that carbon-priced countries get together and form an internal free trade agreement, and tariff carbon-intensive goods from outsiders. Because of the political complexity of implementing this, Canada has gone a different way to keep businesses from being uncompetitive against foreign non-carbon-taxed businesses. Canada uses "output-based allocation" where a relatively green business in an industry is used as a baseline. That is set as a target - create X unit of product with Y units of carbon emissions, and your carbon emissions are untaxed. Every carbon emission over Y is taxed. In this way, a comparatively green business within a dirty industry can still compete with foreigners, but for a dirty business, the marginal value of going green is just as high as if there was no exemptions at all. It's not ideal. It's bureaucratic, tedious, economically suboptimal, and politically complicated since it seems unfair. But it's a good intermediate solution until Nordhaus' full dream could be realized. The money is rebated directly to citizens in federally-regulated provinces. Conservatives hate it all anyways because their carbon plan is "no."
- _Microft 7y ago
  Polluting industries don't get a 'get out of jail free' card - they just die if people don't want to buy their then-expensive products anymore. So if you like they will pay the ultimate price instead.
adrianN 7y ago
We need to just introduce that damn tax already. We should have introduced it thirty years ago after the Rio summit! The longer we wait the harder the transition will become.
- mauflows 7y ago
  It's currently before Congress https://energyinnovationact.org/ https://energyinnovationact.org/
  - chewbacha 7y ago
    Nothing moves in Congress right now because Mitch McConnell is only interested in confirming judges as fast as possible. And he has been explicit in being non-cooperative with Democrats.
mrosett 7y ago
Full text pdf: https://www.researchgate.net/journal/1758-678X_Nature_Climate_Change/publication/333068802_Nudging_out_support_for_a_carbon_tax/links/5cda4b91299bf14d95950a77/Nudging-out-support-for-a-carbon-tax.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/journal/1758-678X_Nature_Climat...
avsteele 7y ago
I don't think you'd see as much resistance to such a tax if it was dollar for dollar paired with a reduction in other taxes. This has two benefits: 1) In the absence of this pairing it just looks like a government-growing cash grab to a segment of the population. 2) People who aren't even convinced of the dangers of AGW can still support it.
- bryanlarsen 7y ago
  That's pretty much what got introduced in Canada this spring. Well, it's a rebate rather than a tax reduction. But there's massive opposition. There seem to be two main arguments: 1. The tax is too small to make any real difference, so we might as well scrap it. (I don't understand this one either, and it's only true for current levels, the tax is supposed to increase every year.) 2. China and the States aren't anything, so anything we do is meaningless and just disadvantages us. (The answer to this argument is Nobel prize winning Bill Nordhaus's carbon club proposal) It looks like the carbon tax opposing conservatives are going to win the election in October. It'll be a shameful time to be a Canadian. We have the highest CO2 emissions per capita and most of the country won't be doing anything about it.
  - Pxtl 7y ago
    I cant help but notice the casecade of downvotes these simple, factual comments are getting.
    - awinder 7y ago
      The article actually explores this very fact — that small nudge legislation becomes much more popular without proportionally dealing with the problem. This inevitably leads to higher long term costs
  - lozenge 7y ago
    Well, this shows why democracies can't fix climate change. In Canada's case, there won't be a free lunch, as many people need to heat their homes much of the year. If the tax becomes large enough to make a real difference to how people live, then there would be enough public support to scrap it, or at the very least freeze any increases. That means it'll only work if technology advances fast enough that we can lower our emissions enough to meet climate goals without compromising quality of life. But that would be a reduction of over 10% a year, every year. Yeah, that's what "limiting to 2C" would actually mean. http://www.climatecodered.org/2014/01/radical-emissions-reductions-1-kevin.html http://www.climatecodered.org/2014/01/radical-emissions-redu... Trudeau has also supported the oil industry at every turn. The extraction and burning of the remaining oil in Canada is itself more than Canada's fair share of global emissions to limit heating to 2C. https://www.nationalobserver.com/2015/07/08/news/tar-sands-vs-canadas-safe-carbon-budget https://www.nationalobserver.com/2015/07/08/news/tar-sands-v... As for the carbon club, existing agreements like NAFTA stand in the way of creating a carbon-pricing trade bloc. The most plausible place for it to start would be the EU after the UK leaves, but even then, I doubt there will be any politicians fighting for it - for similar reasons as for Canada.
spiigrrrls 7y ago
This paper is based on the ideologically driven pseudo-scientific nonsense* called nudge https://www.amazon.com/Nudge-Improving-Decisions-Health-Happiness/dp/014311526X/ https://www.amazon.com/Nudge-Improving-Decisions-Health-Happ...
Lendal 7y ago
Grand projects like TVA and Tesla Inc are what will solve global warming. Carbon tax is just money. More money doesn't solve global warming. In fact I would say money is the reason we have global warming in the first place.
- tybit 7y ago
  Money is probably the most persuasive tool we have as a society to change behaviour. Yes engineering is vital but it works with economics not in isolation.
  - wolco 7y ago
    I think the issue is who pays. If it ends up as consumer tax only it will take awhile before change is reflected. A business tax would accurate change.
- sokoloff 7y ago
  In general and all else being equal, when you tax something you get less of that thing. When you subsidize something, you get more of that thing. There's a pretty strong argument that overall we're subsidizing fossil fuel consumption more than we're taxing it.
- isostatic 7y ago
  And if gas had its externalities included in the price, how do you feel Tesla would be doing?
oski 7y ago
In researching what we can do about climate change, the most convincing proposed policy solution I've seen comes from the Citizen's Climate Lobby -- a Carbon Fee and Dividend (https://citizensclimatelobby.org/basics-carbon-fee-dividend/ https://citizensclimatelobby.org/basics-carbon-fee-dividend/), which I learned about while reading "Being the Change" by Dr. Peter Kalmus. Basically, it's a plan for a carbon tax along with a rebate program (similar to UBI in my opinion) so that the least well off financially don't get crushed by things like higher gas prices.
- Pxtl 7y ago
  That's actually what was implemented in Canada last month on all provinces that didn't run their own carbon pricing system. You'd think everybody could get behind it, right? I got $300 on my tax rebate as an advance for this year's carbon pricing. Of course the conservatives hate it, because their carbon plan is "no." And they're on track to win in November.
  - village-idiot 7y ago
    When did the world’s conservative parties turn into death cults?
    - Al-Khwarizmi 7y ago
      In debates about politics I have often heard that environmental problems are transversal, independent on the left-right spectrum, that the environment and ecology can be defended from the left or from the right... and from an ideal, abstract, theoretical point, that's true, how could one deny that? There is no reason why a conservative should want to destroy the planet - in fact, the very word "conservative" is pretty much against that. However, in practice, I am still yet to see a right-wing party that gives a damn about the environment. Be it at the European level, national level, regional level or even at the city level. Go to any random city in my region, read the platform of left-wing parties, and you will typically see bike lanes, bus lanes, pedestrianization, etc. Read the platform of right-wing parties, and you will see more asphalt, more lanes, more parking spaces. City-level elections are supposed to be much more about the candidate, and less about the party, but they still spontaneously group like that. It shouldn't be like that, and maybe in some other countries it's not like that, I'm not claiming this is universal. But in my country, it certainly is like that.
Pxtl 7y ago
This is happening in Ontario right now as we speak. The Ontario government is fighting against the federal revenue-neutral carbon tax and has instituted a small grab-bag of subsidies for businesses doing green refits. So in essence, they're taking a neutral system that put money to taxpayers and turned it into a subsidy on corporations that pollute, and claiming it as a populist victory. And the public ate it up. I've heard nonsense like "I recycle and don't litter, why should I have to pay a carbon tax" as if those things are related.
- martythemaniak 7y ago
  It should also be noted that the federal carbon tax is a tax-and-rebate scheme. Ie you get taxed on the carbon and the revenues get refunded to the consumers. If you make a lower-carbon choice, you keep your money. If you don't, nothing really changed. It's also slightly progressive, since lower-income folks will actually come out ahead by a bit without making any changes. Warning: strong political opinions below. What we're seeing is really a replay of the ACA reaction in the US. Obamacare was a rejigged Romneycare, which was a rejigged Heritage Foundation plan which was a reaction to the Clinton's healthcare plans. It was a conservative, market-friendly approach to solving an issue... until it was actually implemented. Then we found out it was just a talking point meant that was never meant to be acted upon, a mere cover that allowed conservatives to pretend they were interested solving an issue. Likewise, the tax-and-rebate scheme is basically most conservative and market-friendly approach to tackling climate change that actually produces results. But now that it's actually been implemented, the Ford/Kenney/potential-Scheer governments are reacting by repealing it and replacing it with nothing that produces results. Because they don't have the guts to say simply "No, we don't believe in this and we're not going to do anything about it"
  - Joakal 7y ago
    Lets say it cost consumers $100. After Carbon tax, company gets $20 tax. Price becomes $120. Government says to consumer, here's $20. Consumer and company see no difference. Government cost goes up to maintain the scheme. This is why people say the carbon tax/price must go towards non carbon ressearch/products.
GiorgioG 7y ago
This won't be popular with the HN crowd, but taxing activities that we want to reduce/minimize doesn't work. Cigarette taxes didn't work in any meaningful way (see https://www.nber.org/papers/w18326.pdf https://www.nber.org/papers/w18326.pdf)
- bryanlarsen 7y ago
  Carbon taxes work by encouraging a switch to alternatives and by encouraging efficiencies. When there aren't alternatives, many would just choose to pay higher prices. That's what your study found. Luckily most carbon intensive activities have alternatives.
- jlgray 7y ago
  I don't think the comparison to cigarette taxes is completely fair. Cigarettes are relatively inelastic w.r.t. price as they are addictive, and have no real competing product. Electricity and power generated from carbon emitting sources on the other hand have a much more elastic demand curve. E.g. if your energy bill is cheaper with renewables, no one would choose to go with fossil fuels. Likewise with electric vehicles. If the cost of tanking up an EV is significantly lower than an internal combustion vehicle, people will switch for purely economic reasons. You can look at the lack of a carbon tax as an incentive on fossil fuels which socializes the externalities.
- mlinksva 7y ago
  Hardly. I suggest reading the paper. Here's the conclusion: > To summarize, our analysis of the association between cigarette taxes and adult cigarette use suggests that adult smoking is largely unaffected by taxes. At best, cigarette tax increases may have a small negative association with cigarette consumption, although it is difficult to distinguish the effect from zero, and in practical terms implies that it will take very large tax increases, for example, on the order of 100%, to reduce smoking by 5%. This finding raises questions about claims that, at the current time, tax (price) increases on cigarettes will have an important beneficial health impact through reduced smoking. It may be that in a time (2010) when the median federal and state cigarette tax is approximately $2.40 per pack, further increases in cigarette taxes will have little effect because the pool of smokers is becoming increasingly concentrated with those with strong preferences for smoking. Alternatively, as cigarette taxes and prices continue to rise, smokers are taking other steps to thwart the impact of the price increase such as switching brands and increasing purchases on the black market. Notably, we rule out border crossing as an important explanation of the small tax elasticities. The pool of carbon emitters is not concentrated with those with strong preferences for emitting carbon. Cigarette taxes were already high at the time of the study. Anyone serious about carbon tax to counter global warming says that the tax needs to be very high. If we get to the point that most people are carbon neutral, carbon taxes are high, and would need to be far higher for a 5% reduction in emissions from people with strong preferences for carbon emitting activities, great!
wbeckler 7y ago
The latest IPCC report says we have just 11 years to halve global emissions or we'll be seeing massive destruction to civilization. This is what is spawning organizations like Extinction Rebellion, which forced the UK government to declare a climate emergency. A tax now seems like too weak a measure. Greta Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion and others are talking about 15% reductions annually in industrialized countries. Any other proposal accepts doom or millions of unnecessary deaths as options.
jlgray 7y ago
An under-represented argument for a carbon tax is the fact that it would encourage companies to innovate, both with respect to efficiency as well as using renewable energy. I predict that industries in countries that adopt a carbon tax earlier will end up with a competitive advantage.
- spodek 7y ago
  I'll go further with the example of the U.S. car industry in the 60s, when the evidence was clear that consumers preferred safe, reliable, affordable, efficient cars -- from increasing sales for Volkswagen and Toyota, and most of all from the success of Unsafe at Any Speed. I doubt anyone then would have predicted that two of the U.S. big three would declare bankruptcy and that Toyota, then manufacturer of podunk little cars, would become the #1 manufacturer, but it happened. Had U.S. regulations met consumer demand, U.S. manufacturers may have innovated what consumers wanted instead of more chrome, tail fins, size, etc. Regulation came eventually, but too late for the industry to avoid bankruptcies, unemployment, and so on. In fact, regulation didn't stifle innovation but directed it. Engineers can innovate around safety and efficiency as much as on speed and tail fins. I'd rather have 100,000 mile warranties and electric cars than more chrome, which U.S. market forces created. Today, regarding the environment, the governments that regulate to reflect citizen demand for clean air, land, and water will create markets and companies that beat ones that don't. I hope current U.S. policy doesn't bankrupt more future U.S. markets and companies.
sandworm101 7y ago
So market driven. So incentive-based. So flat. So American. America loves to do things via tax code, which is why the US tax code is famously so complicated, but that time is gone. The answer isn't a new tax to nudge the market. The answer is not an incentive to please stop polluting. We don't need 10% reductions here and there. We need massive reductions everywhere, preferably with active capture that pushes carbon emissions into negative territory. We cannot afford to fund green energy by taxing non-green energy. Coal cannot fund solar. Coal has to stop. We need rules to say that burning coal is now illegal. We need rules that mandate solar+wind as a fixed percentage of energy generation. We need massive rewrites to the rules that limit the deployment of new nuclear technologies. The opportunity for politically-friendly market-based (ie American) approaches has passed. It is time for governments to pass absolute rules forbidding some behaviors and mandating others. If that offends political sensibilities, those political sensibilities need to be set aside. (1) Burning more than 100kg of coal per year is illegal. (2) All new houses must include 10m2 of solar panels per resident. (3) Windmills are, by law, not "an eyesore". No more complaining about them spoiling your retirement view. (4) Those who cannot articulate the difference between a millisievert and a microsievert, between fission and fusion, are not allowed anywhere near the planning meeting for any new power plant.
- joshe 7y ago
  Incentives work really really well. Almost nothing else does over the long term. For a concrete alternative with incentives: https://citizensclimatelobby.org/basics-carbon-fee-dividend/ https://citizensclimatelobby.org/basics-carbon-fee-dividend/ A massive $600 billion dollar per year incentive based nudge.
  - sandworm101 7y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol : absolute ban on CFCs worked. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead : EPA mandated reductions of lead in gasoline worked. Not to mention the thousands of little things (drunk driving, slavery, universal suffrage, speed limits etc) that were overturned relatively successfully without any market-based approaches. There is a right-wing philosophy that all government actions are inherently inefficient, but the reality is that laws work. It is possible to ban a behavior on day one and see it substantially reduced on day two.
Proven 7y ago
You can nudge all you want I will never pay any unless I am forced to, which would at least make the criminal cough...cough Nature of the alliance between the fake environmentalists and the state even more obvious.
gdubs 7y ago
Instead of calling it a tax, let’s just say we’re going to stop subsidizing carbon.
gwbas1c 7y ago
I personally wonder if taxing carbon producing machines makes more sense than taxing fuel? The taxes could directly subsidize cleaner alternatives. Then, once a lot of carbon producing machines are out of use, introduce a carbon tax to help push the remaining ones out?

84 points by colinprince 7y ago

I think this sums it all up "but is controversial because it imposes costs on consumers." A carbon tax is a way for all of us (people) to deal with the problem, while the corporations that created and caused it get a 'get out of jail free' card.

shawnz 7y ago
> the corporations that created and caused it get a 'get out of jail free' card Not necessarily. It could make it easier for them to be outcompeted by competitors that don't rely as heavily on petroleum usage
- funnybeam 7y ago
  Which is the whole point. Either reduce your polluting ways or lose business to a company that does.
sokoloff 7y ago
When an airline creates carbon emissions, they're doing it because the passengers want to go somewhere. When a car maker creates carbon emissions, they're doing it because people are buying cars. It seems eminently reasonable that end consumers will and should end up paying. If you impose a carbon tax, utilities that today create electricity from fossil fuels will have additional incentives that end customers feel to switch to non-carbon sources. It will also provide some small amount of back-pressure against the "no nukes" and "herp, derp, no cancer-causing windmills"
Camas 7y ago
Corporations don't exist in a vacuum. Consumers have also benefited short-term from environmental costs being ignored. Either way, I care much more about fixing the problem than assigning blame.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
adrianN 7y ago
Corporations don't burn coal for fun, they satisfy demand created by people like you and me while trying to maximize profits. Without a carbon tax, corporations that manage to successfully externalize that cost have a huge competitive advantage.
- ken 7y ago
  Companies don't pay taxes for fun, either. What I think that comment is referring to is the fact that corporations have a history of being really good at weaseling their way out of paying taxes, and the bigger companies are the best at it. A carbon tax, in particular, looks like it would be very easy for a multinational to escape. It's reason #{xyz} to move your facility across the border and out of American jurisdiction. If we can't get them to pay taxes already, won't a carbon tax simply be yet another tax which is disproportionately paid by small businesses and individuals, and not the actual biggest polluters, while driving more manufacturing jobs overseas to countries which don't have such laws?
  - amelius 7y ago
    I guess the solution here is to have customs duties based on emissions taxes paid in the originating country. This is not only needed to prevent corporations from moving their business elsewhere, but also to compete with existing/new corporations in foreign countries.
    - Pxtl 7y ago
      That's actually part of Nordhaus' recommended carbon pricing policy. (Nordhaus wrote the book on carbon pricing and won a Nobel prize in economics for it). The idea is that carbon-priced countries get together and form an internal free trade agreement, and tariff carbon-intensive goods from outsiders. Because of the political complexity of implementing this, Canada has gone a different way to keep businesses from being uncompetitive against foreign non-carbon-taxed businesses. Canada uses "output-based allocation" where a relatively green business in an industry is used as a baseline. That is set as a target - create X unit of product with Y units of carbon emissions, and your carbon emissions are untaxed. Every carbon emission over Y is taxed. In this way, a comparatively green business within a dirty industry can still compete with foreigners, but for a dirty business, the marginal value of going green is just as high as if there was no exemptions at all. It's not ideal. It's bureaucratic, tedious, economically suboptimal, and politically complicated since it seems unfair. But it's a good intermediate solution until Nordhaus' full dream could be realized. The money is rebated directly to citizens in federally-regulated provinces. Conservatives hate it all anyways because their carbon plan is "no."
_Microft 7y ago
Polluting industries don't get a 'get out of jail free' card - they just die if people don't want to buy their then-expensive products anymore. So if you like they will pay the ultimate price instead.

adrianN 7y ago

We need to just introduce that damn tax already. We should have introduced it thirty years ago after the Rio summit! The longer we wait the harder the transition will become.

mauflows 7y ago
It's currently before Congress https://energyinnovationact.org/ https://energyinnovationact.org/
- chewbacha 7y ago
  Nothing moves in Congress right now because Mitch McConnell is only interested in confirming judges as fast as possible. And he has been explicit in being non-cooperative with Democrats.

mrosett 7y ago

Full text pdf: https://www.researchgate.net/journal/1758-678X_Nature_Climate_Change/publication/333068802_Nudging_out_support_for_a_carbon_tax/links/5cda4b91299bf14d95950a77/Nudging-out-support-for-a-carbon-tax.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/journal/1758-678X_Nature_Climat...

avsteele 7y ago

I don't think you'd see as much resistance to such a tax if it was dollar for dollar paired with a reduction in other taxes. This has two benefits: 1) In the absence of this pairing it just looks like a government-growing cash grab to a segment of the population. 2) People who aren't even convinced of the dangers of AGW can still support it.

bryanlarsen 7y ago
That's pretty much what got introduced in Canada this spring. Well, it's a rebate rather than a tax reduction. But there's massive opposition. There seem to be two main arguments: 1. The tax is too small to make any real difference, so we might as well scrap it. (I don't understand this one either, and it's only true for current levels, the tax is supposed to increase every year.) 2. China and the States aren't anything, so anything we do is meaningless and just disadvantages us. (The answer to this argument is Nobel prize winning Bill Nordhaus's carbon club proposal) It looks like the carbon tax opposing conservatives are going to win the election in October. It'll be a shameful time to be a Canadian. We have the highest CO2 emissions per capita and most of the country won't be doing anything about it.
- Pxtl 7y ago
  I cant help but notice the casecade of downvotes these simple, factual comments are getting.
  - awinder 7y ago
    The article actually explores this very fact — that small nudge legislation becomes much more popular without proportionally dealing with the problem. This inevitably leads to higher long term costs
- lozenge 7y ago
  Well, this shows why democracies can't fix climate change. In Canada's case, there won't be a free lunch, as many people need to heat their homes much of the year. If the tax becomes large enough to make a real difference to how people live, then there would be enough public support to scrap it, or at the very least freeze any increases. That means it'll only work if technology advances fast enough that we can lower our emissions enough to meet climate goals without compromising quality of life. But that would be a reduction of over 10% a year, every year. Yeah, that's what "limiting to 2C" would actually mean. http://www.climatecodered.org/2014/01/radical-emissions-reductions-1-kevin.html http://www.climatecodered.org/2014/01/radical-emissions-redu... Trudeau has also supported the oil industry at every turn. The extraction and burning of the remaining oil in Canada is itself more than Canada's fair share of global emissions to limit heating to 2C. https://www.nationalobserver.com/2015/07/08/news/tar-sands-vs-canadas-safe-carbon-budget https://www.nationalobserver.com/2015/07/08/news/tar-sands-v... As for the carbon club, existing agreements like NAFTA stand in the way of creating a carbon-pricing trade bloc. The most plausible place for it to start would be the EU after the UK leaves, but even then, I doubt there will be any politicians fighting for it - for similar reasons as for Canada.

spiigrrrls 7y ago

This paper is based on the ideologically driven pseudo-scientific nonsense* called nudge https://www.amazon.com/Nudge-Improving-Decisions-Health-Happiness/dp/014311526X/ https://www.amazon.com/Nudge-Improving-Decisions-Health-Happ...

Lendal 7y ago

Grand projects like TVA and Tesla Inc are what will solve global warming. Carbon tax is just money. More money doesn't solve global warming. In fact I would say money is the reason we have global warming in the first place.

tybit 7y ago
Money is probably the most persuasive tool we have as a society to change behaviour. Yes engineering is vital but it works with economics not in isolation.
- wolco 7y ago
  I think the issue is who pays. If it ends up as consumer tax only it will take awhile before change is reflected. A business tax would accurate change.
sokoloff 7y ago
In general and all else being equal, when you tax something you get less of that thing. When you subsidize something, you get more of that thing. There's a pretty strong argument that overall we're subsidizing fossil fuel consumption more than we're taxing it.
isostatic 7y ago
And if gas had its externalities included in the price, how do you feel Tesla would be doing?

oski 7y ago

In researching what we can do about climate change, the most convincing proposed policy solution I've seen comes from the Citizen's Climate Lobby -- a Carbon Fee and Dividend (https://citizensclimatelobby.org/basics-carbon-fee-dividend/ https://citizensclimatelobby.org/basics-carbon-fee-dividend/), which I learned about while reading "Being the Change" by Dr. Peter Kalmus. Basically, it's a plan for a carbon tax along with a rebate program (similar to UBI in my opinion) so that the least well off financially don't get crushed by things like higher gas prices.

Pxtl 7y ago
That's actually what was implemented in Canada last month on all provinces that didn't run their own carbon pricing system. You'd think everybody could get behind it, right? I got $300 on my tax rebate as an advance for this year's carbon pricing. Of course the conservatives hate it, because their carbon plan is "no." And they're on track to win in November.
- village-idiot 7y ago
  When did the world’s conservative parties turn into death cults?
  - Al-Khwarizmi 7y ago
    In debates about politics I have often heard that environmental problems are transversal, independent on the left-right spectrum, that the environment and ecology can be defended from the left or from the right... and from an ideal, abstract, theoretical point, that's true, how could one deny that? There is no reason why a conservative should want to destroy the planet - in fact, the very word "conservative" is pretty much against that. However, in practice, I am still yet to see a right-wing party that gives a damn about the environment. Be it at the European level, national level, regional level or even at the city level. Go to any random city in my region, read the platform of left-wing parties, and you will typically see bike lanes, bus lanes, pedestrianization, etc. Read the platform of right-wing parties, and you will see more asphalt, more lanes, more parking spaces. City-level elections are supposed to be much more about the candidate, and less about the party, but they still spontaneously group like that. It shouldn't be like that, and maybe in some other countries it's not like that, I'm not claiming this is universal. But in my country, it certainly is like that.

Pxtl 7y ago

This is happening in Ontario right now as we speak. The Ontario government is fighting against the federal revenue-neutral carbon tax and has instituted a small grab-bag of subsidies for businesses doing green refits. So in essence, they're taking a neutral system that put money to taxpayers and turned it into a subsidy on corporations that pollute, and claiming it as a populist victory. And the public ate it up. I've heard nonsense like "I recycle and don't litter, why should I have to pay a carbon tax" as if those things are related.

martythemaniak 7y ago
It should also be noted that the federal carbon tax is a tax-and-rebate scheme. Ie you get taxed on the carbon and the revenues get refunded to the consumers. If you make a lower-carbon choice, you keep your money. If you don't, nothing really changed. It's also slightly progressive, since lower-income folks will actually come out ahead by a bit without making any changes. Warning: strong political opinions below. What we're seeing is really a replay of the ACA reaction in the US. Obamacare was a rejigged Romneycare, which was a rejigged Heritage Foundation plan which was a reaction to the Clinton's healthcare plans. It was a conservative, market-friendly approach to solving an issue... until it was actually implemented. Then we found out it was just a talking point meant that was never meant to be acted upon, a mere cover that allowed conservatives to pretend they were interested solving an issue. Likewise, the tax-and-rebate scheme is basically most conservative and market-friendly approach to tackling climate change that actually produces results. But now that it's actually been implemented, the Ford/Kenney/potential-Scheer governments are reacting by repealing it and replacing it with nothing that produces results. Because they don't have the guts to say simply "No, we don't believe in this and we're not going to do anything about it"
- Joakal 7y ago
  Lets say it cost consumers $100. After Carbon tax, company gets $20 tax. Price becomes $120. Government says to consumer, here's $20. Consumer and company see no difference. Government cost goes up to maintain the scheme. This is why people say the carbon tax/price must go towards non carbon ressearch/products.

GiorgioG 7y ago

This won't be popular with the HN crowd, but taxing activities that we want to reduce/minimize doesn't work. Cigarette taxes didn't work in any meaningful way (see https://www.nber.org/papers/w18326.pdf https://www.nber.org/papers/w18326.pdf)

bryanlarsen 7y ago
Carbon taxes work by encouraging a switch to alternatives and by encouraging efficiencies. When there aren't alternatives, many would just choose to pay higher prices. That's what your study found. Luckily most carbon intensive activities have alternatives.
jlgray 7y ago
I don't think the comparison to cigarette taxes is completely fair. Cigarettes are relatively inelastic w.r.t. price as they are addictive, and have no real competing product. Electricity and power generated from carbon emitting sources on the other hand have a much more elastic demand curve. E.g. if your energy bill is cheaper with renewables, no one would choose to go with fossil fuels. Likewise with electric vehicles. If the cost of tanking up an EV is significantly lower than an internal combustion vehicle, people will switch for purely economic reasons. You can look at the lack of a carbon tax as an incentive on fossil fuels which socializes the externalities.
mlinksva 7y ago
Hardly. I suggest reading the paper. Here's the conclusion: > To summarize, our analysis of the association between cigarette taxes and adult cigarette use suggests that adult smoking is largely unaffected by taxes. At best, cigarette tax increases may have a small negative association with cigarette consumption, although it is difficult to distinguish the effect from zero, and in practical terms implies that it will take very large tax increases, for example, on the order of 100%, to reduce smoking by 5%. This finding raises questions about claims that, at the current time, tax (price) increases on cigarettes will have an important beneficial health impact through reduced smoking. It may be that in a time (2010) when the median federal and state cigarette tax is approximately $2.40 per pack, further increases in cigarette taxes will have little effect because the pool of smokers is becoming increasingly concentrated with those with strong preferences for smoking. Alternatively, as cigarette taxes and prices continue to rise, smokers are taking other steps to thwart the impact of the price increase such as switching brands and increasing purchases on the black market. Notably, we rule out border crossing as an important explanation of the small tax elasticities. The pool of carbon emitters is not concentrated with those with strong preferences for emitting carbon. Cigarette taxes were already high at the time of the study. Anyone serious about carbon tax to counter global warming says that the tax needs to be very high. If we get to the point that most people are carbon neutral, carbon taxes are high, and would need to be far higher for a 5% reduction in emissions from people with strong preferences for carbon emitting activities, great!

wbeckler 7y ago

The latest IPCC report says we have just 11 years to halve global emissions or we'll be seeing massive destruction to civilization. This is what is spawning organizations like Extinction Rebellion, which forced the UK government to declare a climate emergency. A tax now seems like too weak a measure. Greta Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion and others are talking about 15% reductions annually in industrialized countries. Any other proposal accepts doom or millions of unnecessary deaths as options.

jlgray 7y ago

An under-represented argument for a carbon tax is the fact that it would encourage companies to innovate, both with respect to efficiency as well as using renewable energy. I predict that industries in countries that adopt a carbon tax earlier will end up with a competitive advantage.

spodek 7y ago
I'll go further with the example of the U.S. car industry in the 60s, when the evidence was clear that consumers preferred safe, reliable, affordable, efficient cars -- from increasing sales for Volkswagen and Toyota, and most of all from the success of Unsafe at Any Speed. I doubt anyone then would have predicted that two of the U.S. big three would declare bankruptcy and that Toyota, then manufacturer of podunk little cars, would become the #1 manufacturer, but it happened. Had U.S. regulations met consumer demand, U.S. manufacturers may have innovated what consumers wanted instead of more chrome, tail fins, size, etc. Regulation came eventually, but too late for the industry to avoid bankruptcies, unemployment, and so on. In fact, regulation didn't stifle innovation but directed it. Engineers can innovate around safety and efficiency as much as on speed and tail fins. I'd rather have 100,000 mile warranties and electric cars than more chrome, which U.S. market forces created. Today, regarding the environment, the governments that regulate to reflect citizen demand for clean air, land, and water will create markets and companies that beat ones that don't. I hope current U.S. policy doesn't bankrupt more future U.S. markets and companies.

sandworm101 7y ago

So market driven. So incentive-based. So flat. So American. America loves to do things via tax code, which is why the US tax code is famously so complicated, but that time is gone. The answer isn't a new tax to nudge the market. The answer is not an incentive to please stop polluting. We don't need 10% reductions here and there. We need massive reductions everywhere, preferably with active capture that pushes carbon emissions into negative territory. We cannot afford to fund green energy by taxing non-green energy. Coal cannot fund solar. Coal has to stop. We need rules to say that burning coal is now illegal. We need rules that mandate solar+wind as a fixed percentage of energy generation. We need massive rewrites to the rules that limit the deployment of new nuclear technologies. The opportunity for politically-friendly market-based (ie American) approaches has passed. It is time for governments to pass absolute rules forbidding some behaviors and mandating others. If that offends political sensibilities, those political sensibilities need to be set aside. (1) Burning more than 100kg of coal per year is illegal. (2) All new houses must include 10m2 of solar panels per resident. (3) Windmills are, by law, not "an eyesore". No more complaining about them spoiling your retirement view. (4) Those who cannot articulate the difference between a millisievert and a microsievert, between fission and fusion, are not allowed anywhere near the planning meeting for any new power plant.

joshe 7y ago
Incentives work really really well. Almost nothing else does over the long term. For a concrete alternative with incentives: https://citizensclimatelobby.org/basics-carbon-fee-dividend/ https://citizensclimatelobby.org/basics-carbon-fee-dividend/ A massive $600 billion dollar per year incentive based nudge.
- sandworm101 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol : absolute ban on CFCs worked. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead : EPA mandated reductions of lead in gasoline worked. Not to mention the thousands of little things (drunk driving, slavery, universal suffrage, speed limits etc) that were overturned relatively successfully without any market-based approaches. There is a right-wing philosophy that all government actions are inherently inefficient, but the reality is that laws work. It is possible to ban a behavior on day one and see it substantially reduced on day two.

Proven 7y ago

You can nudge all you want I will never pay any unless I am forced to, which would at least make the criminal cough...cough Nature of the alliance between the fake environmentalists and the state even more obvious.

gdubs 7y ago

Instead of calling it a tax, let’s just say we’re going to stop subsidizing carbon.

gwbas1c 7y ago

I personally wonder if taxing carbon producing machines makes more sense than taxing fuel? The taxes could directly subsidize cleaner alternatives. Then, once a lot of carbon producing machines are out of use, introduce a carbon tax to help push the remaining ones out?