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We need a carbon tax stat IMO. Economist John Cochrane had a good blog post about this recently (I actually posted to HN a few days ago but it got buried): htt

We need a carbon tax stat IMO. Economist John Cochrane had a good blog post about this recently (I actually posted to HN a few days ago but it got buried): https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2019/05/ip-on-carbon-tax.html https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2019/05/ip-on-carbon-tax.... From the end: "Climate policy was headed to this kind of bipartisan technocratic resolution in the 1990s before it became a tool of partisan warfare. The challenge, from both sides, is to remove the political baggage that climate policy has accumulated." He then makes that appeal to both sides: "To my climate-skeptic friends: Given that the government is going to regulate carbon, this is the way to do it with least damage. To my green-warrior friends, if the government is actually going to reduce carbon, not just subsidize cronies and engage in worthless value-signaling gestures, a trade of carbon taxes for absurdly costly regulations and subsidies is the only way to get anywhere."

saeranv 7y ago
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but my impression is that this is not something that "both sides" are equally responsible for. In Canada/US, conservatives/Republicans generally refuse to implement a carbon tax; whereas the center-left and left parties generally do. Additionally in the US, the Republicans don't even believe in climate-change. Hence Chomsky's argument that the Republican party is the most dangerous organisation in human history: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/noam-chomsky-republican-party-most-dangerous-organisation-human-history-us-politics-mit-linguist-a7706026.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/noam-choms... So I agree we need carbon tax, but I find it frustrating to pretend this is a issue both sides are at fault for.
- coldpie 7y ago
  Yes. Anyone whining about "both sides" on almost any issue in 2019 is an idiot.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- peacetreefrog 7y ago
  Well, depends what you mean by "at fault". I agree it's better to believe in global warming than deny it exists, but I agree with Cochrane that many of the attempts at at fixing it so far are basically "worthless value-signaling gestures". Cochrane thinks (not sure I agree with him) that the onus right now is more on the traditional left than the right. "...climate policy advocates have gone far beyond a technocratic idea of simply, well, reducing carbon. 'And nuclear energy' is usually noticeably absent. Carbon capture technologies, equally good at reducing carbon are usually noticeably absent. Other agendas like 'climate justice' creep in -- worthy or not, anything else that creeps in means less carbon reduction per dollar. A carbon tax reduces carbon any way that reduces carbon, which is really good at, well, reducing carbon, and not getting distracted with other agendas. That is a strong reason why carbon taxes, and especially such taxes in return for less regulation are resisted on the left." Whether you agree re: who is at fault, given that most people on HN are prob on the "do something about climate change" end of the spectrum, if you are personally skeptical of a carbon tax vs something like the green new deal or Jay Inslee's climate change plan, I'd encourage you to look into it more. Cochrane's blog post and and also this would be good places to start: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/01/17/this-is-not-controversial-bipartisan-group-economists-calls-carbon-tax https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/01/17/this-is-n...
  - olivermarks 7y ago
    'it's better to believe in global warming than deny it exists' - this sums up the belief system aspects of the current hysteria. Cynics say the commercial goal of claims human pollution is super heating earth's atmosphere (which may be true) is to extract taxation from everyone on C02 use. Good stewardship of the planet is clearly in everyone's best interests but falling into the clutches of avaricious ecocapitalists who tax you on everything is only going to empty your wallet and restrict your movements, while probably not solving any environmental concerns.
  - crazygringo 7y ago
    This feels like such a straw man. First, people on the left who are resisting carbon taxes are mostly because they believe cap and trade is a better solution, which many economists agree with. Second, what has some notion of "climate justice" got to do with anything? I don't see any evidence politicians on the left are somehow getting distracted by "value-signaling". Third, where does the idea come from that a carbon tax must be matched with less regulation elsewhere? That's a pure right-wing dream to try to match the two together, there is no connection. What this essentially sounds like is a Republican talking point that it's all Democrats' fault because Democrats aren't succeeding, despite Republicans refusing to help and therefore making it impossible to succeed. The doublespeak and hypocrisy makes your head spin...
- rayiner 7y ago
  The Democrats are willing to make slight changes, but at the end of the day, Americans are pumping 15-20 gigs tons per year of CO2 into the atmosphere and that number wouldn’t change under either Democrat or Republican policies. (Indeed, its not clear that when you account for Democrats’ opposition to nuclear power, which set of policies would’ve led to lower CO2 output in a counterfactual scenario.) And to keep warming to 1.5C, that number needs to go to zero this decade, then negative shortly after that. Also, this needs to happen in china and India, not just the US. Note that measures to actually address climate change are unpopular even among Democrats. Sure, they like it when it’s articulated as a jobs program (“green new deal”) but they still oppose things like carbon taxes, which experts have offered forth as the solution. State level measures along those lines got strong push back in very blue and very environmentally conscious Oregon and Washington
- Bendingo 7y ago
  > pretend this is a issue both sides are at fault for I'm sorry but there is no doubt that "both sides are at fault". "Trudeau has never really stood in the way of Canada’s oil industry, despite years of platitudes about addressing climate change." https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Trudeau-Declares-Climate-Emergency-Then-Approves-Major-Oil-Pipeline.html https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Trudeau-Declares-...
  - saeranv 7y ago
    He's not great, but I'm disagreeing with the false equivlance here. Trudeau is better compared to Harper who gagged scientists, compared to Scheer who wants to rely on subsidies and regulations to limit carbon, compared to Doug Ford and his ideaological opposition to carbon tax. So yes, Liberals are better then the Conservatives on the issue of the oil industry and reducing carbon emissions. ETA: In an ideal world I'd prefer NDP or Green, but as long as we're limited by first past the post, the best way to support climate change mitigation is by avoiding Conservatives via the Liberals.
mieseratte 7y ago
> To my climate-skeptic friends: Given that the government is going to regulate carbon, this is the way to do it with least damage. First, that starts off with a false premise. You don't know that the government is going to regulate carbon. Second, ignoring the "climate change is a myth" crowd, there are those that believe that we are, at this point, past the point of helping and that we might as well just get on with it and adapt to whatever changes await. That attempts at regulation will just destroy the economy, and thus their place in it, and that ruining the economy and thus untold (b|m)illions of lives that way is not worth the unknown outcome of attempting to save the current state of climate. This isn't even a "not my problem" situation. I've heard this from folks leaving in a coastal region that already suffers some amount of regular nuisance flooding. It's not as if rising tides will skip over them. Failing to understand that viewpoint is going to result in two sides yelling past each other. One side thinks we must do everything in our power to preserve nature's status-quo, the other is firmly of the mind that it is an impossibility and to try would be wasted effort with much risk and unclear gain. Your first task is convincing them of the horrors that await for them.
- bryanlarsen 7y ago
  To the second: even if stopping climate change is impossible, slowing it is tremendously valuable.
  - chr1 7y ago
    If you want to better understand the argument take a look at Bjorn Lomborg's talks https://www.lomborg.com https://www.lomborg.com, basically the argument is that even the strictest regulations are going to have a very small effect on the climate in 100 years, and for every dollar spent now we save merely cents in the future. So instead of implementing economically non-profitable measures, it is better to invest much more into research, and into helping poor countries, which will allow us to find better technologies to fight with climate change. I am not sure what i think about this argument yet, but it seems like it may be reasonable.
    - bryanlarsen 7y ago
zajio1am 7y ago
I agree that we need a carbon tax. IMHO the good way to get wider support for it is to make it revenue-neutral - collected money could be distributed equally as income tax credit (or some other way). In this way carbon tax would increas marginal costs of using carbon-intensive products, but does not increase overall taxation.
- saeranv 7y ago
  Trudeau has done this in Canada. I, like you, thought it would be a brilliant way to get around the traditional conservative opposition to taxes, but surprisingly - they still opposed it, and provincial conservatives have challenged it in the courts.
  - graeme 7y ago
    That said, revenue neutrality probably has increased the tax's popularity. Polls show a massive increase in approval when people are informed of this return of money.
- WanderPanda 7y ago
  I would rather like a carbon market where every person gets the same amount of emissions per year and can then sell this towards manufacturers using fossil carbon. This gets the notion of "the air we breath belongs to all of us" way better than shoveling even more money to the government
  - peacetreefrog 7y ago
    The problem with that is there are a lot of transaction costs to individuals selling their personal emissions. Like the comment one higher up mentioned, one way to get around that and do effectively the same thing would be to split the revenue among citizens. This is what a bunch of economists have called for doing: https://www.econstatement.org/ https://www.econstatement.org/
dennisgorelik 7y ago
Tax increase makes people poorer. Poverty kills people. Most likely effect of carbon tax is that it will kill more people than it will save.
- psychometry 7y ago
  This is some South Park Chewbacca defense-level logic.
- bryanlarsen 7y ago
  Taxes move money, they don't destroy it. They make some people richer and some poorer. A carbon tax and dividend scheme (advocated by economists) gives poor people a significant amount of money. The Green New Deal (advocated by left wing democrats) gives poor people a significant amount of money.
  - dennisgorelik 7y ago
    Overhead from distributing taxes -- makes people poorer on average. I see how some taxes (such as gasoline tax for building roads) can have outsized advantages that are bigger than the tax distribution overhead. But carbon tax does NOT have advantages like that. At least not yet, considering that too much of the Earth land is too cold.
perfunctory 7y ago
> We need a carbon tax stat IMO. Good idea. How do we make it happen?
- bryanlarsen 7y ago
  Having the top voted comment on a popular HN thread is a start. As you yourself mentioned, this kind of change requires change at the grass roots.

saeranv 7y ago

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but my impression is that this is not something that "both sides" are equally responsible for. In Canada/US, conservatives/Republicans generally refuse to implement a carbon tax; whereas the center-left and left parties generally do. Additionally in the US, the Republicans don't even believe in climate-change. Hence Chomsky's argument that the Republican party is the most dangerous organisation in human history: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/noam-chomsky-republican-party-most-dangerous-organisation-human-history-us-politics-mit-linguist-a7706026.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/noam-choms... So I agree we need carbon tax, but I find it frustrating to pretend this is a issue both sides are at fault for.

coldpie 7y ago
Yes. Anyone whining about "both sides" on almost any issue in 2019 is an idiot.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
peacetreefrog 7y ago
Well, depends what you mean by "at fault". I agree it's better to believe in global warming than deny it exists, but I agree with Cochrane that many of the attempts at at fixing it so far are basically "worthless value-signaling gestures". Cochrane thinks (not sure I agree with him) that the onus right now is more on the traditional left than the right. "...climate policy advocates have gone far beyond a technocratic idea of simply, well, reducing carbon. 'And nuclear energy' is usually noticeably absent. Carbon capture technologies, equally good at reducing carbon are usually noticeably absent. Other agendas like 'climate justice' creep in -- worthy or not, anything else that creeps in means less carbon reduction per dollar. A carbon tax reduces carbon any way that reduces carbon, which is really good at, well, reducing carbon, and not getting distracted with other agendas. That is a strong reason why carbon taxes, and especially such taxes in return for less regulation are resisted on the left." Whether you agree re: who is at fault, given that most people on HN are prob on the "do something about climate change" end of the spectrum, if you are personally skeptical of a carbon tax vs something like the green new deal or Jay Inslee's climate change plan, I'd encourage you to look into it more. Cochrane's blog post and and also this would be good places to start: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/01/17/this-is-not-controversial-bipartisan-group-economists-calls-carbon-tax https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/01/17/this-is-n...
- olivermarks 7y ago
  'it's better to believe in global warming than deny it exists' - this sums up the belief system aspects of the current hysteria. Cynics say the commercial goal of claims human pollution is super heating earth's atmosphere (which may be true) is to extract taxation from everyone on C02 use. Good stewardship of the planet is clearly in everyone's best interests but falling into the clutches of avaricious ecocapitalists who tax you on everything is only going to empty your wallet and restrict your movements, while probably not solving any environmental concerns.
- crazygringo 7y ago
  This feels like such a straw man. First, people on the left who are resisting carbon taxes are mostly because they believe cap and trade is a better solution, which many economists agree with. Second, what has some notion of "climate justice" got to do with anything? I don't see any evidence politicians on the left are somehow getting distracted by "value-signaling". Third, where does the idea come from that a carbon tax must be matched with less regulation elsewhere? That's a pure right-wing dream to try to match the two together, there is no connection. What this essentially sounds like is a Republican talking point that it's all Democrats' fault because Democrats aren't succeeding, despite Republicans refusing to help and therefore making it impossible to succeed. The doublespeak and hypocrisy makes your head spin...
rayiner 7y ago
The Democrats are willing to make slight changes, but at the end of the day, Americans are pumping 15-20 gigs tons per year of CO2 into the atmosphere and that number wouldn’t change under either Democrat or Republican policies. (Indeed, its not clear that when you account for Democrats’ opposition to nuclear power, which set of policies would’ve led to lower CO2 output in a counterfactual scenario.) And to keep warming to 1.5C, that number needs to go to zero this decade, then negative shortly after that. Also, this needs to happen in china and India, not just the US. Note that measures to actually address climate change are unpopular even among Democrats. Sure, they like it when it’s articulated as a jobs program (“green new deal”) but they still oppose things like carbon taxes, which experts have offered forth as the solution. State level measures along those lines got strong push back in very blue and very environmentally conscious Oregon and Washington
Bendingo 7y ago
> pretend this is a issue both sides are at fault for I'm sorry but there is no doubt that "both sides are at fault". "Trudeau has never really stood in the way of Canada’s oil industry, despite years of platitudes about addressing climate change." https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Trudeau-Declares-Climate-Emergency-Then-Approves-Major-Oil-Pipeline.html https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Trudeau-Declares-...
- saeranv 7y ago
  He's not great, but I'm disagreeing with the false equivlance here. Trudeau is better compared to Harper who gagged scientists, compared to Scheer who wants to rely on subsidies and regulations to limit carbon, compared to Doug Ford and his ideaological opposition to carbon tax. So yes, Liberals are better then the Conservatives on the issue of the oil industry and reducing carbon emissions. ETA: In an ideal world I'd prefer NDP or Green, but as long as we're limited by first past the post, the best way to support climate change mitigation is by avoiding Conservatives via the Liberals.

mieseratte 7y ago

> To my climate-skeptic friends: Given that the government is going to regulate carbon, this is the way to do it with least damage. First, that starts off with a false premise. You don't know that the government is going to regulate carbon. Second, ignoring the "climate change is a myth" crowd, there are those that believe that we are, at this point, past the point of helping and that we might as well just get on with it and adapt to whatever changes await. That attempts at regulation will just destroy the economy, and thus their place in it, and that ruining the economy and thus untold (b|m)illions of lives that way is not worth the unknown outcome of attempting to save the current state of climate. This isn't even a "not my problem" situation. I've heard this from folks leaving in a coastal region that already suffers some amount of regular nuisance flooding. It's not as if rising tides will skip over them. Failing to understand that viewpoint is going to result in two sides yelling past each other. One side thinks we must do everything in our power to preserve nature's status-quo, the other is firmly of the mind that it is an impossibility and to try would be wasted effort with much risk and unclear gain. Your first task is convincing them of the horrors that await for them.

bryanlarsen 7y ago
To the second: even if stopping climate change is impossible, slowing it is tremendously valuable.
- chr1 7y ago
  If you want to better understand the argument take a look at Bjorn Lomborg's talks https://www.lomborg.com https://www.lomborg.com, basically the argument is that even the strictest regulations are going to have a very small effect on the climate in 100 years, and for every dollar spent now we save merely cents in the future. So instead of implementing economically non-profitable measures, it is better to invest much more into research, and into helping poor countries, which will allow us to find better technologies to fight with climate change. I am not sure what i think about this argument yet, but it seems like it may be reasonable.
  - bryanlarsen 7y ago

zajio1am 7y ago

I agree that we need a carbon tax. IMHO the good way to get wider support for it is to make it revenue-neutral - collected money could be distributed equally as income tax credit (or some other way). In this way carbon tax would increas marginal costs of using carbon-intensive products, but does not increase overall taxation.

saeranv 7y ago
Trudeau has done this in Canada. I, like you, thought it would be a brilliant way to get around the traditional conservative opposition to taxes, but surprisingly - they still opposed it, and provincial conservatives have challenged it in the courts.
- graeme 7y ago
  That said, revenue neutrality probably has increased the tax's popularity. Polls show a massive increase in approval when people are informed of this return of money.
WanderPanda 7y ago
I would rather like a carbon market where every person gets the same amount of emissions per year and can then sell this towards manufacturers using fossil carbon. This gets the notion of "the air we breath belongs to all of us" way better than shoveling even more money to the government
- peacetreefrog 7y ago
  The problem with that is there are a lot of transaction costs to individuals selling their personal emissions. Like the comment one higher up mentioned, one way to get around that and do effectively the same thing would be to split the revenue among citizens. This is what a bunch of economists have called for doing: https://www.econstatement.org/ https://www.econstatement.org/

dennisgorelik 7y ago

Tax increase makes people poorer. Poverty kills people. Most likely effect of carbon tax is that it will kill more people than it will save.

psychometry 7y ago
This is some South Park Chewbacca defense-level logic.
bryanlarsen 7y ago
Taxes move money, they don't destroy it. They make some people richer and some poorer. A carbon tax and dividend scheme (advocated by economists) gives poor people a significant amount of money. The Green New Deal (advocated by left wing democrats) gives poor people a significant amount of money.
- dennisgorelik 7y ago
  Overhead from distributing taxes -- makes people poorer on average. I see how some taxes (such as gasoline tax for building roads) can have outsized advantages that are bigger than the tax distribution overhead. But carbon tax does NOT have advantages like that. At least not yet, considering that too much of the Earth land is too cold.

perfunctory 7y ago

> We need a carbon tax stat IMO. Good idea. How do we make it happen?

bryanlarsen 7y ago
Having the top voted comment on a popular HN thread is a start. As you yourself mentioned, this kind of change requires change at the grass roots.