4 ms·

There is so many issues to solve in order to have a carbon tax. Just to pick a few examples: People do not want their electric bill to jump ten (or more) folds

by belorn 7y ago

There is so many issues to solve in order to have a carbon tax. Just to pick a few examples: People do not want their electric bill to jump ten (or more) folds just because wind production went down and now the gas turbine is burning, and they definitively do not want brownouts. Industries like steel and other high energy users is particular allergic to variance in power availability and price, and without tariffs it is practically impossible to demand it in a global economy. Food prices would go up as rural living is directly impacted by carbon taxes. It used to be that the largest portion of a persons income went to pay for food. Today it is a rather small portion. Asking people to pay the carbon tax through increased food prices is a very hard proposition, and without tariffs it is practically impossible in a global economy. Then we have urbanization where increased costs to personal transportation means a population that relies more on mass transit systems. That mean in order to keep people from moving to cities we need a significant investment into building out the railway system, which is the opposite what most countries has done in the last 50-80 years. That investment means raised taxes on top of the carbon tax. It also mean a increased strain on the infrastructure inside cities when density will increase while new infrastructure is being built, which mean more taxes. Then we have international trade (air and sea transport) which is governed through international treaties. To be fair this is likely the easiest place to do a carbon tax as it would only effect all imports and exports and operate as a equal tariff for everyone, but getting people to agree to it it is a significant bigger hill than the Paris Agreement.

davedx 7y ago
> Industries like steel and other high energy users is particular allergic to variance in power availability and price Kind of. Actually many high energy users like steel industry are often the primary clients of demand-response agreements with their suppliers. If it's in the contract and helps offset their energy costs then some variance isn't necessarily bad for their business.
lmilcin 7y ago
I think the most important benefit of co2 tax would be we would be much more conscious about emissions the same it happened to garbage couple decades ago. This is prerequisite for business to include it as a real factor in optimizations. And if you are one of those that do not care you would still have to pay for cleaning after your.self
- pif 7y ago
  > I think the most important benefit of co2 tax would be we would be much more conscious about emissions I think discussions could get more constructive if proponents of CO2 tax did get conscious of the epycal change they are talking about.
  - sokoloff 7y ago
    > get conscious of the epycal change What does epycal mean? (Or what word did you mean?) Google failed me.
    - szatkus 7y ago
      Butchered "ethical"?
    - pif 7y ago
      s/epycal/epic
  - lmilcin 7y ago
    Same issue as protecting environment from garbage and toxic substances or replacing our use of oil and gas with renewables. It costs huge, nobody had incentive starting it, but it is worth it. The tax would have to be slowly introduced over period of many years. It is necessary for economy and various industries to adjust. New industry of scrubbing co2 needs funds and time to develop.
  - pif 7y ago
    s/epycal/epic
lotsofpulp 7y ago
>There is so many issues to solve in order to have a carbon tax. Just to pick a few examples: All of your examples look like one issue to me, which is people unwilling to change their lifestyle and sacrifice their luxuries. The only way out of this mess is to use less resources, which means consume less, travel less, have fewer children, etc. Carbon tax or dictatorial orders, the root of the problem is people don’t want to consume less, and our children and their children will pay the price due to us not wanting to pay it now.
- sokoloff 7y ago
  Of course no one wants to pay it now. To me, that’s an argument for forcing the payment (via taxation) rather than wishing really hard that people will change.
- pif 7y ago
  > people unwilling to change their lifestyle and sacrifice their luxuries. I agree with you this is a very important issue. But it's far too easy to underestimate the "stubborness" of people to keep living fine!
- belorn 7y ago
  Getting people to accept increased food prices, higher cost of imported goods and higher taxes in order to focus on infrastructure is complex. To make a comparison, universal healthcare is a rather minor governmental change. To put down some numbers, Americans spend just 6.4% of their household income on food. Around 1950 they spent about 20%. It not that Americans eat one fifth as much as they used to (if anything the claim is that people eat more today), so the life style change is both that people need to pay more and eat less. Similar if we talk about railway budget, the US government spend today about 0.00156% in proportion to the budget of 1950. It basically stopped investing into the railway infrastructure. Naturally the proportion of the population (and industry) that use the railway system has also gone down, through not as extreme as the budget. The root of the problem is that people don't want to pay more to get less, and then also consume less at the same time. They also don't want to pay more taxes in order to invest heavily in infrastructure that take half a century before people see the benefits.
jnwatson 7y ago
These are sound quite manageable relative to the economic catastrophe of doing nothing.
corebit 7y ago
You make it sound like these unsolved, expensive, or insurmountable issues. Literally all of these have cheap, trivial fixes that would reopen markets closed by the perverse subsidization we have now. > People do not want their electric bill to jump ten (or more) folds Power companies already offer budget billing to deal with the seasonal variation. It's trivial to extend this to some level of weather prediction. In fact there's already source variation taken into account. Even if the increased volatility causes the order of magnitude price changes, there is already a market for electric price smoothing through batteries and energy storage. Just look what Tesla did for this exact issue in Australia. >Food prices would go up as rural living is directly impacted by carbon taxes. I'm not sure how you're figuring this. If anything, food prices would decrease because we'd find more efficient local distribution techniques. Since rural areas is where the foo dis grown, that's where it would be the cheapest. In fact we not only already have more local distribution channels - we have federal infrastructure around it: https://www.ams.usda.gov/local-food-directories/farmersmarkets https://www.ams.usda.gov/local-food-directories/farmersmarke.... Moreover, there's already a growing free market for this: https://fortune.com/2015/08/21/local-food-movement-business/ https://fortune.com/2015/08/21/local-food-movement-business/. > increased costs to personal transportation means a population that relies more on mass transit systems. That mean in order to keep people from moving to cities we need a significant investment into building out the railway system I'm not following this argument. Increased reliance on mass transit would overall make everything cheaper, AVOIDing massive investments in both railroads and increased highway capacity. I also don't follow your last point. Tariffs don't require treaties and are probably the best place to solve this in the beginning. As more nations enact their own carbon tariffs, we could begin to have a real discussion on international agreements.

by belorn 7y ago

davedx 7y ago

> Industries like steel and other high energy users is particular allergic to variance in power availability and price Kind of. Actually many high energy users like steel industry are often the primary clients of demand-response agreements with their suppliers. If it's in the contract and helps offset their energy costs then some variance isn't necessarily bad for their business.

lmilcin 7y ago

I think the most important benefit of co2 tax would be we would be much more conscious about emissions the same it happened to garbage couple decades ago. This is prerequisite for business to include it as a real factor in optimizations. And if you are one of those that do not care you would still have to pay for cleaning after your.self

pif 7y ago
> I think the most important benefit of co2 tax would be we would be much more conscious about emissions I think discussions could get more constructive if proponents of CO2 tax did get conscious of the epycal change they are talking about.
- sokoloff 7y ago
  > get conscious of the epycal change What does epycal mean? (Or what word did you mean?) Google failed me.
  - szatkus 7y ago
    Butchered "ethical"?
  - pif 7y ago
    s/epycal/epic
- lmilcin 7y ago
  Same issue as protecting environment from garbage and toxic substances or replacing our use of oil and gas with renewables. It costs huge, nobody had incentive starting it, but it is worth it. The tax would have to be slowly introduced over period of many years. It is necessary for economy and various industries to adjust. New industry of scrubbing co2 needs funds and time to develop.
- pif 7y ago
  s/epycal/epic

lotsofpulp 7y ago

>There is so many issues to solve in order to have a carbon tax. Just to pick a few examples: All of your examples look like one issue to me, which is people unwilling to change their lifestyle and sacrifice their luxuries. The only way out of this mess is to use less resources, which means consume less, travel less, have fewer children, etc. Carbon tax or dictatorial orders, the root of the problem is people don’t want to consume less, and our children and their children will pay the price due to us not wanting to pay it now.

sokoloff 7y ago
Of course no one wants to pay it now. To me, that’s an argument for forcing the payment (via taxation) rather than wishing really hard that people will change.
pif 7y ago
> people unwilling to change their lifestyle and sacrifice their luxuries. I agree with you this is a very important issue. But it's far too easy to underestimate the "stubborness" of people to keep living fine!
belorn 7y ago
Getting people to accept increased food prices, higher cost of imported goods and higher taxes in order to focus on infrastructure is complex. To make a comparison, universal healthcare is a rather minor governmental change. To put down some numbers, Americans spend just 6.4% of their household income on food. Around 1950 they spent about 20%. It not that Americans eat one fifth as much as they used to (if anything the claim is that people eat more today), so the life style change is both that people need to pay more and eat less. Similar if we talk about railway budget, the US government spend today about 0.00156% in proportion to the budget of 1950. It basically stopped investing into the railway infrastructure. Naturally the proportion of the population (and industry) that use the railway system has also gone down, through not as extreme as the budget. The root of the problem is that people don't want to pay more to get less, and then also consume less at the same time. They also don't want to pay more taxes in order to invest heavily in infrastructure that take half a century before people see the benefits.

jnwatson 7y ago

These are sound quite manageable relative to the economic catastrophe of doing nothing.

corebit 7y ago

You make it sound like these unsolved, expensive, or insurmountable issues. Literally all of these have cheap, trivial fixes that would reopen markets closed by the perverse subsidization we have now. > People do not want their electric bill to jump ten (or more) folds Power companies already offer budget billing to deal with the seasonal variation. It's trivial to extend this to some level of weather prediction. In fact there's already source variation taken into account. Even if the increased volatility causes the order of magnitude price changes, there is already a market for electric price smoothing through batteries and energy storage. Just look what Tesla did for this exact issue in Australia. >Food prices would go up as rural living is directly impacted by carbon taxes. I'm not sure how you're figuring this. If anything, food prices would decrease because we'd find more efficient local distribution techniques. Since rural areas is where the foo dis grown, that's where it would be the cheapest. In fact we not only already have more local distribution channels - we have federal infrastructure around it: https://www.ams.usda.gov/local-food-directories/farmersmarkets https://www.ams.usda.gov/local-food-directories/farmersmarke.... Moreover, there's already a growing free market for this: https://fortune.com/2015/08/21/local-food-movement-business/ https://fortune.com/2015/08/21/local-food-movement-business/. > increased costs to personal transportation means a population that relies more on mass transit systems. That mean in order to keep people from moving to cities we need a significant investment into building out the railway system I'm not following this argument. Increased reliance on mass transit would overall make everything cheaper, AVOIDing massive investments in both railroads and increased highway capacity. I also don't follow your last point. Tariffs don't require treaties and are probably the best place to solve this in the beginning. As more nations enact their own carbon tariffs, we could begin to have a real discussion on international agreements.