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It only has to do it cheaply now because there is NO COST to putting CO2 into the air. Why are people surprised that if something is free (pumping CO2 into air
by privateSFacct 7y ago
It only has to do it cheaply now because there is NO COST to putting CO2 into the air.
Why are people surprised that if something is free (pumping CO2 into air) demand for it is high?
You are telling me that doing a charge of let's say $10 - $100/ton of CO2 wouldn't have a DRAMATIC impact on emissions? Is $10 - $100/ton too little for a supposed climate emergency?
There is so much funding and lawmaking and finger pointing and shaming - but still - dumping CO2 into the atmosphere if free and dumping remains high and people pretend to be surprised.
On energy: CA curtails (turns off) solar (and wind) power because there is not enough demand. In 2019 CA had 921,000 MWhs of curtailment.
Let's start by charging something for CO2 emissions.
- threeseed 7y agoYou mean a Carbon Tax ? The tax that applies to every single business, every single product, every single process, everything. The one that causes every single vested interest to come out of the woodwork and join together to make it politically toxic. We tried this in Australia. It has killed every government that even dared to discuss it. And politically it is utterly impossible to defend e.g. "Carbon tax that raises power prices for pensioners".
- quixoticelixer- 7y agoExcept many countries have carbon tax
- chopin 7y agoWhich ones would that be? I know of many which have a tax on various forms of energy consumption. And even then, industrial consumers are exempt or have a reduced rate.
- Danieru 7y agoHeres a document explaining things from 2017 issues by the Japanese government. I remember reading it a few days ago, interesting for the context: http://www.env.go.jp/en/policy/tax/20170130_greening.pdf http://www.env.go.jp/en/policy/tax/20170130_greening.pdf IMHO, the first step is to migrate coal power plants to capture and storage. It is much easier to drop emissions than to pull from the air. I would like to see more tax pressure globally incentivizing carbon release reductions. Instead you get weird stuff like Japan's carbon tax where coal pays the lowest carbon tax of gasoline and diesel.
- AtlasLion 7y agoNot all polluters are equal, some make huge gains while doing it.
- Gupie 7y agoWhy not have the level of sales tax (VAT in the UK) vary depending on amount of C02 was used to create a product. The consumer would not pay any more on average.
- codebje 7y ago... "will be used to offset costs for pensioners." Our carbon tax worked at reducing emissions, and at being low economic impact. It was removed because we are a corrupt banana republic, not because it's unworkable.
- baq 7y agodon't call it tax, call it carbon dividend and give the collected money away to citizens.
- lukifer 7y agoThis is the secret. The average citizen would actually come out ahead financially, making it a progressive tax, as opposed to the de-facto regressive taxes that have received popular opposition in other attempts. "The Largest Public Statement of Economists in History": https://clcouncil.org/economists-statement/ https://clcouncil.org/economists-statement/
- sampo 7y ago> The average citizen would actually come out ahead financially For a while. But if the carbon tax works and society switches to clean energy, then there is no more emissions and no more dividends pay to the citizens.
- KptMarchewa 7y agoGoal achieved.
- lukifer 7y agoI suspect there will be always be use cases for fossil fuels; for instance, even when 99% of all cars are electric, I wouldn't want to deny auto enthusiasts muscle cars and the like, if they're willing to pay for the societal externality. The carbon tax can continue to go up to cover these cases. Moreover, I think the same model can apply to other negative externalities (aka, Pigovian Tax [0]). But to the extent that the public will someday complain that their carbon dividend is going down: (a) I call that a good problem to have, and (b) because the collective action problem now points the other direction, there's no individual incentive to over-consume such that the dividend goes up again. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian_tax
- specialist 7y agoSquint a bit and Canada's carbon dividend looks like UBI. Two birds, one stone.
- p0nce 7y agoCarbon tax is not harder to implement than VAT. It's also the most effective tool against CO2 release.
- bambax 7y agoYes, people don't want any solution that would result in the slightest inconvenience in the present. So we'll have the end of civilization instead. We need to think past that point: how will the world look like once civilization has collapsed? What will still exist? What will not?
- nnq 7y ago> It has killed every government that even dared to discuss it. And politically it is utterly impossible to defend Then pull it out of political discussion! We don't have political discussion about "how to hang people of color Q better" anywhere in the world (mostly) anymore because we've wrote it in the text of our f laws that violence and racial discrimination are forbidden! Not on the political menu anymore. Same needs to happen with lots of stuff concerning climate, ecology, sustainability etc. - we need to restrict the political menu to only the right choices. And use the states' monopoly on violence to enforce these choices.
- pjc50 7y agoI have some very bad news for you: there are lots of people actively trying to work to bring those back on the menu. It's almost impossible to put things "beyond politics" so long as someone wants to bring them back.
- nnq 7y agoOnce some things are off the menu, people need to work really hard to change things. And, more importantly, violence can be used against those people - I mean throw-them-in-prison type of violence, not more. Just like with freedom - in order to preserve it, you need to, "paradoxically", shut some toxic persons' mouths forcefully (eg. "hate speech"). Yeah, sure, you can philosophise in the most general terms but that's not how you get people and companies stop doing wrong things. You get them when the people/entities who want to re-bring the despicable things back into discussion can be fined / closed / put-in-prison etc. I don't argue for eco-fascism. But with some things we need to be ruthless, especially in order to be able to carry on our peaceful, understanding and democratic discussions concerning all the other things!
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- ailideex 7y agoGood luck convincing China to impose a carbon tax.
- perfunctory 7y agoGiven trade imbalance you could impose carbon tax on Chinese imports.
- xxgreg 7y agoChina has piloted a number of carbon pricing schemes since 2013. It is introducing a nationwide scheme this year. https://www.reuters.com/article/climate-change-china-idUSL3N21H02B https://www.reuters.com/article/climate-change-china-idUSL3N...
- StreamBright 7y agoYou could but they already planning for a greener future. CO2 is the least of the problems with burning anything (including coal in power plants). https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/plans-for-new-reactors-worldwide.aspx https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-an...
- usrusr 7y agoGiven the extremely uneven distribution of money I suspect that you'd reach "couldn't afford exhaling" levels at one end before making anything resembling a dent at the other. I'm not against a carbon tax, far from it, but it's a difficult problem. The most direct approach would be to levy the tax at the time buried carbon is taken out of its geological grave, but good luck enforcing that globally. The most realistic approach (still a total sci-fi fantasy, with plenty of room for a dystopian touch) would be a fundamental removal of resource extraction sovereignty, implemented through a combination of military force and buying out whoever is currently in charge of representing that sovereignty.