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Then let's raise the cost of adding a ton of CO2 to the atmosphere. We have been encouraging pollution since it's cheaper to just dump it than to reduce their

Then let's raise the cost of adding a ton of CO2 to the atmosphere. We have been encouraging pollution since it's cheaper to just dump it than to reduce their production significantly or invest in capturing it. If the cost to remove it is $80-$100 USD, then that should be the cost of adding it. We should start demanding they either pay the costs associated with someone else having to deal with it, or reduce how much they dump into the air in the first place.

throwaway0a5e 6y ago
>Then let's raise the cost of adding a ton of CO2 to the atmosphere. >If the cost to remove it is $80-$100 USD, then that should be the cost of adding it. We should start demanding they either pay the costs associated with someone else having to deal with it, or reduce how much they dump into the air in the first place. This works until all the people who have enough trouble achieving a decent standard of living vote you out of office or revolt (depending on the system of government of the country in-question). Few things universally piss people off quite as well as standards of living going backwards. The cost of removing CO2 needs to be cheaper. The cost of emitting less CO2 for a given standard of living needs to be cheaper. Carbon taxes that reflect the current price of removing carbon from the atmosphere are socially and politically unsustainable.
- GVIrish 6y ago
  Correctly pricing in the negative externalities of burning fossil fuels is what will help us shift away from fossil fuels. And if people are gonna be upset about a decrease in standard of living because they can't buy gas guzzling cars anymore or air travel is more expensive, they're really not going to like the drop in standard of living from climate change. Coastal flooding and storm surge is already destroying billions of dollars in real estate value. Houston has seen three 500-year floods in less than 5 years. We've seen the devastation from large scale wildfires in Australia and California. Subsistence fishermen in some parts of the world are already seeing their fisheries collapse. If we don't get climate change under control we're not going to be talking about temporary pain while we shift to cleaner technology. We'll be looking at large scale climate refugee crises, collapses of industries, collapses of governments, and wide scale human misery.
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    You are missing the point. The fact that we are headed toward refugee crisis and Miami being underwater doesn't change the incentives and game theory aspect of it. If emissions are expensive to remove and there is no way to globally ensure that nearly everybody pays for their emissions then nobody is going to pay for any of their emissions and will just invest in mitigating the problems locally even if that's not the globally optimal solution. Any country that tries to make its people pay the actual cost of their emissions without the rest of the world doing the same will quickly see regime change because people aren't gonna waste a bunch of resources pissing in the wind like that. If emission are cheap to remove then it's going to be easier to get everyone to pay and the fact that some "emissions havens" won't pay will be a non issue because picking up the slack will be cheap enough. In order to tax emissions at what it costs to dispose of them the cost of disposing of them needs to be cheaper. (Of course both of us are making the assumption that taxing emissions at the cost of disposing of them will solve the problem which isn't guaranteed because nations will be tempted to use that money on other things but I think we can continue using that assumption for the time being.)
    - givinguflac 6y ago
      I disagree and feel that it is you who are missing the point. While I agree removal of CO2 needs to be less expensive, we simply don't have an option right now. We do have an option to make it more expensive to pollute until we figure that out. Why do you directly relate carbon taxes to a reduction in living standards??
      - cagenut 6y ago
        Because a certain type uses it as a code-phrase for "smaller cars, condos and fake cheeseburgers". They feel a deep sense of revolt at the affront of that personally, but are smart enough to realize they'll come off like the disgustingly amoral (imho evil) person they are if they complain about it personally. So they project it as a vague "standard of living" across poor/global-south people as a way of concern trolling libs into not taking their truck.
      - 6y ago
- jjk166 6y ago
  Making emitting CO2 more expensive leads directly to releasing less CO2 for a given standard of living. If you 10x the cost of coal, that's not going to 10x the cost of electricity, people are just going to switch over to a different energy source. Likewise for large scale industrial processes and transportation. Further, most technologies that reduce CO2 emmissions do so by being more efficient, which reduces long term costs and leads to better productivity. The creation and installation of these replacements creates high paying jobs and stimulates the economy. Incentivising the adoption of these technologies allows them to be produced at larger scales which in turn drops their price, leading to wider scale adoption. Preventing catastrophic climate change of course has its own immense benefits to standards of living. Indeed, a high tax due to a high cost of removing CO2 from the atmosphere creates an enormous incentive for those who can not abandon their polluting methods to invest in the developments of better sequestering technologies. Waiting for the technology to just magically appear as a prerequisite for incentivizing its deployment is dumb.
- aaron_m04 6y ago
  That's the real problem with any policies that would actually significantly fight climate change: our unequal society has people who would be disproportionately impacted by increased prices and laws against carbon emissions.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
PoignardAzur 6y ago
> Then let's raise the cost of adding a ton of CO2 to the atmosphere. cries in Gilets Jaunes.
LeifCarrotson 6y ago
Demanding an increase in the cost of adding CO2 would be effective for the organizations and people in that jurisdiction as long as that rule lasts. It's a great stop-gap mechanism. But a technical solution to lower the cost of removing a ton of CO2 is superior to a political solution to raise the cost of adding a ton of CO2. It's better because it's a permanent step forwards, not one that has to be held on to, and it's better because it better aligns with everyone's incentives. The political solution is vulnerable to changing societal and cultural winds. It takes constant expenditure of political fervor to maintain as a law, and is always vulnerable to a political competitor suggesting "...don't want to pay that $100USD/ton fee? Help me gain power and I'll help you gain money." Once the technology exists to take the cost to remove it down by an order of magnitude, this effort no longer needs to be expended and the incentive to remove it no longer exists. Modern fuel-injected and turbocharged engines do not only have lower emissions, they are more powerful and require lower maintenance than carbureted big-block engines. And if you've driven a Tesla you know that a battery electric vehicle can be both better for the environment and a better car (for everything but extremely long-range journeys) than an internal-combustion vehicle. Similarly, Lets Encrypt making HTTPS as easy and as cheap as non-encrypted sites did far more to increase the number of secure websites than years of advocacy begging website owners to get certificates and browser vendors to increase the equivalent of fees.

throwaway0a5e 6y ago

>Then let's raise the cost of adding a ton of CO2 to the atmosphere. >If the cost to remove it is $80-$100 USD, then that should be the cost of adding it. We should start demanding they either pay the costs associated with someone else having to deal with it, or reduce how much they dump into the air in the first place. This works until all the people who have enough trouble achieving a decent standard of living vote you out of office or revolt (depending on the system of government of the country in-question). Few things universally piss people off quite as well as standards of living going backwards. The cost of removing CO2 needs to be cheaper. The cost of emitting less CO2 for a given standard of living needs to be cheaper. Carbon taxes that reflect the current price of removing carbon from the atmosphere are socially and politically unsustainable.

GVIrish 6y ago
Correctly pricing in the negative externalities of burning fossil fuels is what will help us shift away from fossil fuels. And if people are gonna be upset about a decrease in standard of living because they can't buy gas guzzling cars anymore or air travel is more expensive, they're really not going to like the drop in standard of living from climate change. Coastal flooding and storm surge is already destroying billions of dollars in real estate value. Houston has seen three 500-year floods in less than 5 years. We've seen the devastation from large scale wildfires in Australia and California. Subsistence fishermen in some parts of the world are already seeing their fisheries collapse. If we don't get climate change under control we're not going to be talking about temporary pain while we shift to cleaner technology. We'll be looking at large scale climate refugee crises, collapses of industries, collapses of governments, and wide scale human misery.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  You are missing the point. The fact that we are headed toward refugee crisis and Miami being underwater doesn't change the incentives and game theory aspect of it. If emissions are expensive to remove and there is no way to globally ensure that nearly everybody pays for their emissions then nobody is going to pay for any of their emissions and will just invest in mitigating the problems locally even if that's not the globally optimal solution. Any country that tries to make its people pay the actual cost of their emissions without the rest of the world doing the same will quickly see regime change because people aren't gonna waste a bunch of resources pissing in the wind like that. If emission are cheap to remove then it's going to be easier to get everyone to pay and the fact that some "emissions havens" won't pay will be a non issue because picking up the slack will be cheap enough. In order to tax emissions at what it costs to dispose of them the cost of disposing of them needs to be cheaper. (Of course both of us are making the assumption that taxing emissions at the cost of disposing of them will solve the problem which isn't guaranteed because nations will be tempted to use that money on other things but I think we can continue using that assumption for the time being.)
  - givinguflac 6y ago
    I disagree and feel that it is you who are missing the point. While I agree removal of CO2 needs to be less expensive, we simply don't have an option right now. We do have an option to make it more expensive to pollute until we figure that out. Why do you directly relate carbon taxes to a reduction in living standards??
    - cagenut 6y ago
      Because a certain type uses it as a code-phrase for "smaller cars, condos and fake cheeseburgers". They feel a deep sense of revolt at the affront of that personally, but are smart enough to realize they'll come off like the disgustingly amoral (imho evil) person they are if they complain about it personally. So they project it as a vague "standard of living" across poor/global-south people as a way of concern trolling libs into not taking their truck.
    - 6y ago
jjk166 6y ago
Making emitting CO2 more expensive leads directly to releasing less CO2 for a given standard of living. If you 10x the cost of coal, that's not going to 10x the cost of electricity, people are just going to switch over to a different energy source. Likewise for large scale industrial processes and transportation. Further, most technologies that reduce CO2 emmissions do so by being more efficient, which reduces long term costs and leads to better productivity. The creation and installation of these replacements creates high paying jobs and stimulates the economy. Incentivising the adoption of these technologies allows them to be produced at larger scales which in turn drops their price, leading to wider scale adoption. Preventing catastrophic climate change of course has its own immense benefits to standards of living. Indeed, a high tax due to a high cost of removing CO2 from the atmosphere creates an enormous incentive for those who can not abandon their polluting methods to invest in the developments of better sequestering technologies. Waiting for the technology to just magically appear as a prerequisite for incentivizing its deployment is dumb.
aaron_m04 6y ago
That's the real problem with any policies that would actually significantly fight climate change: our unequal society has people who would be disproportionately impacted by increased prices and laws against carbon emissions.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

PoignardAzur 6y ago

> Then let's raise the cost of adding a ton of CO2 to the atmosphere. cries in Gilets Jaunes.

LeifCarrotson 6y ago

Demanding an increase in the cost of adding CO2 would be effective for the organizations and people in that jurisdiction as long as that rule lasts. It's a great stop-gap mechanism. But a technical solution to lower the cost of removing a ton of CO2 is superior to a political solution to raise the cost of adding a ton of CO2. It's better because it's a permanent step forwards, not one that has to be held on to, and it's better because it better aligns with everyone's incentives. The political solution is vulnerable to changing societal and cultural winds. It takes constant expenditure of political fervor to maintain as a law, and is always vulnerable to a political competitor suggesting "...don't want to pay that $100USD/ton fee? Help me gain power and I'll help you gain money." Once the technology exists to take the cost to remove it down by an order of magnitude, this effort no longer needs to be expended and the incentive to remove it no longer exists. Modern fuel-injected and turbocharged engines do not only have lower emissions, they are more powerful and require lower maintenance than carbureted big-block engines. And if you've driven a Tesla you know that a battery electric vehicle can be both better for the environment and a better car (for everything but extremely long-range journeys) than an internal-combustion vehicle. Similarly, Lets Encrypt making HTTPS as easy and as cheap as non-encrypted sites did far more to increase the number of secure websites than years of advocacy begging website owners to get certificates and browser vendors to increase the equivalent of fees.