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Why a carbon text, why UBI? Why do these same activists also campaign against nuclear power?

triceratops 6y ago
I'm assuming you meant "carbon tax"? Why? Because it's the most elegant way of putting a price on emissions. Why UBI? It redistributes the tax collected from high emitters (likely to be higher income) to low-emitters (likely to be lower income) so progressives like it. It keeps the tax revenue neutral and doesn't allow the government to expand so conservatives like it. > Why do these same activists also campaign against nuclear power? Because of the long history of cost overruns, waste disposal and management issues, and the fear of a minuscule chance of catastrophic failure (not saying this last one is a rational fear). Why fixate on nuclear power whenever climate change comes up? Why not institute a carbon tax and leave the rest to the market? Some countries (France, India, the UK) love nuclear power, and others (US, Japan, Germany) are not so hot on it. If they all have carbon taxes, each country can figure out for itself what it wants to do, and collectively embargo/tariff countries that don't have a carbon tax. It's weird that a lot of people's default position is "I won't do anything for climate change unless we get nuclear power." Almost like they know there's very little chance of the national opinion about nuclear power changing very soon, so that gives them an "out" on taking any other action.
- samatman 6y ago
  > Why? Because it's the most elegant way of putting a price on emissions. I used to agree with this, and now I don't. A carbon tax has to be an approximation, and there are significant judgement calls on what the total carbon burden of a given product or service might be. This is a recipe for paperwork, loopholes, and a raft of unintended consequences. Instead, I support an across-the-board carbon sales tax on everything. Use some of this to subsidize carbon-reducing technology at the point of sale. Put the rest of it toward everything else we use taxes for, and make sure that renewable research, nuclear energy, and so on, are adequately funded. UBI? sure, why not; but let's not attach it directly to a climate tax, that only confuses both issues. There are some exceptions: it's practical to calculate the carbon burden of electricity, and handle the taxation-and-subsidy market directly in that field.
  - triceratops 6y ago
    > A carbon tax has to be an approximation, and there are significant judgement calls on what the total carbon burden of a given product or service might be. Sorry, could you explain more? I always assumed a carbon tax meant an extraction tax on any fossil fuel. For example, taxing companies per barrel of crude, per ton of natgas or coal they take out of the ground. Since practically all carbon emissions involve the use of a fossil fuel somewhere in the chain, wouldn't this capture the carbon output of any product or service?
    - samatman 6y ago
      Sure, that would be one way to do it: if there were a one world government, which could impose such a tax. But in the world we have, it's not going to work: that tax would be imposed on only the developed world, which already has issues competing in manufacturing, due to paying reasonable amounts of money for labor, and at least some attention to workplace safety and environmentally-responsible behavior. So you'd have to apply tariffs of some sort on imported goods, and base it on some guesswork as to the carbon footprint of the items. At which point, just giving up and charging a sales tax is better, for the reasons I described.
      - triceratops 6y ago
        Couldn't countries with carbon extraction taxes impose blanket 25% (or 50%, whatever it takes to get immediate compliance) tariffs on all imports from countries that don't have the same carbon taxes? Or impose economic sanctions, freeze assets and so on? Sorry, I'm just spitballing here. Have I fallen prey to "it's easy, just do X"? I agree this would still require a fair amount of coordination between the countries that do the tariffs. But less so than deciding tariffs on individual products based on their pollution.
        samatman 6y ago
        > Have I fallen prey to "it's easy, just do X"? A little bit? A carbon tax is workable, I've just come to favor a sales tax as simpler. They're both consumption taxes, the latter says "ok, this is what we have to take out of the economy to pay for mitigation, lets do it as a sales tax and then pay some of it back for products that reduce carbon burden, either directly or as substitute goods for especially polluting technologies". The more moving parts something like this has, the more opportunities there are to take advantage of that. Sales tax already exists, it's well understood, this would be fire-and-forget, and it wouldn't create a bunch of new jobs for accountants (nothing against them, but we don't want that).

I'm assuming you meant "carbon tax"? Why? Because it's the most elegant way of putting a price on emissions. Why UBI? It redistributes the tax collected from high emitters (likely to be higher income) to low-emitters (likely to be lower income) so progressives like it. It keeps the tax revenue neutral and doesn't allow the government to expand so conservatives like it. > Why do these same activists also campaign against nuclear power? Because of the long history of cost overruns, waste disposal and management issues, and the fear of a minuscule chance of catastrophic failure (not saying this last one is a rational fear). Why fixate on nuclear power whenever climate change comes up? Why not institute a carbon tax and leave the rest to the market? Some countries (France, India, the UK) love nuclear power, and others (US, Japan, Germany) are not so hot on it. If they all have carbon taxes, each country can figure out for itself what it wants to do, and collectively embargo/tariff countries that don't have a carbon tax. It's weird that a lot of people's default position is "I won't do anything for climate change unless we get nuclear power." Almost like they know there's very little chance of the national opinion about nuclear power changing very soon, so that gives them an "out" on taking any other action.

samatman 6y ago
> Why? Because it's the most elegant way of putting a price on emissions. I used to agree with this, and now I don't. A carbon tax has to be an approximation, and there are significant judgement calls on what the total carbon burden of a given product or service might be. This is a recipe for paperwork, loopholes, and a raft of unintended consequences. Instead, I support an across-the-board carbon sales tax on everything. Use some of this to subsidize carbon-reducing technology at the point of sale. Put the rest of it toward everything else we use taxes for, and make sure that renewable research, nuclear energy, and so on, are adequately funded. UBI? sure, why not; but let's not attach it directly to a climate tax, that only confuses both issues. There are some exceptions: it's practical to calculate the carbon burden of electricity, and handle the taxation-and-subsidy market directly in that field.
- triceratops 6y ago
  > A carbon tax has to be an approximation, and there are significant judgement calls on what the total carbon burden of a given product or service might be. Sorry, could you explain more? I always assumed a carbon tax meant an extraction tax on any fossil fuel. For example, taxing companies per barrel of crude, per ton of natgas or coal they take out of the ground. Since practically all carbon emissions involve the use of a fossil fuel somewhere in the chain, wouldn't this capture the carbon output of any product or service?
  - samatman 6y ago
    Sure, that would be one way to do it: if there were a one world government, which could impose such a tax. But in the world we have, it's not going to work: that tax would be imposed on only the developed world, which already has issues competing in manufacturing, due to paying reasonable amounts of money for labor, and at least some attention to workplace safety and environmentally-responsible behavior. So you'd have to apply tariffs of some sort on imported goods, and base it on some guesswork as to the carbon footprint of the items. At which point, just giving up and charging a sales tax is better, for the reasons I described.
    - triceratops 6y ago
      Couldn't countries with carbon extraction taxes impose blanket 25% (or 50%, whatever it takes to get immediate compliance) tariffs on all imports from countries that don't have the same carbon taxes? Or impose economic sanctions, freeze assets and so on? Sorry, I'm just spitballing here. Have I fallen prey to "it's easy, just do X"? I agree this would still require a fair amount of coordination between the countries that do the tariffs. But less so than deciding tariffs on individual products based on their pollution.
      - samatman 6y ago
        > Have I fallen prey to "it's easy, just do X"? A little bit? A carbon tax is workable, I've just come to favor a sales tax as simpler. They're both consumption taxes, the latter says "ok, this is what we have to take out of the economy to pay for mitigation, lets do it as a sales tax and then pay some of it back for products that reduce carbon burden, either directly or as substitute goods for especially polluting technologies". The more moving parts something like this has, the more opportunities there are to take advantage of that. Sales tax already exists, it's well understood, this would be fire-and-forget, and it wouldn't create a bunch of new jobs for accountants (nothing against them, but we don't want that).