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A bunch of environmentalists are idiots. But that doesn’t mean there’s no sensible plan or that it’s all speculative. In economics carbon’s costs have a name: t
by graeme 6y ago
A bunch of environmentalists are idiots. But that doesn’t mean there’s no sensible plan or that it’s all speculative. In economics carbon’s costs have a name: they impose an externality on others.
The standard remedy for an externality is a tax. So, to address climate change you would:
1. Institute a tax on carbon
2. Work through an international framework like the UN or WTO to have other countries also institute this tax, and to levy tariffs on any countries that don’t.
3. Since carbon is taxed, you can lower other, less efficient taxes such as the income tax, which is a drag on productivity.
4. You can also redistribute some of the money to compensate the poor for the effective tax increase. For instance this is how canada deals with its sales tax.
There are other coherent plans but that’s a big one. Had we implemented thus tax 50 years ago, the effects would have been:
* energy efficiency is encouraged in production as there is a higher cost
* other forms of energy such as nuclear and hydro gain an advantage
* There would have been more capital available for researching other alternatives such as solar
* The economy would have remained good due to the benefits of a sharply lower income tax
Environmentalists tend to be rather bad at math and not good at thinking through economics or evaluating tradeoffs. Because everyone else abandoned the field, they produced the most prominent (and wrong headed) solutions.
But with gradual economically sensible action 50 years ago, we could have been in for a very soft landing. We could have still used fossil fuels too! They were pretty necessary, but the system I outlined would have nudged us towards a different energy base.
- tomp 6y agoThis sounds like a very good plan. The best part of it is that a single country can institute it on it’s own - just start taxing products and imports by carbon! A big enough country could move the needle, and encourage others to take action. Instead, the only actual ideas that actual people actually propose are 100% braindead. Ban meat (lol), ban nuclear (lol lol), ban plastic straws (lol lol lol), ...
- lovemenot 6y agoThis style of argumentation is chilling the discussion. Please stop with the ad hominems. There are many overlapping problems, not only climate change. It's complex. Partial solutions are still solutions. They are just incomplete
- tomp 6y agoI disagree. I think that partial solutions (or, in cases I listed above, anti-solutions) steal the enthusiasm from real solutions. Giving people the ego-boost and emotional satisfaction of solving the problem, but actually making it worse.
- lovemenot 6y agoPerhaps we can agree to disagree without being derogatory to each other. You will continue to see things in black and white "the problem", "real solutions". I will continue to see a mosaic of overlapping issues.
- tomp 6y agoSorry, no disrespect meant to you personally. I just ridicule and disrespect bad ideas.
- lovemenot 6y agoAlright. But please be aware that it is possible to chill discussion through stridency. I don't believe this applies only to me.
- coverj 6y agothe ideas aren't bad though, you just don't agree with them. Banning meat isn't something I would get on board with but it would probably be effective. There's been a lot of discussion lately on HN about nuclear and I can actually see both sides of the debate. Plastic straws I think you have actually just strawmanned environmentalists here as I've never seen plastic straws mentioned as a solution or contributor to global warming.
- horns4lyfe 6y agoWhile I agree in principle with what you're putting forward, I think there are a couple of huge obstacles. One, good luck convincing politicians to sacrifice their projects to make room for #3. I understand the carbon tax would be more efficient, but in the short term there would a be a revenue loss, and most politicians would only care about that. Two, Without #3, the whole thing is a non-starter. It's a lofty academic idea that fits well into a forum like this; but without #3 happening, it boils down to "give me more of your money and I promise we'll fix it!", which is an unacceptable argument for lots of Americans (myself included, to be frank). I personally hold that the best and most realistic solution is a headfirst, committed dive into nuclear energy.
- graeme 6y agoNot obvious why #3 is impossible. You can forecast revenue changes from a carbon tax and revenue losses from an income tax, set rates accordingly, and adjust as you go. This is especially feasible if you have a 50 year timeframe. Should be quite feasible to make it revenue neutral and this rob no politician of their project. Nuclear would have been great 50 years ago! My argument is that the project I outlined above would have given market based incentive to make nuclear competitive. If level headed people of all stripes had focussed on the problem it would have been solveable. (Since I can’t edit my comment above, I should add for posterity: obviously not all environmentalists are bad at math or systems thinking, and some of them had sensible solutions. But we would have had better solutions if others joined too)