5 ms·

Isn't it amazing how all solutions to all these problems require an intellectual elite preaching to people about how to live their lives.

adrianN 5y ago
The most popular solution, a carbon tax, requires nobody to preach to anybody.
- nickpp 5y ago
  Is it "the most popular solution" really?! Because I can't seem to find it implemented anywhere. I am all in favor of a carbon tax, btw.
  - h4kor 5y ago
    Sweden, Switzerland, Finland, Norway, France, Iceland, Denmark, Ireland, UK, ....
  - adrianN 5y ago
    Various forms of carbon pricing are already implemented. There is for example a minuscule carbon tax in Germany and a carbon market in the EU. Naturally there are big enough holes in both that they're not particularly effective, but that is just because politicians are currently busy pretending to solve the crisis without implementing any solution.
  - meowkit 5y ago
    Popular may be the wrong word. Climate change is driven by carbon/greenhouse emissions, which are generated by productivity/industry, which is created by our economic paradigm namely capitalism. Capitalism is great imo, except when its unconstrained - it then becomes cancerous and a positive feedback loop. Feedback loops are exponential by their implicit mathematical nature. Either this loop is going to go vertical and explode, or we temper the exponentiation rate to buy more time. A carbon tax will temper the growth rate by treating emissions as a cost and not a willie nillie economic “externality”. But this will make a country uncompetitive in the short term - which makes it politically tenuous and even unviable to those who can only think in the short term. It would likely need to be paired with incentives for other industries and trade agreements/sanctions to force other nations to cooperate. So all this to say our solutions are become tree hugging hippies, techno optimism (new efficient technology will save us!), or capital controls (carbon tax, etc). I don’t know about everyone else, but the first one is a pipe dream, the second is an existential gamble, and the third one actually seems manageable.
- busymom0 5y ago
  Carbon tax causes: 1. Jobs to get shipped to countries which don’t have those carbon taxes and don’t care about environmental regulation - India, China, Pakistan 2. Those countries neither have environmental regulations, filtering systems etc, nor are they carbon neutral (like Canada) to absorb the carbon 3. Overall ends up making us worse as obviously some carbon tax isn’t going to make people not want to buy something they need. So it’s just getting passed down to the consumer. I hope everyone once visits the 3 countries listed and visits the cities with the most industries or even the rivers where the waste from leather tanneries get dumped. Carbon is the last thing they care about.
  - adrianN 5y ago
    Any carbon tax scheme includes tariffs and rebates to avoid the transfer of emissions to other countries. The economists proposing these taxes are not stupid.
    - busymom0 5y ago
      Tariffs and rebates may not help much when anywhere from 80-90% of it will be exempt: > No one knows how high a carbon tariff would be but it seems likely it would be imposed at the rate of our own federal carbon tax. A back-of-the-envelope approximation using the example of imports of Chinese and Indian steel shows that the impact would be significant. In 2019, Canada imported 612,000 metric tons of steel from India and China. The emissions associated with those imports are around 1,132,200 tonnes of carbon dioxide, using McKinsey’s estimate of 1.85 tons of carbon dioxide per metric ton of steel produced. > Chinese and Indian steel presumably wouldn’t have to pay the full weight of the carbon tax on every ton of CO2, because we exempt 80-90 per cent of emissions from our domestic industry, and, to be non-discriminatory, the adjustment rate would have to match how we treat domestic producers. That said, even with an exemption rate of 85 per cent a carbon tariff would be costly. At that rate, 169,830 tons of CO2 related to these imports would be subject to the tax, which is currently $40/ton. That gives a cost of more than $6.7 million. At the 2030 rate of $170/ton, it balloons to more than $28.8 million. Apply this technique across a long list of other products from these and other high-emitters and the costs become substantial. https://financialpost.com/opinion/opinion-carbon-tariffs-are-policy-mischief https://financialpost.com/opinion/opinion-carbon-tariffs-are...
74B5 5y ago
I cant figure out if you mean the (anti-scientific) climate catastrophe sceptics or regular christianity.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  That argument says that the only solution to climate catastrophe is zoning policy, which is quite frankly ridiculous. This is probably to influence housing prices, not to make a significant ecological impact. On the contrary, we have a problem with giant cities where you cannot even see the sky anymore...
  - 74B5 5y ago
    >This is probably to influence housing prices >we have a problem with giant cities where you cannot even see the sky anymore... Our problem is, that we externalize cost to much. Moral people take care of their waste/byproducts and side effects -- unless they can't see it. Like invisible CO2, overseas exploitation or paramounting debt. We have build our society and lifeforms on top of these externalities and some day will be pay day, so it is reasonable to either limit consumption or pay for sustainable disposal now. Compact cities reduce metabolic cost of our processes and you can't really bring the luxury argument while looking at the current over all decline.
    - raxxorrax 5y ago
      People living in the countryside have in most cases a far more sustainable way of living. Of course that doesn't scale infinitely, but that is a whole other problem. My country has introduced a carbon tax to control consumer behavior. We already have the highest energy prices and have problems with skyrocketing prices for property. Our finance minister is probably delighted and my state will start to save nature tomorrow. This is senseless activism. There won't be a change in consumer behavior, because people already try to minimize energy usage obviously. Our energy tax already covers that. To connect that to CO2 emissions has some advantages, but also some disadvantage, because there a lot of other factors that threaten the environment. What is clear that it won't have an effect on consumption. You can do that for all I care. I can live with increased property prices. But don't complain about lacking equity or equality afterwards. You wanted that yourself. Noise and stress levels are also higher living in a city. This might be interesting for a religious ascetic and city planners invested in property prices or people jealous of people living where they want to.
imtringued 5y ago
The inverse position doesn't make any sense. Should we pick a random person to make the decisions? Why even have elections? Why not go full anarcho capitalist if having leadership is pointless?
- easytiger 5y ago
  I'm not talking about political leadership per se.

adrianN 5y ago

The most popular solution, a carbon tax, requires nobody to preach to anybody.

nickpp 5y ago
Is it "the most popular solution" really?! Because I can't seem to find it implemented anywhere. I am all in favor of a carbon tax, btw.
- h4kor 5y ago
  Sweden, Switzerland, Finland, Norway, France, Iceland, Denmark, Ireland, UK, ....
- adrianN 5y ago
  Various forms of carbon pricing are already implemented. There is for example a minuscule carbon tax in Germany and a carbon market in the EU. Naturally there are big enough holes in both that they're not particularly effective, but that is just because politicians are currently busy pretending to solve the crisis without implementing any solution.
- meowkit 5y ago
  Popular may be the wrong word. Climate change is driven by carbon/greenhouse emissions, which are generated by productivity/industry, which is created by our economic paradigm namely capitalism. Capitalism is great imo, except when its unconstrained - it then becomes cancerous and a positive feedback loop. Feedback loops are exponential by their implicit mathematical nature. Either this loop is going to go vertical and explode, or we temper the exponentiation rate to buy more time. A carbon tax will temper the growth rate by treating emissions as a cost and not a willie nillie economic “externality”. But this will make a country uncompetitive in the short term - which makes it politically tenuous and even unviable to those who can only think in the short term. It would likely need to be paired with incentives for other industries and trade agreements/sanctions to force other nations to cooperate. So all this to say our solutions are become tree hugging hippies, techno optimism (new efficient technology will save us!), or capital controls (carbon tax, etc). I don’t know about everyone else, but the first one is a pipe dream, the second is an existential gamble, and the third one actually seems manageable.
busymom0 5y ago
Carbon tax causes: 1. Jobs to get shipped to countries which don’t have those carbon taxes and don’t care about environmental regulation - India, China, Pakistan 2. Those countries neither have environmental regulations, filtering systems etc, nor are they carbon neutral (like Canada) to absorb the carbon 3. Overall ends up making us worse as obviously some carbon tax isn’t going to make people not want to buy something they need. So it’s just getting passed down to the consumer. I hope everyone once visits the 3 countries listed and visits the cities with the most industries or even the rivers where the waste from leather tanneries get dumped. Carbon is the last thing they care about.
- adrianN 5y ago
  Any carbon tax scheme includes tariffs and rebates to avoid the transfer of emissions to other countries. The economists proposing these taxes are not stupid.
  - busymom0 5y ago
    Tariffs and rebates may not help much when anywhere from 80-90% of it will be exempt: > No one knows how high a carbon tariff would be but it seems likely it would be imposed at the rate of our own federal carbon tax. A back-of-the-envelope approximation using the example of imports of Chinese and Indian steel shows that the impact would be significant. In 2019, Canada imported 612,000 metric tons of steel from India and China. The emissions associated with those imports are around 1,132,200 tonnes of carbon dioxide, using McKinsey’s estimate of 1.85 tons of carbon dioxide per metric ton of steel produced. > Chinese and Indian steel presumably wouldn’t have to pay the full weight of the carbon tax on every ton of CO2, because we exempt 80-90 per cent of emissions from our domestic industry, and, to be non-discriminatory, the adjustment rate would have to match how we treat domestic producers. That said, even with an exemption rate of 85 per cent a carbon tariff would be costly. At that rate, 169,830 tons of CO2 related to these imports would be subject to the tax, which is currently $40/ton. That gives a cost of more than $6.7 million. At the 2030 rate of $170/ton, it balloons to more than $28.8 million. Apply this technique across a long list of other products from these and other high-emitters and the costs become substantial. https://financialpost.com/opinion/opinion-carbon-tariffs-are-policy-mischief https://financialpost.com/opinion/opinion-carbon-tariffs-are...

74B5 5y ago

I cant figure out if you mean the (anti-scientific) climate catastrophe sceptics or regular christianity.

raxxorrax 5y ago
That argument says that the only solution to climate catastrophe is zoning policy, which is quite frankly ridiculous. This is probably to influence housing prices, not to make a significant ecological impact. On the contrary, we have a problem with giant cities where you cannot even see the sky anymore...
- 74B5 5y ago
  >This is probably to influence housing prices >we have a problem with giant cities where you cannot even see the sky anymore... Our problem is, that we externalize cost to much. Moral people take care of their waste/byproducts and side effects -- unless they can't see it. Like invisible CO2, overseas exploitation or paramounting debt. We have build our society and lifeforms on top of these externalities and some day will be pay day, so it is reasonable to either limit consumption or pay for sustainable disposal now. Compact cities reduce metabolic cost of our processes and you can't really bring the luxury argument while looking at the current over all decline.
  - raxxorrax 5y ago
    People living in the countryside have in most cases a far more sustainable way of living. Of course that doesn't scale infinitely, but that is a whole other problem. My country has introduced a carbon tax to control consumer behavior. We already have the highest energy prices and have problems with skyrocketing prices for property. Our finance minister is probably delighted and my state will start to save nature tomorrow. This is senseless activism. There won't be a change in consumer behavior, because people already try to minimize energy usage obviously. Our energy tax already covers that. To connect that to CO2 emissions has some advantages, but also some disadvantage, because there a lot of other factors that threaten the environment. What is clear that it won't have an effect on consumption. You can do that for all I care. I can live with increased property prices. But don't complain about lacking equity or equality afterwards. You wanted that yourself. Noise and stress levels are also higher living in a city. This might be interesting for a religious ascetic and city planners invested in property prices or people jealous of people living where they want to.

imtringued 5y ago

The inverse position doesn't make any sense. Should we pick a random person to make the decisions? Why even have elections? Why not go full anarcho capitalist if having leadership is pointless?

easytiger 5y ago
I'm not talking about political leadership per se.