6 ms·

Agreed 100%: it's a basic economic problem- climate change is a classic tragedy of the commons scenario, largely caused by fossil fuels being too cheap, with ea

by JTbane 5y ago

Agreed 100%: it's a basic economic problem- climate change is a classic tragedy of the commons scenario, largely caused by fossil fuels being too cheap, with easy-to-dismiss externalities. Only political intervention (carbon taxes, green subsidies) could cause a decline in use.

epicureanideal 5y ago
Except that carbon taxes that are only implemented in one country cause fossil fuel demand by that country to decline, which makes it even cheaper for countries without carbon taxes. I wonder if instead of a carbon tax, there should be a tax that funds a fossil fuel 1:N storage requirement. You burn a gallon of gas, you need to store a gallon of gas in the strategic reserve. That way the tax is paid, we eventually figure out how many gallons were accessible (because we eventually run out), and the price goes up for all countries even those that are not taxing carbon. Alternatively, rather than extracting and storing the gas, the tax could fund the purchase of estimated reserves that are left unexploited. I assume the oil companies would also love this method.
- tinco 5y ago
  Well, everyone's going to hate the answer, but we'll be having to both incentivize decarbonization, and pressure countries to stop pumping and selling oil and gas. And that's meant in the extreme way, at some point we will have to go to war with these countries.
  - Robotbeat 5y ago
    Why not just levy a carbon tariff on imports? Ban fossil fuel production, export, and import domestically and then replace most tariffs with a carbon tariff. Also, make decarbonization look awesome by investing in cheap decarbonization tech. Convince these countries to decarbonize by making it easy, cheap, and sexy while making it basically a precondition of trade. And combine this with substantial decarbonization foreign aid. All much cheaper & better than war. This is one big reason I think “Degrowth”/austerity approaches to decarbonization are actually counterproductive: they make decarbonization look super unattractive to countries that want to develop, particularly if they have substantial fossil fuel reserves.
    - tinco 5y ago
      People don't use energy because it's sexy, they use it because they need or want things that cost energy and they pay according to their need. The concern is not importing carbon, the concern is countries using the energy themselves. For every Tesla there's a thousand little diesel trucks driving around on the african continent, and that number will only go up, especially if western demand for oil goes down. I don't think the 'attractiveness' of decarbonization has any consequence at all. Just look at Texas, one of the most oil dependent, climate change denying anti-green states there is, yet they're also the largest producer of renewable wind energy, and are closing their coal plants. That's got nothing to do with attractiveness, it's just economics. Selling wind power is simply profitable. Vice versa, no one cares more about the planet than the rich people of the world. You won't find more green movement startups, solar panels on roofs, high efficiency buildings, electric cars and even vegetarians in any other slice of the population. Yet those same nature lovers are also the ones who do the most international flights. With each round trip burning as much fuel as a regular person would in a year of commuting to work. It's got nothing to do with attractiveness, they want to, there's no other way, they can afford to, so they do it.
      - Robotbeat 5y ago
        > For every Tesla there's a thousand little diesel trucks driving around on the african continent Nah, this isn't accurate. Tesla has sold over 1.5 million vehicles (probably will get over 2 million by the end of this year)[0]. There's only approximately 30-40 million cars in the entire continent of Africa[1]. (And expand this to "little diesel trucks" isn't going to change the math much, and probably there's fewer of those.) Tesla is also scaling up, producing almost a million vehicles per year right now... over 180,000 last quarter, and they have 1 new factory in China that is expanding and 2 totally new factories (in Texas and Germany). So Tesla will soon be producing about as many new vehicles as all the new car sales in Africa (which has ~1 million new car sales per year [1]). And Tesla is just one provider. More cost-optimized electric vehicles, like are super popular in China (the Hong Guang Mini EV is $4500 [2]), are likely to be the big sellers in Africa. [0] https://insideevs.com/news/499678/tesla-model-3y-million-sales/ https://insideevs.com/news/499678/tesla-model-3y-million-sal... [1] https://lmc-auto.com/news-and-insights/african-auto-market-maturity/ https://lmc-auto.com/news-and-insights/african-auto-market-m... [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56178802 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56178802

by JTbane 5y ago

epicureanideal 5y ago

Except that carbon taxes that are only implemented in one country cause fossil fuel demand by that country to decline, which makes it even cheaper for countries without carbon taxes. I wonder if instead of a carbon tax, there should be a tax that funds a fossil fuel 1:N storage requirement. You burn a gallon of gas, you need to store a gallon of gas in the strategic reserve. That way the tax is paid, we eventually figure out how many gallons were accessible (because we eventually run out), and the price goes up for all countries even those that are not taxing carbon. Alternatively, rather than extracting and storing the gas, the tax could fund the purchase of estimated reserves that are left unexploited. I assume the oil companies would also love this method.

tinco 5y ago
Well, everyone's going to hate the answer, but we'll be having to both incentivize decarbonization, and pressure countries to stop pumping and selling oil and gas. And that's meant in the extreme way, at some point we will have to go to war with these countries.
- Robotbeat 5y ago
  Why not just levy a carbon tariff on imports? Ban fossil fuel production, export, and import domestically and then replace most tariffs with a carbon tariff. Also, make decarbonization look awesome by investing in cheap decarbonization tech. Convince these countries to decarbonize by making it easy, cheap, and sexy while making it basically a precondition of trade. And combine this with substantial decarbonization foreign aid. All much cheaper & better than war. This is one big reason I think “Degrowth”/austerity approaches to decarbonization are actually counterproductive: they make decarbonization look super unattractive to countries that want to develop, particularly if they have substantial fossil fuel reserves.
  - tinco 5y ago
    People don't use energy because it's sexy, they use it because they need or want things that cost energy and they pay according to their need. The concern is not importing carbon, the concern is countries using the energy themselves. For every Tesla there's a thousand little diesel trucks driving around on the african continent, and that number will only go up, especially if western demand for oil goes down. I don't think the 'attractiveness' of decarbonization has any consequence at all. Just look at Texas, one of the most oil dependent, climate change denying anti-green states there is, yet they're also the largest producer of renewable wind energy, and are closing their coal plants. That's got nothing to do with attractiveness, it's just economics. Selling wind power is simply profitable. Vice versa, no one cares more about the planet than the rich people of the world. You won't find more green movement startups, solar panels on roofs, high efficiency buildings, electric cars and even vegetarians in any other slice of the population. Yet those same nature lovers are also the ones who do the most international flights. With each round trip burning as much fuel as a regular person would in a year of commuting to work. It's got nothing to do with attractiveness, they want to, there's no other way, they can afford to, so they do it.
    - Robotbeat 5y ago
      > For every Tesla there's a thousand little diesel trucks driving around on the african continent Nah, this isn't accurate. Tesla has sold over 1.5 million vehicles (probably will get over 2 million by the end of this year)[0]. There's only approximately 30-40 million cars in the entire continent of Africa[1]. (And expand this to "little diesel trucks" isn't going to change the math much, and probably there's fewer of those.) Tesla is also scaling up, producing almost a million vehicles per year right now... over 180,000 last quarter, and they have 1 new factory in China that is expanding and 2 totally new factories (in Texas and Germany). So Tesla will soon be producing about as many new vehicles as all the new car sales in Africa (which has ~1 million new car sales per year [1]). And Tesla is just one provider. More cost-optimized electric vehicles, like are super popular in China (the Hong Guang Mini EV is $4500 [2]), are likely to be the big sellers in Africa. [0] https://insideevs.com/news/499678/tesla-model-3y-million-sales/ https://insideevs.com/news/499678/tesla-model-3y-million-sal... [1] https://lmc-auto.com/news-and-insights/african-auto-market-maturity/ https://lmc-auto.com/news-and-insights/african-auto-market-m... [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56178802 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56178802