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>In many cases, people are not willing to do the theoretically/physically best/most energy efficient solution because it’s much, much cheaper to not. This is w

>In many cases, people are not willing to do the theoretically/physically best/most energy efficient solution because it’s much, much cheaper to not. This is why we need to change the economics of the situation. If we raise taxes on the very wealthy, Jeff Bezos might not get to go to space, but we could insulate a few hundred thousand houses.

sokoloff 5y ago
I don’t see a stable and effective long-term alternative to raising carbon-intensive energy prices. If you create a large pile of government giveaway money but keep energy cheap, people will take the money and continue to use a lot of energy. (I’ll save money on heating and use it to keep the house 74°F instead of 69°F in the winter or to take a vacation to a tropical location.) Bezos, Musk, and Gates aren’t the problem here. 100s of millions of Americans and a couple billion people worldwide who could all save 2-5% of their footprint are the problem. Incentives need to nudge them each a little rather than confiscation and redistribution of the wealth of a few dozen people. It can be comfortable to think “I don’t need to change; we just need to tax the ultra rich”, but the reality is closer to the opposite.
- minikites 5y ago
  >If you create a large pile of government giveaway money but keep energy cheap Why would we keep energy cheap? The economics of that also needs to change. I agree that we should also raise carbon-intensive energy prices, and do our best to structure it to penalize disproportionate users (e.g. construction costs for massive houses and buildings). I also don't understand how you could "take the money" for improvements like insulation and then still use more energy, unless you just mean fraud in general. Change also needs to happen at a societal level. We need to tax extreme amounts of wealth, because that wealth came from society, so the burden is on them to help. On a global level, we could also do more to help developing and industrializing nations. Imagine a green version of the Marshall Plan.
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    Right now, I only heat my house to 69°F/20.5°C in the winter (because of the cost). If a government program pays for the insulation, wall repairs, paint, and HVAC replacement to make my house more efficient, I might choose to heat my house to 74 or 75°F/24°C if energy is still cheap. That’s not fraud; that’s consumers making entirely rational trade-offs about how much each additional degree of comfort is worth to them in monetary terms. “We should tax billionaires and raise taxes on carbon energy” is effective overwhelmingly because of the second part. You could nearly equally well say “we should chew more bubble gum and raise taxes on carbon energy”. (It’s fine to have a separate debate on billionaire tax policy, but it seems tenuous at best to link it to energy policy.)

sokoloff 5y ago

I don’t see a stable and effective long-term alternative to raising carbon-intensive energy prices. If you create a large pile of government giveaway money but keep energy cheap, people will take the money and continue to use a lot of energy. (I’ll save money on heating and use it to keep the house 74°F instead of 69°F in the winter or to take a vacation to a tropical location.) Bezos, Musk, and Gates aren’t the problem here. 100s of millions of Americans and a couple billion people worldwide who could all save 2-5% of their footprint are the problem. Incentives need to nudge them each a little rather than confiscation and redistribution of the wealth of a few dozen people. It can be comfortable to think “I don’t need to change; we just need to tax the ultra rich”, but the reality is closer to the opposite.

minikites 5y ago
>If you create a large pile of government giveaway money but keep energy cheap Why would we keep energy cheap? The economics of that also needs to change. I agree that we should also raise carbon-intensive energy prices, and do our best to structure it to penalize disproportionate users (e.g. construction costs for massive houses and buildings). I also don't understand how you could "take the money" for improvements like insulation and then still use more energy, unless you just mean fraud in general. Change also needs to happen at a societal level. We need to tax extreme amounts of wealth, because that wealth came from society, so the burden is on them to help. On a global level, we could also do more to help developing and industrializing nations. Imagine a green version of the Marshall Plan.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  Right now, I only heat my house to 69°F/20.5°C in the winter (because of the cost). If a government program pays for the insulation, wall repairs, paint, and HVAC replacement to make my house more efficient, I might choose to heat my house to 74 or 75°F/24°C if energy is still cheap. That’s not fraud; that’s consumers making entirely rational trade-offs about how much each additional degree of comfort is worth to them in monetary terms. “We should tax billionaires and raise taxes on carbon energy” is effective overwhelmingly because of the second part. You could nearly equally well say “we should chew more bubble gum and raise taxes on carbon energy”. (It’s fine to have a separate debate on billionaire tax policy, but it seems tenuous at best to link it to energy policy.)