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Just. Tax. It. We have warmed the earth because we love comfort and money. We will never stop loving those things. So instead let's use the same systems to fix

• blhack 5y ago
  How do you make the major polluters pay the tax?
  • triceratops 5y ago
    I don't understand the question.
    • ThalesX 5y ago
      Let’s say I’m from Netherlands and create dozens of companies, local, nearshore and offshore to both reduce the taxes I pay and to top up my carbon emission quota.
      • ranma4703 5y ago
        each company doesn't get it's own quota. There is one quota, and companies bid to buy parts of it; higher demand, higher prices.
      • triceratops 5y ago
        Clearly we're talking about different interpretations of "taxing carbon". I'm quite uninformed, but the simplest thing would be to tax fossil fuel companies per unit of raw fossil fuel they extract from the ground. That's it. They can't lie about how much they extracted: that's securities fraud. Splitting into smaller companies, offshoring, IP licensing or other elaborate tax avoidance mechanisms don't work because you aren't taxing "net income" or anything else that can be gamed. If a country refuses to impose the same tax on its domestic fossil fuel extractors, tariff or embargo all of its exports until it complies. This will only work if the biggest importers start doing this right away.
    • thehappypm 5y ago
      China is the largest CO2 producer in the world and is growing. The US is second but our emissions are actually decreasing and likely to continue decreasing. Taxing Western companies may reduce the West's carbon footprint but hardly helps the overall picture while being essentially austerity.
      • freemint 5y ago
        Oh it very much helps. Non western country also have a right to develop economically. It's not that by being first to pollute the atmosphere. By reducing the incredible irresponsible per capita emissions of the USA other countries can develop within a fixed CO2 budget.
        • Fuzzy_Logic 5y ago
          How do you define what an appropriate per capita CO2 budget is? Is it different for someone from China, India, and the US? What about the difference between individuals from rural agricultural communities vs a large city? If non-western countries have the 'right' to increase carbon emissions why don't poorer people in Western countries have the 'right' to increase their emissions? What is the target level for developing economics? How does it make sense to mandate Western countries go to net-zero while all developing countries continue to dramatically increase per capita emissions? Since it would be impossible to force China or India to meet the same standards the West self-imposes in this scenario, you are essentially asking Western individuals to pay a higher cost of living for NO net carbon reductions. This mandate will disproportionately affect poor people. As a result I don't see how anyone expects radical carbon reduction policies to receive support from the Western world. I do not see how this is a rational course of action for an individual voter or for any developed economy.
          • freemint 5y ago
            > How do you define what an appropriate per capita CO2 budget is? Negotiation of elected represenatatives constraint by a total budget. > Is it different for someone from China, India, and the US? Yes. > What about the difference between individuals from rural agricultural communities vs a large city? This is something that should be respected when the country allocations are made. However the distribution in the country itself is subject to decisions in the country. > If non-western countries have the 'right' to increase carbon emissions why don't poorer people in Western countries have the 'right' to increase their emissions? Because countries with unequal wealth distributions shouldn't be rewarded or allowed to externalize (by taking up more CO2 budget) their societal wealth distriubtution. However in terms of allocation of the budget in the country i would find poorer people getting more a workable solution. > What is the target level for developing economics? Being able work afford cost due to climate change. Being able to live a live without deprivation. Such that people won't need to be prevented at gun point from fleeing into the richer countries. That be a good start. > How does it make sense to mandate Western countries go to net-zero while all developing countries continue to dramatically increase per capita emissions? Because the consequences otherwise are ugly. The western countries could of course invest heavily to into developing countries with the goal to direct their growth. However i am not sure collolianlist meddling will be appreciated by people in developing countries. > Since it would be impossible to force China or India to meet the same standards the West self-imposes in this scenario, you are essentially asking Western individuals to pay a higher cost of living for NO net carbon reductions. This mandate will disproportionately affect poor people. If the mandate will disproportionately affect poor people it was implemented badly on a inner country basis. Inside your country you can do redistribution to make it less impactfull on poor people. > I do not see how this is a rational course of action for an individual voter or for any developed economy. Yeah, it is a case of a tragedy of the (unmanaged) commons. I don't think that this approach is feasible but i adopt this position none the less as any compromise which i am a part of will be pulled in a direction i find preferable for all mankind according to my ethics. I choose my position to optimize the resulting compromise.
  • danuker 5y ago
    Boycotts and import duties.
  • cannabis_sam 5y ago
    By reducing the “freedom” of corporations. (Of course, this requires your country to not have surrendered to regulatory capture.)
• deleted 5y ago
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• 3pt14159 5y ago
  I've been saying this for years, but I finally get why "Just. Tax. It." doesn't work. The voters. They turn out in droves when it comes to taxes on something as visible as the price they pay at the pump or when it comes to the oil patch in Alberta. It's politically easier to create import duties or to go into debt and subsidize things. The level of taxation we need to stop a complete catastrophe is higher than people will put up with in most of the world.
  • FinanceAnon 5y ago
    True, Switzerland (who I view as a "green" and progressive country) recently voted against those taxes in a referendum. I think it would be much worse in other countries. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57457384 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57457384
    • WitCanStain 5y ago
      Switzerland is very conservative, I'm not all that surprised if it didn't pass.
      • FinanceAnon 5y ago
        I am not an expert on Swiss politics/demographics, but if you search for "the most liberal countries in the world" they consistently come up in top 10 (for example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_World_Liberty_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_World_Liberty_Index) Prostitution is legal, abortion is legal, and they have pilot trials for "cannabis clubs"
        • adamors 5y ago
          Comment you're responding to probably didn't mean American conservative. Most conservatives support abortion in the EU, it's the far-right that doesn't.
        • __bjoernd 5y ago
          Indeed, Switzerland is very conservative. Like in every other country you have a divide between the progressive/liberal/young-ish big cities (Zurich, Bern, Lausanne, Basel, ...) and the conservative/old-ish rest of the country (great skylines, very low population density). And then you look at the actual rules (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_initiative_(Switzerland)#Federal_popular_initiative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_initiative_(Switzerlan...): "A double majority of people and cantons is required to change the constitution." --> Swiss cantons are split up historically, not by population, similar to US states. The conservative, low-pop cantons can hold the progressives hostage on anything they don't like because even if you get the liberal cities behind you that is still way beyond the majority of cantons.
• deleted 5y ago
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• rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago
  >We will never stop loving those things Did we just tax tobacco? People loved tobacco. At some point, with the right information (e.g media not bought by big business), we can realize that things that are bad for us are just bad for us. We can avoid telling us that and have someone take money from our wallet to prevent us from buying the things that kill us, but why not just better inform ourselves about the way we're killing us? Anywhere I go now, I'm overwhelmed by ads telling me to buy a big SUV, go flight somewhere every weekend, buy something new because I deserve more, etc. Of course, those paying for the ads say they're advertising because I want those things... but why are they advertising, then? If I wanted a bigger SUV/picker so much, they would not keep the ad spend and keep that as profit for their shareholders. The whole system wants more, more, more stuff and they know the more addictive are the bigger/larger/shinier/louder/anything-er and that takes energy and pollutes. They need that more than the consumers. I stopped loving this shit (no car, no flight, small flat, etc), and I'm still flooded with "BUY" orders. Employers will do everything to have me buy a car (I don't need) instead of taking the money of that car for myself. It isn't a problem of wish or desire but we're told it is, because the consumption system keeps playing with these desires. I should just watch Century of the Self again...
  • coalslaw 5y ago
    I'm not sure tobacco is a good comparison here. Tobacco was a relatively easy thing to tax/restrict/ban as it serves no real purpose beyond individual enjoyment.
    • mikestew 5y ago
      And about the time governments started taxing the shit out of tobacco is also about the time tobacco use was starting to become quite unfashionable. Why would I or my friends care about not being able to smoke in a bar if we find smoky bars annoying? Hypothetically try passing such taxes in the 60s, see how far that would have gotten. Point being: carbon tax? That hits everyone to some extent, and arguably hits those least likely to care about climate change the most.
      • 5y ago
• mberning 5y ago
  Carbon taxes disproportionately hurt low income people. Rich folks will still drive their cars, fly on jets, and use tons of energy in general. Carbon taxes also make your nation less competitive in a global economy. That’s not good when enemy states have zero compunction about using fossil fuels to overtake you economically and militarily. Carbon taxes also incentivize industry to move production to nations with little or no carbon tax. In general I find it extremely foolish to think that carbon taxes would be a good way of going about this.
  • rcpt 5y ago
    Climate change disproportionately hurts low income people even more. Those who rely on crop yields and fish stocks to survive every year and don't have the money to become refugees will have a much harder time than the first world folks who might need to start carpooling.
  • jpeloquin 5y ago
    > Carbon taxes disproportionately hurt low income people. If the carbon tax collected was re-distributed uniformly as a tax credit (each person gets the same tax credit), would it still hurt low income people? I Googled this and it seems like it should help people with low incomes, but maybe there's something wrong with the underlying reasoning. https://aneconomicsense.org/2020/08/06/a-carbon-tax-with-redistribution-would-be-a-significant-help-to-the-poor/ https://aneconomicsense.org/2020/08/06/a-carbon-tax-with-red...
    • tomatotomato37 5y ago
      No, but every proposal so far hand waves the specifics of both what the tax will go to along with all the other technical details that would actually make the tax work. We could have a utopian world where the true value of carbon is consistently taxed equally across all industries and then distributed efficiently to those unfairly affected by it. We could also have an unholy bureaucrtic nightmare where the actual tax varies violently depending on which party in power, has exemptions for every industry big enough to have lobbyist, and instead completely burdens the middle class while all profits go towards filling the desert with enough tanks to fight WWII sixteen times over while still having enough left over to think really, really hard about building high speed rail in a place that isn't useless. Don't forget that the people that would be implementing this are the same people who are currently voting to criminalize every element of the cryptocurrency ecosystem (including development of more efficient standards) while still leaving an exception for PoW miners.
• rebuilder 5y ago
  The problem is, just taxing CO2 emissions doesn't let you control who gets hit by the price increases. It could very well lead to increases in food and transportation costs that would be disproportionately burdensome to the poorest part of the population. Raising the cost of those items is politically very unpopular since it tends to cause unrest. So I think what we'll get instead is some complex system of first taxing everything and then subsidizing some forms of consumption (again, food and transportation), while trying to incentivize switching over to renewable energy sources.
  • frankbreetz 5y ago
    If you use carbon tax to fund ubi, it will only hit above average emitters, who will be incentivised to emit less.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • CountSessine 5y ago
      …which, seems like a good thing?
    • lutorm 5y ago
      I don't think that's true. No matter how much you emit, you can still end up with more money if you emit less.
  • gruez 5y ago
    >So I think what we'll get instead is some complex system of first taxing everything and then subsidizing some forms of consumption (again, food and transportation), or just tax everything, then giving it back to everyone via a flat dividend?
  • IngoBlechschmid 5y ago
    The earnings of the CO2 tax could be equally distributed to all citizens on a monthly basis. That way, while consumer prices would increase, all those citizens who contribute below average to the country's CO2 emissions (and those are the vast majority and especially includes people who are poor) would, in sum, have more money available than before.
• titzer 5y ago
  > Every single plane ticket I take should have a tax which is used to offset or capture the carbon emissions of my flight. I will pay it. So what you're saying is that it won't change your behavior. Why don't you just donate $1000 or whatever to a charity? (I dunno, maybe you already do). I don't mean to attack you, but encoded in your very language is the exact problem. No one is willing to change their own behavior, they want other people to change. Repeat this x 7 billion and suddenly you understand what the inertia is. We live in the fading dream of a world that we sold to us that we could do whatever we want with absolutely no consequences; worse, that everything that we did that "made money" and contributed to GDP growth was good for everyone. Turns out that that was bullshit greed talking and the God of consequences is visiting its revenge on us through the same lesson every petri dish full of bacteria learns: you will choke to death on your own waste products.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • meowkit 5y ago
    > No one is willing to change their own behavior, they want other people to change. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons A tax is a practical way to address this. Internalizing the externalities is the way the wiki puts it.
    • toomuchtodo 5y ago
      It’s not practical if there isn’t the political will to implement it.
      • toomuchtodo 5y ago
        Following up: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/07/obituary-carbon-tax-beloved-climate-policy-dies-47/619507/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/07/obituary... (Carbon Tax, Beloved Policy to Fix Climate Change, Is Dead at 47)
  • 5y ago
• ihuk 5y ago
  Where would that money go though? Do you honestly believe that given enough money politicians can come up with a viable solution for climate change? Mind you those are the same people who want to end privacy on the Internet[1]. Same people who came up with European Union’s biofuel mandate which caused deforestation of Indonesia for palm-oil plantations. Across the pond, it's the same people that subsidized ethanol fuel which, more or less, benefited only corn farmers. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28115343 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28115343
  • abraae 5y ago
    > Where would that money go though? It doesn't really matter. Even if the tax revenue was piled up and set on fire, the planet would still be better off for it
    • ihuk 5y ago
      I might be too cynical but what's most likely to happen is that corporations will find a way to avoid paying the tax and it will hurt people who struggle the most already. For example, in EU car manufacturers have to keep average CO2 emissions of new car sales below 95 g/km. VW buys a large amount (I believe it was around 37%) of their ID.3 electric car to reduce the average emissions of their newly sold cars. So what you suggest is we take money from poor people and burn it. I fail to see how that will help.
      • InitialLastName 5y ago
        Presumably, VW buying their own cars to offset their CO2 emissions redistributes some of their profit from more-CO2-emitting cars into their supply chain, thus incentivizing them to sell fewer of those cars.
      • abraae 5y ago
        I suggest we take money from anyone who wants to pollute. At source. Yes, some poor people will be impacted (though not as many as continuing to ignore the problem). By "at source", I mean that car makers should not be taxed. Instead, fossil fuels should be taxed as close as possible to when they are pulled from the ground. Not when they are used (like a car does). Then if car makers decide to build big diesel chugging vehicles, of course their market will be severely limited because not many people will want to pay the cost of running them. Car makers are therefore still incentivized by market forces. to build efficient vehicles, but we don't need artificial and easily gamed regimes about what proportion of their production is fuel efficient.
• briantakita 5y ago
  Who enforces the taxes? The same parties who are doing most of the polluting. The military, government, the technocrats in control of the systems. Just. Tax. It. puts more power in the hands of the people causing the problems. On the other hand, what if the climate change was primarily driven by natural cycles? Taxing everybody would have a negative impact on the populations' readiness & survivability to these changes. Many people already do not trust big government to be beneficial & responsive to their needs, for good reason. Making living even more difficult for the population by increasing taxes would only cause more to reject the systems that bind them. --- It seems like the downvotes, are related to some Epistimological blind spots on the part of the downvoters. I recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAqOMGnJ2MQ&ab_channel=Actualized.org https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAqOMGnJ2MQ&ab_channel=Actua... As an alternative, you can all just pay me Trillions of dollars, & I will solve all of the climate issues. We are in this together, after all...
  • bumby 5y ago
    >what if the climate change was primarily driven by natural cycles? What if climate change was perpetuated by giant sloths who want to drive humans to extinction? We can play the “what if” game and I think it’s important to keep an open mind in science, but to quote Walter Kotschnig, not so open that our brains fall out. We can use a bit of Bayesian inference here. Given the current data, the probability of natural cycles (or ground sloths) being the root cause seems low. Given the potential risk, hanging our hat on that small chance seems like an irrational choice. Or a potential one that just reduces our cognitive dissonance so we feel better about ourselves. I know there’s many people who bristle at the thought of any authority outside of themselves but that can become an epistemological bias in its own right. Likewise, the comment adds very little to the discussion because the compliment can be said with equal validity. ”-The free market- puts more power in the hands of the people causing the problems.” Can easily extend to individual consumers just as your statement points the finger at government
    • briantakita 5y ago
      > What if climate change was perpetuated by giant sloths who want to drive humans to extinction? Then we should question the assertion & by directly seeing giant sloths, one can know that giant sloths are indeed destroying the climate. However, we don't have any direct evidence that humans are causing the climate to change. We have direct evidence that solar cycles, geomagnetic field effects, & the general naturally occurring cycles do affect the climate directly, and always have throughout Earth's history. Instead, we have institutional funding directly incentivizing an opinion, which is "humans are the primary driver in climate change". If many scientists don't have that opinion, those scientists don't have a career. We can use Bayesian inference to understand that the climates in other planets in the Solar System is also changing. Given that humans, to my knowledge, do not populate other planets in the Solar System, that makes the probability of natural cycles are the primary driver of climate change quite high. Given the potential & historically validated risk of tyrannical governments & class warfare causing genocide & mass effects on the broader population, hanging our hat on the small chance that the same people who lie all the time are now telling the truth in this one case, despite their contradictory actions, seems like an irrational choice. I know that there's many people who want us all to just follow the self-imposed authority figures because they benefit from that arrangement, but that can become an epistemological bias in it's own right. Likewise, this comment above adds very little to the discussion, because it seeks to distract from the central point, which is about people of power & wealth using lies, fear-mongering, shaming, & pseudo-intellectual arguments to gain even more power over everybody else. > Can easily extend to individual consumers under a completely free-market solution. Can also easily extend to the institutions directly responsible for the social conditions, such as the military, banking establishment, political figures, bureaucrats, technocrats, etc. The increasing consumptive behavior of these classes of people directly contradicts the "crisis" we are all facing. If the people in power who caused these problems really are concerned about the "crisis", they should give up ALL of their power over others so the broader spirit of humanity can solve the problems that they have caused. And my offer still stands. Give me Trillions of dollars of wealth & liquid cash and I will gladly save you from the problems that I say you created. I'll even include some statistics & Science in that package deal!
• intrasight 5y ago
  Economists have been saying this for years. Really it's the only way to let market forces decide. Make it a publicly listed company that collects the tax, and distribute dividends equally to all citizens. Such things should be possible with digital currencies.
  • laristine 5y ago
    That _publicly listed company_ sounds like... the government.
    • tejohnso 5y ago
      And the digital currency sounds like fiat direct deposit :)
  • notJim 5y ago
    > Economists have been saying this for years Maybe with this track record, they should reconsider their ideas? https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/why-has-climate-economics-failed https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/why-has-climate-economics-...
• xkjkls 5y ago
  Taxing it is still pretty hard to do. It's often hard to know exact emissions or what to test. I agree its probably an easier solution, but the accounting of "who is actually producing the carbon" is incredibly complicated, and will become more incredibly complicated as soon as literally billions of dollars are at stake.
  • CountSessine 5y ago
    It doesn’t actually seem that complicated at all. Tax crude oil and coal. That’s seems pretty simple. Maybe there’s something I haven’t thought of.
    • xkjkls 5y ago
      Thousands of other things also have carbon emissions: beef production for instance. Or deforestation -- while it doesn't have a positive CO2 benefit, it removes a CO2 sink. The fishing industry has massive CO2 costs that aren't from fossil fuels.
      • CountSessine 5y ago
        That's 1 thing (the meat industry) whose carbon emissions are both direct (not supply-chain based) and wouldn't be captured by a petroleum+coal producers tax. Not thousands. Meat production is about 15% of our global carbon emissions, so certainly it can't be ignored - but when the other 85% is coming from activity fueled by petroleum+coal, it doesn't make a lot of sense to throw up your hands to reject a carbon tax because there's "thousands" of emissions source (which ones?) which collectively amount to less than a percentage point of our carbon footprint. We mustn't let the best be the enemy of the very, very good. A straight-forward carbon tax on fossil fuels is both enforceable, linear, and not that complicated. Can we ignore ranching and meat production? Of course not. So let's tax both.
• ttul 5y ago
  Taxation of carbon totally works. British Columbia has a $50/tonne tax, which increases the cost of unleaded gas by about CAD $0.996/L and natural gas by $0.0882/m^3 [1] Revenue from the tax goes into the government's general revenue, which allows BC to have among the lowest rate of income tax of any province in Canada. Meanwhile, BC has the highest rate of electrical vehicle purchasing in North America [2]. One study showed that employment increased by 0.74% as a result of the carbon tax [3]. Finally, research shows that the tax is highly progressive, having a smaller impact on poor households than rich ones [4]. [1] https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/taxes/sales-taxes/publications/mft-ct-005-tax-rates-fuels.pdf https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/taxes/sales-taxes/publicat... [2] https://vancouversun.com/opinion/mark-zacharias-and-ian-neville-vancouver-is-leading-the-charge-as-canada-switches-to-electric-vehicles-by-2035 https://vancouversun.com/opinion/mark-zacharias-and-ian-nevi... [3] https://contacts.ucalgary.ca/info/econ/files/info/unitis/publications/1-7729354/Yamazaki_CarbonTax_JEEM_2017.pdf https://contacts.ucalgary.ca/info/econ/files/info/unitis/pub... [4] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0928765515000317 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09287...
  • brailsafe 5y ago
    The lower income tax actually offsets the premium I pay to live here vs other provinces. Or at least that's how it worked out when I had a job last March. The rent keeps coming, but the money ain't.
    • ttul 5y ago
      You’ll be poor, but happy.
      • brailsafe 5y ago
        There's a threshold of savings under which things start getting very risky, that encroaches on my happyness, but on the flipside there's no amount of money I can think of that would make me work endlessly, because it doesn't make me happy beyond that
• notJim 5y ago
  Carbon taxes are political suicide in the US. In fact, we know that oil companies push for them exactly because they know how unpopular they are. In Washington state, one of the more progressive states, they've failed over and over again to pass a carbon tax. Nothing they can do makes it work politically. In France, a carbon tax kicked off the yellow vests movement. Like it or not, the Green New Deal framing works better, because it emphasizes the benefits, rather than the costs.
  • PoignardAzur 5y ago
    I think Washington state did manage to pass a carbon tax? https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/washington-states-carbon-pricing-bill-could-be-most-far-reaching-in-nation-so-how-will-it-work/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/washington-states-...
    • notJim 5y ago
      That's great news, looks like my info was out of date.
  • omegaworks 5y ago
    Exactly. America is structurally dependent on cars. The working poor have been forced into increasingly long commutes to find affordable housing. We need big structural changes: densification, massive investment in sustainable transit systems and urban design.
  • lutorm 5y ago
    It seems a strategy that might work is pairing the carbon tax with a universal refundable tax credit such that it's revenue-neutral. That way people can pocket the difference if they want to use less carbon.
    • notJim 5y ago
      One of the failed referenda in Washington included this feature. It lost 60-40.
• aero-glide2 5y ago
  But airlines by itself is only responsible for 2.3% of global emissions.
• mempko 5y ago
  Carbon taxes are pushed by the fossil fuel industry precisely because they are politically untenable. They push for the solution they know isn't going to happen.
• palanq 5y ago
  National carbon taxes for the US are politically infeasible. Best we can do right now is big climate-tied infrastructure spending packages, sector-specific targets, R&D investments--whole mess of things. That is the stuff that can pass for the foreseeable future. Carbon taxes as the exclusive solution is a naive dream of economists.