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> if the alternative was to pay $9 per gallon of gasoline? It's easy to forget how incredibly cheap gasoline still is in the US. In Europe you expect to pay s
by xorcist 5y ago
> if the alternative was to pay $9 per gallon of gasoline?
It's easy to forget how incredibly cheap gasoline still is in the US.
In Europe you expect to pay somewhere between $6 (Baltics) to $8 (Nordics).
Given the enormous budgetary excesses of the covid situation, one would only expect these prices to rise even further. Gasoline consumption is something a society generally want to discourage given the externalities involved.
- marvin 5y agoThis is a thing I don't get about climate politics in the Nordics. We have already implemented taxation that strongly disincentivizes a large source of CO2 emissions from businesses and private individuals. Gasoline is expensive here because we pay ~80% tax on it, not because it's expensive to ship. And granted, we do have very strong EV adoption to show for it. But it's a very small step from here to an effective climate stategy that also inventivizes emission reductions everywhere else. We should have a large-scale R&D program going to sequester CO2 for geological timescales, and pay for it using the existing gasoline taxes as well as an additional and gradually-increasing CO2 emission fee. But instead this tax money goes towards increasing the number of people working in the public sector. You'd think this was a big talking point for the Greens, but those folks don't understand economics and focus all their efforts on trying to decommission the oil sector. I don't get it!