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There exists a world beyond your experience. A world in which people on low incomes have to chose between heating and eating. Sure - there are those that fly to

• the8472 5y ago
  How about not letting high income people use the baseline needs of low income people to deflect responsibility for their freely made choices? Especially when they're responsible for a much larger fraction of the carbon footprint. It's not only on corporations.
  • throwawaylinux 5y ago
    It's pretty sickening when hundreds of billionaires and celebrities and rulers fly their private jets to these secretive conferences where they decide exactly how horrible and greedy Joe Coalminer is, and what penance he must pay for his sins. I can't believe people try to shrug it off as no big deal because the absolute carbon output is small, or postulating that they must have offset it. If there are two things people react badly to, it is injustice / unfairness, and hypocrisy. The ruling class has done more to turn the average person against their climate change proposals than just about anything else, in my opinion. Quite probably by design, such is the blatant audacity of their double standards.
    • LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
      What else is new? https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wasser_predigen_und_Wein_trinken https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wasser_predigen_und_Wein_trin...
    • Lammy 5y ago
      > where they decide exactly how horrible and greedy Joe Coalminer is, and what penance he must pay for his sins Don't worry, The Smartest Guys In The Room went from 0 to 100 on this issue in 1969 when no major societal changes were going on and for no ulterior reason at all: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED050960.pdf https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED050960.pdf "The difference [in family size] is important not simply because of the numbers but because it bears vitally upon a fundamental question about the Nation's future: Do we wish to continue to invest even more of our resources and those of much of the rest of the world in meeting demands for more services, more classrooms, more hospitals, and more housing as population continues to grow?"
• Aulig 5y ago
  That's why i like the idea of a "climate dividend". Everyone will pay a carbon tax, which then finances the climate dividend, which is evenly paid out to the population. So if you emit below average amounts of carbon, you will actually be better off financially.
  • MonkeyClub 5y ago
    I wonder whether this will be like income tax, theoretically proportional, but practically affecting the rich less than the poor, and companies even less?
    • rovolo 5y ago
      Just to clarify this point, the income tax is progressive and affects the rich more than the poor on income. A software developer making $150k will pay 24% on additional income while someone making $30k will pay 12% on additional income. The distinction in the US is whether you make your money through labor (max 37% tax) or capital gains (max 20% tax). There is a lower tax rate for capitalists (who make money via ownership of capital) vs laborers (who make money through labor income). Furthermore, capital gains can be delayed until you realize your gains (sell your capital). This distinction is what practically gives the rich lower taxes than the poor.
      • imtringued 5y ago
        All this nonsense should be rolled into a single income tax and then the overall tax rate should be lowered. Yeah sure there might be good reasons for a low capital gains tax but if that is the case then there are good reasons for a low income tax as well. The only thing the income tax should be doing is discourage employers from piling up all the work on as few people as possible. Employers prefer keeping people full time and full time unemployed because it is more efficient per worker and the bargaining power of the unemployed doesn't exist. If everyone were to work according to their own demand for labor then this bargaining power cliff wouldn't exist and a whole lot of welfare programs could be abolished.
  • piokoch 5y ago
• tda 5y ago
  These high energy prices mostly hit wasteful industries like greenhouse tomato growers. That is because they gave always relied on cheap, subsidized natural gas. Consumers pay approximately 75% energy tax already so even a 100% rise before taxes results in only a 25% percent rise after. I live in a 100 year old, poorly insulated house with my family of 4, and we manage to use half of the average for a family house here. And we are not really trying, only thing we do is limit what parts of the house we heat (not the bedrooms) and set the temperature smartly. I cycle 30km to my work on an electric bike to exercise and limit car usage. So yes, I really don't think the price rise will have too much impact on consumers directly. I think most people in the Netherlands can halve their energy consumption here with very limited impact on QoL just by heating less and using their car less. And if the price really gets problematic our gov could just lower the taxation
  • bojangleslover 5y ago
    Yeah why can't the "heating vs eating" people just take 2hrs to bike 30km to work every day like we do? On the flip side I respect your dedication to bike that much thru Dutch winter!
    • tda 5y ago
      I don't think there are more than a handful of "heating vs eating" people in the Netherlands. On the contrary; poverty is positively correlated with obesity. We do have lots of baby boomers in big houses that they heatup just for themselves. My mom has 4 times my heating bill by herself than I have with a family of four. It would solve a lot of problems if the elderly move to smaller houses and leave the bigger houses for families that need them.
      • Scoundreller 5y ago
        > It would solve a lot of problems if the elderly move to smaller houses and leave the bigger houses for families that need them. A lot of places make that kind of swap uneconomical. From paying capital gains now instead of later, to loss of property tax increase exemptions to loss of property tax deferrals. Some places exempt gains on housing gains but not other gains (kinda a problem if you downsize and take a windfall)… Many places ignore housing wealth when it comes to social assistance, but include everything else.
• tshaddox 5y ago
  These are two separate concerns which can be dealt with independently and simultaneously. A society which can afford to prevent its members from suffering due to lack of food or home heat ought to do so, and can do so via means very much unrelated to the costs and negative externalities of jet fuel.
  • rad_gruchalski 5y ago
    And how do you do that?
    • woodpanel 5y ago
      > And how do you [reconcile extreme green policy goals with income losses for the poorest]? There are no answers given usually, less so convincingly, mostly because the ones demanding scarcity are usually not the ones affected by it. Just trying to find one member of the working class / blue collar amongst ExtencionRebllion and the like will be a tedious task. Not so much if you look for kids of millionaires, or of bilionaires. Or Millionaires and Billionaires themselves. As of now I can only see two outcomes: They either start making these scarcity demands a part of their foreign policy (meaning getting tough on the actual global polluters, not their domestic poor people who barely can afford one cheap vacation to the Balears per year). Or we just start naming what we would have called it 150 years ago: A top-down class-war.
      • HWR_14 5y ago
        I don't know how to parse what you're saying at all. There are tons of working class people worried about climate change and it's pretty trivial to design systems that increase the income for the poorest while being green. Meanwhile your "ExtinctionRebellion" phrase seems like a political touchstone that you assume other people know what you're talking about, but I have no clue what it is.
        • Lammy 5y ago
          The Smart People in the USA realized population growth was a Bad Thing Actually™ and got really into saving the environment in the mid-1960s after we ended racism and poverty forever and needed something even more noble to do: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=segregationist%2Cenvironmentalist&year_start=1950&year_end=2000&corpus=17&smoothing=2 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=segregationist... edit: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED050960.pdf#page=13 https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED050960.pdf#page=13 "We have all heard about a population problem in the developing nations of Asia, Africa and Latin America, where death rates have dropped rapidly and populations have exploded. Only recently have we recognized that the United States may have population problems of its own. There are differing views. Some say that it is a problem of crisis proportions — that the growth of population is responsible for pollution of our air and water, depletion of our natural resources, and a broad array of social ills." SUBTLE
• pier25 5y ago
  I live in Mexico and there are still millions here that need to use wood to cook or heat water.
  • epistasis 5y ago
    Wood is not a fossil fuel, so as long as forests are not being destroyed overall for the fuel, the are carbon neutral. However, people's health would probably be increased if we could provide people electric heat.
    • pier25 5y ago
      The point is that energy is not cheap for everyone. Apple products are luxury items for the vast majority of humanity. Also, like you said, cooking and heating with wood is terrible for the lungs and this has become much more very evident with COVID.
    • Karrot_Kream 5y ago
      With wood things get a bit unclear for me. Using something like district heating which uses wood as a source to generate hot water/steam and pipe that to houses is a way to stay carbon neutral while keeping emissions away from people to avoid impacting their health. But this assumes that heating needs can be sustainably forested. Right now there's also all sorts of shenanigans where wood is imported from the US as biomass in Europe as a sustainable source, but the carbon costs from shipping wood across the ocean are not considered.
• saeranv 5y ago
  I'm a little confused at how you think the previous comment somehow is shifting blames from corporations to people. While true that rising energy costs will effect consumers, it's also one of the ways we can change the incentive structure for corporations! For example: No one should be choosing between heating and eating, from a thermodynamic perspective. It's trivial to drastically cut heating energy through very low-tech methods: increasing insulation in the walls, and add extra layers of glass to your windows. The reason it's not done is because real estate developers have no incentive to increase their construction costs by some marginal amount since they know that natural gas cost is so cheap no customer is going to care about heating energy reduction. Not only that, most customers strongly prefer the cheaper construction once they're shown how many decades it would take for the better building envelope to pay for itself via energy bill reductions. Same reason there isn't a incentive to switch from (dirty) gas to electric, install solar panels, switch to heat pumps etc etc. Now consider how building related carbon emissions make up about 40% of the total emissions, and you'll see how much of an infuriating obstacle cheap energy is in cutting carbon emissions. Yes, there will be low-income people for who this will be a crisis, but that can be dealt with separately: government subsidies, or government subsidies of envelope retrofits (great stimulus idea). There is no reason frame this issue in a us versus them manner.
• Zenst 5y ago
  20% of my income goes on fuel and I'm a low-fuel user, I live on a budget of walking and getting the bus is a treat. For me gas prices in the UK, what really messed me up was the standing charges (daily charge for infrastructure) circa 2006 they doubled that but lowered the unit price which for the average family of 4 usage, worked out as a saving of £100 a year. Though as a single person, that change cost me near on £100 a year in extra standing charge and a saving of unit cost of £20 a year. I just find it annoying how most fuel usage pricing can and does actually penalise responsible low-usage users. Sure the more you buy the cheaper things get but when you get to climate, wear and tear upon the infrastructure - those users who don't have to worry about the money or have any care are reward by a fixed impact cost upon infrastructure - even if they use 10x more than somebody else - they both pay the same. Then the more they use - then costs become cheaper for them. Pro-tip - slow baking a baked potatoes in the oven is a good meal that also warms the home so double usage of that fuel. What would I change - well I'd quota people - additional quota's for medical conditions and other variable but the gist would be - fuel you use up to that quota then you pay X price per unit and the standing charge is dropped and worked into the price. Now, after you use your quota - you pay extra per unit of fuel. That way those who do the most impact are more fairly paying for it. Sadly it won't happen, but then - some serious action is needed upon climate change. FWIW when I was more fiscally able (energy usage less than 1% of income)- my fuel usage was the same heating wise - always been a jumper if needed and going for a brisk walk does wonders for feeling warm.
  • colechristensen 5y ago
    There are plenty of places that charge higher rates for heavy usage tiers.
  • y4mi 5y ago
    If you reduced your carbon footprint to 0 for your entire life you will have saved less then a second of industrial CO2 output. Personal choice is meaningless wrt climate change. It's a topic that cannot be addressed without structural/societal changes, likely by legislation.
    • mcntsh 5y ago
• dghughes 5y ago
  >A world in which people on low incomes have to chose between heating and eating. What my mother gets for old age pension is the same as the cost as a tank of heating oil for her house. Thankfully she doesn't need a full tank of oil each month and summer means less fuel burned except for hot water for the oil fired water heater. I do help my mom monetarily as much as I can but yes it is a huge burden for low income people to heat their homes.
• jaredklewis 5y ago
  I can't find anything in the parent comment that suggests a lack of sympathy for working class people or an attempt to put any blame on them. There are countless policy choices that can help the less fortunate, the great majority of which are not incompatible with gas or energy being more expensive. For example, I'm not a huge fan of agricultural subsidies, not because I want food to be more expensive, but because of the negative environmental and health effects they've had. But the money the government pays to farmer giants could instead be redistributed to poor people and (IMHO) help them a great deal more. Likewise, revenue from taxes on things like gasoline could mitigate the effects of higher cost for low income families, which still encourage upper classes to invest in clean energy.
• mcv 5y ago
  Wasting energy isn't going to help those people. More money is. "Poor people" is a bad argument to avoid fair energy prices. If you care about poor people, make them less poor, and switch energy use to more sustainable sources. There's something to be said for taxing fossil fuels and paying that money back equally to everybody. People who polute will lose money, and people who don't will receive it.
• JohnClark1337 5y ago
  Silicon valley bubbles are a fun place