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The best solution to climate change is a price on Carbon. Anything else is just pork. If we don't want to impose a carbon price on ourselves, we can do it to

The best solution to climate change is a price on Carbon. Anything else is just pork. If we don't want to impose a carbon price on ourselves, we can do it to others via import tariffs.

tda 5y ago
And preferably tax carbon as close to the source as possible (crude oil). Because leaving oil in the geound is so much easier than putting it back in.
PartiallyTyped 5y ago
Shouldn't it include methane? Methane is far more potent green house gas than Co2.
johnchristopher 5y ago
Like a carbon coin ? That you get once you have proven you took out some CO2 from the atmosphere. Like in the ministry of future novel: https://mashable.com/feature/carbon-coin-climate-change-crypto https://mashable.com/feature/carbon-coin-climate-change-cryp... ?
Broken_Hippo 5y ago
I disagree: It might be part of the solution, but simply taxing carbon means that rich folks or companies can pollute. We need green methods put into law to force folks to cut their emissions and pollutants - and punish those who run afoul of the laws, including steep fines, possible business shutdowns, and personal liability/criminal charges for CEOS and other folks running the company, especially if they cover up their polluting. I'd much rather just deny good that do not meet standards. Again, tariffs just make it so moneyed folks can just pay to avoid stuff.
- wdn 5y ago
  Exactly this. We are seeing Bill Gates telling us HOW to save the planet for being the biggest person polluter but he CAN buy carbon credit to offset his carbon footprint. Hypocrite!
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - HKH2 5y ago
    When you put it like that, buying carbon credit seems a lot like paying indulgences.
- ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  Carbon taxes basically do that though. They "fine" you if you use more carbon than your competitors, disadvantaging you in the market. Tax evasion is already a crime, and would be difficult for most people since it would be embedded into the things they buy in a million little ways. But each supplier has their own direct incentive to change that to stay conpetitive. There's room for other policies too, the whole "if you dont do carbon taxes youre not serious about climate change" thing seems like a bait and switch by politicians who have already poisoned the well on taxes generally. (And people generally seem ignorant that carbon pricing is an integral part of action on climate change around the world).
  - Broken_Hippo 5y ago
    A company can simply decide to pay the carbon tax, though. Actual penalties mean that you are actually risking your company if you don't comply. Fines are different if the folks in charge have to pay some as well, for example, and/or if they are a significant portion of profit (percentage of profit is a harder hit than a flat carbon tax that you can plan for if you would like). After fines? Jail times for those in charge and closing/auctioning off your business. Carbon taxed don't do these things, and I'm not a believer in the market taking care of this since carbon taxed don't actually make anyone get more efficient than their competitors, who are only likely to get efficient if it is profitable. Carbon taxes themselves aren't likely to do this.
    - sershe 5y ago
      The differences are on the margins... many activities become unprofitable or less profitable if you have to pay carbon tax. Many fuel sources (e.g. coal) become uneconomical, so people switch. I don't see any issue with rich people polluting. Carbon tax is like LVT - we have commons (ability of the ecosystem to "absorb" emissions), we have to split it up somehow, what better way than to price them in a manner where only the amount that can be sustainably used, is used? People who can make the best use of the capacity, or are willing to burn money on it, will buy it up.
    - merrywhether 5y ago
      Lots of industries are low margin (the natural state of competitive markets) and cannot simply pay the carbon tax and act like nothing happened. They can pass the price along, and that will hurt these industries according to how elastic their customers’ demand is. So at least we’d be emitting carbon for the things markets deem more useful. It may not be a total solution, but it’s a first step. Too many climate activists have this brinksman “no but” approach to changing the course of the political ship of climate change (see nuclear power discussion above), when we really need “yes and” even if the first steps aren’t perfect or big enough. Yelling at people to make drastic changes has never convinced even honest skeptics.
- oefrha 5y ago
  Also, I fail to see how carbon tax collected in the U.S. for wasteful lifestyle is going to be distributed to, say, Ethiopia, with a same-order-of-maginitude population (115M vs 329M) and ~1/150 emissions per capita (according to [1]). Without scaling back the unsustainable rich American lifestyle, this tax will have limited domestic impact, while punishing developing countries trying to catch up via more polluting industries. Which is perfect for maintaining the world order where the majority of human beings work and live in subpar conditions to support the unsustainable lifestyles of a small minority, I suppose. [1] https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-per-capita/ https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-pe...
  - Factorium 5y ago
    Westerners are actually much more efficient in terms of scientific, economic, cultural output per unit of CO2, compared to developing nations. Ethiopia can benefit from the renewable energy technology developed in the West, and skip fossil fuels entirely.
- TheRealSteel 5y ago
  It's justified to execute people who head organizations that have high carbon emissions. At this point, emitting large amounts of carbon should be considered terrorism.
- ip26 5y ago
  If the cost of a carbon credit is higher than the cost of sequestration, and sequestering operations generate credits, then in essence by paying for carbon credits you are paying to clean up your emissions.
Joeri 5y ago
I don't get why everyone talks about carbon instead of fossil fuels. The carbon that's already in the atmosphere cycles through it but doesn't change it. The carbon that gets dug up from the ground gets added to the atmosphere. It seems to me that what we really need to do is stop mining fossil fuels, and e.g. incentivize biofuels. If we tax carbon we also make biofuels more expensive, while in the grand scheme of things they seem to be basically climate neutral?
- ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  Its just a shorthand. Most actual policies include gasses other than carbon dioxide (which is different from carbon anyway) and account for things that absorb or emit carbon in other ways (e.g change in land use). The low hanging fruit is to stop digging up fossil fuels and burning them though and as such theyll be impacted most by "carbon" fees.
bulka 5y ago
Fact: bears eat beets. Bears, beets, "Battlestar Galactica."
hannob 5y ago
I really wish people would stop thinking that there's this one thing that will fix climate. There isn't. It'll take lots of things. Carbon pricing is a good one if done right, but it's not a silver bullet. There are no silver bullets.
- OscarCunningham 5y ago
  Why is it not a silver bullet?
- tda 5y ago
  The primary (only even) cause of the climate crisis is the fact that we have burnt and continue to burn a ton of carbon and emit it as CO2 in the atmosphere. And as most of the world functions with some form of capitalism, it makes a lot of sense to put a price on something to make it less desirable. In fact it makes so much sense that until we have put a significant price on fossil carbon use we cannot tell our children that we really tried to do something to prevent this crisis.
newsclues 5y ago
I think carbon is the wrong thing. We need to go after pollution. People understand pollution, it’s plastic in the lake, or smog in the sky, people don’t understand “carbon” but garbage on the ground is something we can do something about. Climate change is the wrong term. We need to fight a war on pollution.
- tda 5y ago
  Pollution and global warming are two separate things we both need to prevent. We do not need to choose, we can and should address both. In Western countries pollution is generally better contained/addressed/regulated than in poorer countries, however Western countries contribute hugely more greenhouse gasses (certainly per capita, and especially US and AUS) than poorer countries. So no, carbon is not the wrong thing. It is the primary, singularly most important things we should address. And indeed, as long as we don't put a properly high prico on it one way or the other we are just fooling around and making the earth that much less inhabitable for our children

The best solution to climate change is a price on Carbon. Anything else is just pork. If we don't want to impose a carbon price on ourselves, we can do it to others via import tariffs.

tda 5y ago

And preferably tax carbon as close to the source as possible (crude oil). Because leaving oil in the geound is so much easier than putting it back in.

PartiallyTyped 5y ago

Shouldn't it include methane? Methane is far more potent green house gas than Co2.

johnchristopher 5y ago

Like a carbon coin ? That you get once you have proven you took out some CO2 from the atmosphere. Like in the ministry of future novel: https://mashable.com/feature/carbon-coin-climate-change-crypto https://mashable.com/feature/carbon-coin-climate-change-cryp... ?

Broken_Hippo 5y ago

I disagree: It might be part of the solution, but simply taxing carbon means that rich folks or companies can pollute. We need green methods put into law to force folks to cut their emissions and pollutants - and punish those who run afoul of the laws, including steep fines, possible business shutdowns, and personal liability/criminal charges for CEOS and other folks running the company, especially if they cover up their polluting. I'd much rather just deny good that do not meet standards. Again, tariffs just make it so moneyed folks can just pay to avoid stuff.

wdn 5y ago
Exactly this. We are seeing Bill Gates telling us HOW to save the planet for being the biggest person polluter but he CAN buy carbon credit to offset his carbon footprint. Hypocrite!
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- HKH2 5y ago
  When you put it like that, buying carbon credit seems a lot like paying indulgences.
ZeroGravitas 5y ago
Carbon taxes basically do that though. They "fine" you if you use more carbon than your competitors, disadvantaging you in the market. Tax evasion is already a crime, and would be difficult for most people since it would be embedded into the things they buy in a million little ways. But each supplier has their own direct incentive to change that to stay conpetitive. There's room for other policies too, the whole "if you dont do carbon taxes youre not serious about climate change" thing seems like a bait and switch by politicians who have already poisoned the well on taxes generally. (And people generally seem ignorant that carbon pricing is an integral part of action on climate change around the world).
- Broken_Hippo 5y ago
  A company can simply decide to pay the carbon tax, though. Actual penalties mean that you are actually risking your company if you don't comply. Fines are different if the folks in charge have to pay some as well, for example, and/or if they are a significant portion of profit (percentage of profit is a harder hit than a flat carbon tax that you can plan for if you would like). After fines? Jail times for those in charge and closing/auctioning off your business. Carbon taxed don't do these things, and I'm not a believer in the market taking care of this since carbon taxed don't actually make anyone get more efficient than their competitors, who are only likely to get efficient if it is profitable. Carbon taxes themselves aren't likely to do this.
  - sershe 5y ago
    The differences are on the margins... many activities become unprofitable or less profitable if you have to pay carbon tax. Many fuel sources (e.g. coal) become uneconomical, so people switch. I don't see any issue with rich people polluting. Carbon tax is like LVT - we have commons (ability of the ecosystem to "absorb" emissions), we have to split it up somehow, what better way than to price them in a manner where only the amount that can be sustainably used, is used? People who can make the best use of the capacity, or are willing to burn money on it, will buy it up.
  - merrywhether 5y ago
    Lots of industries are low margin (the natural state of competitive markets) and cannot simply pay the carbon tax and act like nothing happened. They can pass the price along, and that will hurt these industries according to how elastic their customers’ demand is. So at least we’d be emitting carbon for the things markets deem more useful. It may not be a total solution, but it’s a first step. Too many climate activists have this brinksman “no but” approach to changing the course of the political ship of climate change (see nuclear power discussion above), when we really need “yes and” even if the first steps aren’t perfect or big enough. Yelling at people to make drastic changes has never convinced even honest skeptics.
oefrha 5y ago
Also, I fail to see how carbon tax collected in the U.S. for wasteful lifestyle is going to be distributed to, say, Ethiopia, with a same-order-of-maginitude population (115M vs 329M) and ~1/150 emissions per capita (according to [1]). Without scaling back the unsustainable rich American lifestyle, this tax will have limited domestic impact, while punishing developing countries trying to catch up via more polluting industries. Which is perfect for maintaining the world order where the majority of human beings work and live in subpar conditions to support the unsustainable lifestyles of a small minority, I suppose. [1] https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-per-capita/ https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-pe...
- Factorium 5y ago
  Westerners are actually much more efficient in terms of scientific, economic, cultural output per unit of CO2, compared to developing nations. Ethiopia can benefit from the renewable energy technology developed in the West, and skip fossil fuels entirely.
TheRealSteel 5y ago
It's justified to execute people who head organizations that have high carbon emissions. At this point, emitting large amounts of carbon should be considered terrorism.
ip26 5y ago
If the cost of a carbon credit is higher than the cost of sequestration, and sequestering operations generate credits, then in essence by paying for carbon credits you are paying to clean up your emissions.

Joeri 5y ago

I don't get why everyone talks about carbon instead of fossil fuels. The carbon that's already in the atmosphere cycles through it but doesn't change it. The carbon that gets dug up from the ground gets added to the atmosphere. It seems to me that what we really need to do is stop mining fossil fuels, and e.g. incentivize biofuels. If we tax carbon we also make biofuels more expensive, while in the grand scheme of things they seem to be basically climate neutral?

ZeroGravitas 5y ago
Its just a shorthand. Most actual policies include gasses other than carbon dioxide (which is different from carbon anyway) and account for things that absorb or emit carbon in other ways (e.g change in land use). The low hanging fruit is to stop digging up fossil fuels and burning them though and as such theyll be impacted most by "carbon" fees.

bulka 5y ago

Fact: bears eat beets. Bears, beets, "Battlestar Galactica."

hannob 5y ago

I really wish people would stop thinking that there's this one thing that will fix climate. There isn't. It'll take lots of things. Carbon pricing is a good one if done right, but it's not a silver bullet. There are no silver bullets.

OscarCunningham 5y ago
Why is it not a silver bullet?
tda 5y ago
The primary (only even) cause of the climate crisis is the fact that we have burnt and continue to burn a ton of carbon and emit it as CO2 in the atmosphere. And as most of the world functions with some form of capitalism, it makes a lot of sense to put a price on something to make it less desirable. In fact it makes so much sense that until we have put a significant price on fossil carbon use we cannot tell our children that we really tried to do something to prevent this crisis.

newsclues 5y ago

I think carbon is the wrong thing. We need to go after pollution. People understand pollution, it’s plastic in the lake, or smog in the sky, people don’t understand “carbon” but garbage on the ground is something we can do something about. Climate change is the wrong term. We need to fight a war on pollution.

tda 5y ago
Pollution and global warming are two separate things we both need to prevent. We do not need to choose, we can and should address both. In Western countries pollution is generally better contained/addressed/regulated than in poorer countries, however Western countries contribute hugely more greenhouse gasses (certainly per capita, and especially US and AUS) than poorer countries. So no, carbon is not the wrong thing. It is the primary, singularly most important things we should address. And indeed, as long as we don't put a properly high prico on it one way or the other we are just fooling around and making the earth that much less inhabitable for our children