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Carbon pricing works and is an everyday thing over here in Europe & UK: https://ember-climate.org/data/carbon-price-viewer/ https://ember-climate.org/data/carbo

Carbon pricing works and is an everyday thing over here in Europe & UK: https://ember-climate.org/data/carbon-price-viewer/ https://ember-climate.org/data/carbon-price-viewer/

giantg2 5y ago
One thing I question, is the equity of this solution. Don't the pricing solutions essentially price out lower income people while allowing the wealthy to be largely unaffected? It seems that would lead to a more stratified society. If it's really about reducing emissions, why not force the wealthy to use the alternatives that the lower class are economically forced to use?
- fulafel 5y ago
  We also have fairly big income transfers in many countries, making this a somewhat orthogonal question.
- MrPatan 5y ago
  You showed up with the wrong sign.
- jsmith45 5y ago
  The fundamental idea of carbon pricing is that businesses right now have basically no disincentive to spewing out as much CO2 as they want, except possibly for angering a relatively small amount of people who care strongly about the environment. Why on earth would they voluntary spend the money to needed to reduce their carbon footprint? (unless they determine it is cheap enough to buy offsets or whatever to be able to call themselves carbon neutral for marketing purposes.) This also means that development of sustainable alternatives is often slowed, as they will cost more at first, even if they happen to end up being less expensive in the long run (which is unlikely to be true in all cases, but which could potentially be true in a few specific scenarios). But what are the alternatives? Simply outlawing burning of gasoline effective on some future date will be no more equitable. Putting a strict quota system on companies would also cause prices to rise and be unequitable to. I don't see any realistically implementable system that does not potentially cause prices to rise, and obviously rising prices on most goods disproportionately affects lower income people.
rsj_hn 5y ago
> Carbon pricing works and is an everyday thing over here in Europe & UK How do you measure how much it works? From 2005-2018, the US, with no carbon pricing, reduced CO2 emissions per GDP by 45% and the Euro Area reduced it by 52%. So is your claim that the 7% percentage points extra over 13 years is what Carbon pricing achieved for the EU? E.g. a gain of 0.5% per year? At this rate, after 100 years you would have achieved a reduction that is 65% better than the what the US would achieve without carbon pricing. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PP.GD?locations=US-EU https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PP.GD?locat... Of course in absolute terms, the US increased efficiency more over the same period (but I think percent change is more relevant, as the US started with a higher base). At the same time, the EU is facing very high electricity bills, there was a backlash at further increase in gas taxes in France, and the EU is straining to push this agenda further. Meanwhile there are electrical outages in China forcing China to rollback its coal reduction targets. So what I see is a lot of pain and political capital expended for very small gains in terms of CO2/GDP. If you have a different conclusion, then I'd love to see your methodology and the numbers you are coming up with to measure how effective this is.
- fulafel 5y ago
  > How do you measure how much it works? There is a set, yearly decreasing amount of emission rights in circulation so it's fairly well quantified. You can argue that the set rate is too lax, but the current rates are quite steep and it seems obvious that it's having an effect.
  - rsj_hn 5y ago
    I don't think you read my post at all. If there is no difference in emissions between a nation that has no carbon pricing and a nation that does, then how do you measure the effect of carbon pricing? If there is only a small difference -- a .5% change per year -- between a nation that has no carbon pricing and one that does -- then how can you argue that the effect of carbon pricing is more than a very slight increase in efficiency?
    - 5y ago

Carbon pricing works and is an everyday thing over here in Europe & UK: https://ember-climate.org/data/carbon-price-viewer/ https://ember-climate.org/data/carbon-price-viewer/

giantg2 5y ago

One thing I question, is the equity of this solution. Don't the pricing solutions essentially price out lower income people while allowing the wealthy to be largely unaffected? It seems that would lead to a more stratified society. If it's really about reducing emissions, why not force the wealthy to use the alternatives that the lower class are economically forced to use?

fulafel 5y ago
We also have fairly big income transfers in many countries, making this a somewhat orthogonal question.
MrPatan 5y ago
You showed up with the wrong sign.
jsmith45 5y ago
The fundamental idea of carbon pricing is that businesses right now have basically no disincentive to spewing out as much CO2 as they want, except possibly for angering a relatively small amount of people who care strongly about the environment. Why on earth would they voluntary spend the money to needed to reduce their carbon footprint? (unless they determine it is cheap enough to buy offsets or whatever to be able to call themselves carbon neutral for marketing purposes.) This also means that development of sustainable alternatives is often slowed, as they will cost more at first, even if they happen to end up being less expensive in the long run (which is unlikely to be true in all cases, but which could potentially be true in a few specific scenarios). But what are the alternatives? Simply outlawing burning of gasoline effective on some future date will be no more equitable. Putting a strict quota system on companies would also cause prices to rise and be unequitable to. I don't see any realistically implementable system that does not potentially cause prices to rise, and obviously rising prices on most goods disproportionately affects lower income people.

rsj_hn 5y ago

> Carbon pricing works and is an everyday thing over here in Europe & UK How do you measure how much it works? From 2005-2018, the US, with no carbon pricing, reduced CO2 emissions per GDP by 45% and the Euro Area reduced it by 52%. So is your claim that the 7% percentage points extra over 13 years is what Carbon pricing achieved for the EU? E.g. a gain of 0.5% per year? At this rate, after 100 years you would have achieved a reduction that is 65% better than the what the US would achieve without carbon pricing. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PP.GD?locations=US-EU https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PP.GD?locat... Of course in absolute terms, the US increased efficiency more over the same period (but I think percent change is more relevant, as the US started with a higher base). At the same time, the EU is facing very high electricity bills, there was a backlash at further increase in gas taxes in France, and the EU is straining to push this agenda further. Meanwhile there are electrical outages in China forcing China to rollback its coal reduction targets. So what I see is a lot of pain and political capital expended for very small gains in terms of CO2/GDP. If you have a different conclusion, then I'd love to see your methodology and the numbers you are coming up with to measure how effective this is.

fulafel 5y ago
> How do you measure how much it works? There is a set, yearly decreasing amount of emission rights in circulation so it's fairly well quantified. You can argue that the set rate is too lax, but the current rates are quite steep and it seems obvious that it's having an effect.
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  I don't think you read my post at all. If there is no difference in emissions between a nation that has no carbon pricing and a nation that does, then how do you measure the effect of carbon pricing? If there is only a small difference -- a .5% change per year -- between a nation that has no carbon pricing and one that does -- then how can you argue that the effect of carbon pricing is more than a very slight increase in efficiency?
  - 5y ago