4 ms·

The "tax" is already baked in, it costs more to run poorly optimised code. What we need is a carbon tax, then wasteful use of electricity can funnel back into

• abecedarius 5y ago
  > paying for its impact The rationale of a carbon tax is to make prices account for the externality, so that people use carbon-emitting energy where it's still worth it, and stop where it's not. (And over time encourage everyone to find better ways to do things.) You might see this as a quibble, but there's so much misunderstanding. E.g. the #1 objection is about the expense to poor people, but if all this tax revenue went straight back to a UBI it would not affect the above logic. The objection does have force if it's "funneled back into paying for its impact" instead.
  • tonyedgecombe 5y ago
    >the #1 objection is about the expense to poor people It amazes me when people who have no interest in the plight of the poor suddenly start spouting this. Even more so when you consider that the poor aren't creating this problem, their carbon emissions are minimal. In many ways they stand to gain from changes to reduce emissions (improved provision for walking and cycling, better public transport, etc). The poor really don't give a shit if your flight across the Atlantic gets more expensive.
    • abecedarius 5y ago
      Yup, you're completely ignoring the argument about how to effectively focus everyone's efforts and ingenuity on fixing the problem of carbon emissions, instead substituting class-war logic, and assigning me to the other side of your war. Confirming the misunderstanding I brought up. A Pigovian tax is not a redistribution scheme, it's a fix-misallocation scheme. > The poor really don't give a shit if your flight across the Atlantic gets more expensive. What does giving a shit have to do with what I wrote? Yes, a proper carbon tax raises the price of such a flight; wealthier people disproportionately take such flights, and therefore are paying; as UBI, wealthier people get almost none of that back, as there are few of them. There are probably fewer flights. Plane manufacturers (and competing transport systems) invest in finding more carbon-efficient designs. And the same pressure applied throughout the economy, without commissars decreeing who flies how much, etc., also throughout the economy. Do you want the problems solved?
• brabel 5y ago
  The Australian Government circa 2010 introduced a carbon tax... it was one of the first governments in the world to do so. It causes prices to go up, miners to threaten to close mines as costs became too high, basically it was a shit show and the government went to election against a conservative party promising to remove the tax and make it impossible to bring it back, ever, if it won... of course, it won and has remained in power since then. Today, Australia is probably one of the worst offenders when it comes to carbon emissions per-capita, and its Government is hostile to carbon emission reductions except when it costs no jobs, no taxes and no worries to anyone , i.e. never. I think we can see this scenario playing up again in quite a few other countries, unfortunately... for this reason, I don't think taxes will solve the problem.
  • WalterBright 5y ago
    Here in America we make it difficult to deploy natural gas, so we burn more coal instead.
  • magarnicle 5y ago
    A country with a less powerful mining lobby would probably have an easier time getting a carbon tax off the ground.