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> Unless one company could find a way to produce goods with less energy than their competitors, or obtain its energy from cleaner sources, perhaps by investing

by SllX 4y ago

> Unless one company could find a way to produce goods with less energy than their competitors, or obtain its energy from cleaner sources, perhaps by investing in solar power. Sure. Let’s take that solar power investment: under your proposed regime, the cost of the supplies and materials and electronics of the R&D employees would be bear a carbon tax. The electricity to power the lightning and electronics would beat a carbon tax. Any transport they use will bear a carbon tax. The food they eat will bear a carbon tax. The mines the materials for the panels will bear a carbon tax. The transport of the materials will bear a carbon tax. The equipment for extraction will bear a carbon tax. The factories which produce the panels will bear a carbon tax. The intermediaries that ship and handle the panels will bear a carbon tax. The infrastructure to connect it to the grid will bear a carbon tax. And I’m sure I’m leaving out several thousand items, but that’s probably why the serious proposals say to just do it at the plants and refineries, I.e. increase the cost of energy directly. Taxes are not a cost in the way supplies and materials are and a carbon tax doesn’t make the “cost of the good” more real, just higher. They are a fiat cost, hence the need to tie to something real: the cost of governance. Consumers do not accept lightly increases in their cost of living, as you can see in the present moment with the current price of fuel in the US and the likely parties to suffer in upcoming elections.

Wowfunhappy 4y ago
The transportation could be done via electric vehicles. The lighting and electronics could itself be powered by greener sources. Maybe not for the first new solar farm constructed, but over time as the infrastructure was built out. And the tax would incentivize the building of that infrastructure. Let me ask: do you think it's possible in a literal sense for society to emit greenhouse gases? If it's not possible, your argument makes sense to me. But if it is possible, we should financially reward people who make greener choices.
- SllX 4y ago
  > The transportation could be done via electric vehicles. The lighting and electronics could itself be powered by greener sources. Maybe not for the first new solar farm constructed, but over time as the infrastructure was built out. And the tax would incentivize the building of that infrastructure. Every single thing you just listed would take energy to produce and would bear a carbon tax because a carbon tax is really just an energy tax. The electric vehicles need batteries, the batteries need lithium, and the lithium has to come out of the ground. This results in a product with much more mass than your typical ICE, thus has more energy put into its production, but to offset this the electricity can theoretically come from some solar farm in the Mojave desert. In practice it probably comes from a gas fired plant, but that is still a lot better than if it were to come from a coal powered plant (and sometimes it does). Everything we do by living has an impact on the planet. Actually to be more exact anything any living creature does has an impact on the planet, but we’re the only species that thinks on a planetary scale (except maybe birds, I’m sure there’s a fun philosophical discussion there but we’ll have to table it) and therefore care about this ecosystem we have conceptualized as a planet. So when I eat some beans or drink milk and or a cow eats some grass or “feed”, we both emit a GHG with a global warming potential of 27-30 over 100 years. You should be happy to note that as a responsible citizen of this planet, I have omitted both beans and milk from my diet. Unfortunately my hypothetical methane account is probably overdrawn on account of my love of steak as my primary source of protein. No. We cannot live without waste as a necessary product of living, and since there’s a lot of us, we waste a lot of energy. What we can do is get a lot more efficient with our energy usage and reduce the total amount of waste, but we will continue to be GHG emitters for as long as we have civilization. Either we find some way to get the planet to absorb more of our emissions or we naturally die off until we reach an equilibrium with the planet. That could be billions of us or it could be zero of us. I’m unconvinced tax policy will be our silver bullet, nor will cronyism. > we should financially reward people who make greener choices. Which brings me to my final point. If you mean this in a private market sense, that’s fine. If you mean this as an extension of tax policy and the course of government business, this is called cronyism—the government picking winners and losers and is a fine example of why our tax code is already so complex. We have plenty of that already, and I would like to see less to the point that it approaches or eventually achieves zero but I’m not holding my breath.

by SllX 4y ago

Wowfunhappy 4y ago

The transportation could be done via electric vehicles. The lighting and electronics could itself be powered by greener sources. Maybe not for the first new solar farm constructed, but over time as the infrastructure was built out. And the tax would incentivize the building of that infrastructure. Let me ask: do you think it's possible in a literal sense for society to emit greenhouse gases? If it's not possible, your argument makes sense to me. But if it is possible, we should financially reward people who make greener choices.

SllX 4y ago
> The transportation could be done via electric vehicles. The lighting and electronics could itself be powered by greener sources. Maybe not for the first new solar farm constructed, but over time as the infrastructure was built out. And the tax would incentivize the building of that infrastructure. Every single thing you just listed would take energy to produce and would bear a carbon tax because a carbon tax is really just an energy tax. The electric vehicles need batteries, the batteries need lithium, and the lithium has to come out of the ground. This results in a product with much more mass than your typical ICE, thus has more energy put into its production, but to offset this the electricity can theoretically come from some solar farm in the Mojave desert. In practice it probably comes from a gas fired plant, but that is still a lot better than if it were to come from a coal powered plant (and sometimes it does). Everything we do by living has an impact on the planet. Actually to be more exact anything any living creature does has an impact on the planet, but we’re the only species that thinks on a planetary scale (except maybe birds, I’m sure there’s a fun philosophical discussion there but we’ll have to table it) and therefore care about this ecosystem we have conceptualized as a planet. So when I eat some beans or drink milk and or a cow eats some grass or “feed”, we both emit a GHG with a global warming potential of 27-30 over 100 years. You should be happy to note that as a responsible citizen of this planet, I have omitted both beans and milk from my diet. Unfortunately my hypothetical methane account is probably overdrawn on account of my love of steak as my primary source of protein. No. We cannot live without waste as a necessary product of living, and since there’s a lot of us, we waste a lot of energy. What we can do is get a lot more efficient with our energy usage and reduce the total amount of waste, but we will continue to be GHG emitters for as long as we have civilization. Either we find some way to get the planet to absorb more of our emissions or we naturally die off until we reach an equilibrium with the planet. That could be billions of us or it could be zero of us. I’m unconvinced tax policy will be our silver bullet, nor will cronyism. > we should financially reward people who make greener choices. Which brings me to my final point. If you mean this in a private market sense, that’s fine. If you mean this as an extension of tax policy and the course of government business, this is called cronyism—the government picking winners and losers and is a fine example of why our tax code is already so complex. We have plenty of that already, and I would like to see less to the point that it approaches or eventually achieves zero but I’m not holding my breath.