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This is a terrible argument because it presumes there are no uses of faster travel that are beneficial. The proper argument is for a carbon tax that captures th
by snapplebobapple 4y ago
This is a terrible argument because it presumes there are no uses of faster travel that are beneficial. The proper argument is for a carbon tax that captures the externalities caused by emitting carbon and then to let individuals decide if they want to pay that or not for whatever activity they are partaking in.
Whether it benefits the masses or the elite is irrelevant, what is relevant is that the use is worth more than the correctly priced cost of carbon
- pydry 4y ago>The proper argument is for a carbon tax The proper argument is to get a carbon tax first before unbanning anything like this. And it's not on the political horizon so....
- denton-scratch 4y agoCarbon taxes (as they exist now) are a con. You just buy some carbon credits from some company that is supposedly carbon-negative, because it plants forests somewhere so obscure that nobody checks. And anyway, forests are not carbon-negative; all that lives must die. They're carbon-neutral.
- ianburrell 4y agoCarbon tax != carbon credits. Carbon credits are part of emission trading approach. Carbon tax doesn't need credits cause uses money. Not being cheatable is one of the advantages of carbon tax.
- nwallin 4y agoWe do not have carbon taxes, we have carbon credits. Carbon credits are at best green political theater. At worst they're an effective means for the carbon economy (coal, oil, gas) to deflect efforts to get a carbon tax on the table, as evidenced by comments like this one. Carbon taxes, on the other hand, are an effective solution to global warming.
- aziaziazi 4y agoWhat is relevant is the inhabitability of the earth, not who pays what.
- thfuran 4y ago>Whether it benefits the masses or the elite is irrelevant Why is that irrelevant? Must we permit everything that might be of benefit to someone, even if it comes at the expense of everyone else?
- Nextgrid 4y ago> Must we permit everything that might be of benefit to someone, even if it comes at the expense of everyone else? If we can offset "the expense of everyone else" (in this case via a carbon tax), why not?
- thfuran 4y agoAssessing a tax doesn't actually clean the air. All it does is ensure that only the rich have the right to fuck everyone else over. If the government committed to funding carbon capture at a rate of at least as much as they would've in the counterfactual where there was instead a ban plus the additional amount funded by the carbon tax revenue, taxing the externality would probably be adequate redress, but that isn't ever going to happen.
- Nextgrid 4y ago> Assessing a tax doesn't actually clean the air Unless you use that tax to pay someone to clean the air?
- thfuran 4y agoYou have to both put the entirety of the tax towards it and ensure that the fact that you're funding it through the tax doesn't decrease the amount of additional funding you put towards it or else that decrease effectively decreases the tax rate (at least as far as carbon capture is concerned). The second part is harder than the first.
- Dylan16807 4y agoThere's basically zero funding toward it right now, so the second part becomes pretty easy. If we wanted to massively fund air cleaning, which I'm in favor of doing, we should use a tax as funding from day one.
- michaelmrose 4y agoOffsets are basically mostly lies and nonsense. If your goal is to reduce emissions in absolute terms controlling it with taxes makes less sense than just limiting which unlike offsets actually does something.