7 ms·

Just a contextual note -- one thing Sabine says is: AI won't help because we know the exact solution, we just aren't willing to do it. Presumably she's referri

Just a contextual note -- one thing Sabine says is: AI won't help because we know the exact solution, we just aren't willing to do it. Presumably she's referring to her first proposal -- a carbon tax. It's my understanding that there's nearly consensus among economists that a carbon tax is the most efficient solution to global warming, but political consensus that it would never happen when framed as a tax. If you don't know what a carbon tax is, or why it's orders of magnitude more efficient a solution than "eat less meat" I'd encourage you to look into it a bit. Essentially if you create a system where what is best for the planet is also the cheapest course of action (for individuals and businesses), you no longer have to rely on convincing every single individual to change their morality/beliefs.

AndrewKemendo 3y ago
A global tax requires global enforcement No sovereign is going to agree to subordinate itself without all others doing the same Classic prisoners dilemma
- neilk 3y ago
  That’s too pessimistic. Dozens of countries have some kind of carbon tax right now. Important and influential jurisdictions like California, also have them. Even oil-producing regions have them. They are universally rather timid in their scope, and politically fragile. So maybe they aren’t going to get us there, at least not in their current form. But it’s going too far to say they just don’t exist or can’t exist. We have plenty of treaties that inhibit states. Nuclear weapons, slavery, pollutants. Enlightentment and enlightened self-interest isn’t out of the question.
  - AndrewKemendo 3y ago
    “Enlightened self interest” is randian nonsense. That’s how we got here in the first place Ask Lybia how nuclear disarmament went Go count all the slaves supplying the global market for chocolate, cobalt, mica, vanilla etc... How about prisoners in the US making .20-.50c/hr making license plates or literally picking cotton on a former slave plantation in alabama. Or how about slave labor in the form of migrant children working in factories for Hyundai in the US south The concept of self-interested Neoliberalism has utterly failed and it is turning into a global catastrophe The earth cannot sustain 8 Billion people each living at millionaire consumption standards
    - wolverine876 3y ago
      I don't understand your point: There are bad things in the world, so everything is bad? We could point to lots of good things too. In fact, you live better - far better - than anyone in history. It's not even close. It was built by the post-war 'neoliberal' order, on a foundation of human rights and free markets. For us to quit and complain after all the work our predecessors did, remaining optimistic and working in a much starker situation - after depressions and world wars - would be pathetic abdication of our duties.
      - AndrewKemendo 3y ago
        I’m not sure what to tell you here cause you’re not looking at reality because life is hard for a lot of people and getting harder. I suggest you read this: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2022.0261#RSTB20220261F1 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2022.026...
        wolverine876 3y ago
        > life is hard for a lot of people and getting harder. Life is hard and always has been, but it's far easier than the lives of our ancestors (on average, of course). Just look at the people who lived through - or the (200?) million who died in and more who lost everything in - WWII, less than 100 years ago, right after the Great Depression, right after WWI. And they were optimistic and energetic enough to build historically free, peaceful, and prosperous postwar order. There is far more to do, absolutely. Let's get to work.
    - fsflover 3y ago
      > The earth cannot sustain 8 Billion people each living at millionaire consumption standards This might be true, but what exactly are you suggesting?
- fulafel 3y ago
  A lot of places already have carbon pricing in place (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_emission_trading#Examples_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_emission_trading#Exampl...). The international political system has a long track record of cajoling nations into joining treaties that theoretically are like this. It's not prisoner's dilemma, because the main property of the PD problem is that parties are prevented from communicating and cooperating with each other. When there's negotiations, transparencency/monitoring, etc, parties can cooperate. If you think international treaty development is like PD, you are due for a for a big optimism update!
nradov 3y ago
In order to be politically acceptable, a carbon tax should be phased in gradually and coupled with a reduction in income tax so as to make it revenue neutral. That way it can't be framed as just another government tax grab.
- dublinben 3y ago
  Offsetting income tax would be a massive handout to the rich, who have been and continue to be the greatest contributors to carbon emissions. Instead, it should be paired with a dividend which makes it revenue neutral for the median household. Lower income families, who are more impacted by but less responsible for climate change, would be paid a benefit.
  - AdrianB1 3y ago
    There is progressive taxation, so you can control who is getting offsets and who is not.
  - michael1999 3y ago
    Canada’s rebate was per-capita. Most people received more in their rebate than they paid in increased fuel cost.
  - angra_mainyu 3y ago
    > Offsetting income tax would be a massive handout to the rich, who have been and continue to be the greatest contributors to carbon emissions. I'm not sure how these two ideas make sense in your head. If you implement a carbon tax and the rich are the greatest contributors as you stated, one would expect them to be hit by the carbon tax as well. In any case, I personally see an income tax as a strange thing to have in the context of a discussion wherein taxing undesirable behavior is seen as a way of disincentivizing it. At the very minimum free the working class and lower-middle class from income tax.
  - brlewis 3y ago
    In the U.S. capital gains and dividends are taxed at a low rate to benefit the rich, and "Income tax" is a working-class thing. Maybe the OP was referring to the U.S. concept of income tax.
ianai 3y ago
It's finding a way to input the external costs of consumption of emissive products into their final price(s). In reality, a gallon of gas causes significantly more damage than the price paid at the pump - it was like $16/gallon when I saw a figure for it around 2010. Imagine how much differently a world with $20/gallon gas would look. There'd probably be massive pressures from all corners to move away from oil.
- trimethylpurine 3y ago
  Gas was just under $4 a liter every time I've been to Europe. That's about $16/gallon. People were driving to work, and sitting in traffic, just like they do in the US.
  - ianai 3y ago
    For there, that'd be 32/gallon with the old figure I used.
    - trimethylpurine 3y ago
      Do you have any example of a country driving less when fuel costs were ALWAYS higher? I would guess short term, yes, but eventually people will drive just as much, and they will spend less on housing, which will decrease costs of housing to allow for a larger portion of income to pay for gas. That seems like basic economics to me. Unless, you have a real world example that contrasts that. People still have to get to work. They still have to pick up their kids from school. It doesn't matter what gas costs. They still have to. Just like they are paying double for it in Europe today, they will pay whatever it costs.
      - ianai 3y ago
        Absolutely, when gas doubled during the Great Recession I personally saw much less traffic on the roads in the major US city I lived in at the time. People were also much less aggressive on the roads. Unlike those days, people can now offset their use of oil for transportation with BEVs and PHEVs. See recent reports of oil/gas demand seemingly plateaued to decreasing. When the price of something increases, energy included, alternatives become more attractive. Oil enjoyed strong price insensitivities for a long time, but those days are sunsetting. Even China is seeing this with their “lying flat” movement. Dowries for a marriage are averaging USD 60,000(per The Economist). So instead men aren’t dating and aren’t doing the 996. Russia is seeing it in European nations building LNG infrastructure at their major ports and taking deliveries from overseas. That’s a long term loss of business. And those same European nations are incentivizing their citizens to replace heaters with heatpumps and other means of reducing fossil fuel use. When prices and costs increase people are incentivized to decide to go with alternatives.
zapnuk 3y ago
It's not just on a global level. In germany we can't agree on building new north-south power lines to transport the energy we generate through wind power. ..and in the USA (and many other 1st world countries) you still have one of the two political parties who doesn't even agree that climate change is either real or poses a serious problem.
jcfrei 3y ago
A carbon tax will not be politically viable for two simple reasons: 1) Some people who would need to pay can't really afford it: It's people living in old houses or who have to drive very far to work or rely on cheap energy for heating and electricity - It's not gonna affect the software engineer who drives his Tesla to work. 2) Another big chunk of the working population would lose their jobs because their industry gets shaken up: Those working in polluting industries (coal and gas) or the huge part of the economy that's surrounding petro-chemicals (gas stations clerks, heating engineers, fuel truck drivers), etc. You would need to redistribute the CO2 tax income as welfare checks but again: That's not a politically viable solution because the fear of job losses pretty much outweighs anything else.
- brlewis 3y ago
  How about redistributing the CO2 tax as cuts in payroll and income taxes? That would benefit the working population and create a lot of replacement jobs.
- barbazoo 3y ago
  Have a look at https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/carbon-pricing-in-canada-what-it-is-what-it-costs-and-why-you-get-a-rebate-1.6627245 https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/carbon-pricing-in-canada-wha... about the Canadian carbon tax and how rebates can work.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
whydoineedthis 3y ago
A carbon tax will make the problem worse. To make up for the profit losses from the tax, business will produce and sell more goods - actually increasi g the pollution put in the air.
jjjjj55555 3y ago
I've been hearing for over a decade that carbon taxes are the solution. I've also been hearing that Republicans are standing in the way of this solution. What I've never heard is an explanation of why some sensible, well-run scandinavian country hasn't already implemented this and brought their emissions down to zero. If there are simple solutions to this problem then why hasn't some country already implemented them?
- K0nserv 3y ago
  Sweden has had a carbon tax since 1991 and has almost halved co2 emissions since. Sources: https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/sweden https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/sweden https://government.se/government-policy/swedens-carbon-tax/swedens-carbon-tax/ https://government.se/government-policy/swedens-carbon-tax/s...
  - jjjjj55555 3y ago
    The US has dropped them 25% over the same time period, so Sweden has done 25 percentage points better. That's less than a 1% compounded drop for those 35 years, and that's assuming that all of the delta was attributable to carbon taxes. That's not a very convincing case.
- _Tev 3y ago
  It is not simple. Carbon tax is useless without carbon tariffs, which have high political costs. Not to mention without any kind of carbon dividends the whole scheme would be extremely unpopular. So everyone is just pushing half solutions and talking a lot. Politicians will never go for hard solutions, especially when everyone is satisfied by talking about magic pills like "green deal", "more renewables" or (from current top comment) "climate advocacy" and "citizen engagement". People just love talking. And feeling good about it.

AndrewKemendo 3y ago

A global tax requires global enforcement No sovereign is going to agree to subordinate itself without all others doing the same Classic prisoners dilemma

neilk 3y ago
That’s too pessimistic. Dozens of countries have some kind of carbon tax right now. Important and influential jurisdictions like California, also have them. Even oil-producing regions have them. They are universally rather timid in their scope, and politically fragile. So maybe they aren’t going to get us there, at least not in their current form. But it’s going too far to say they just don’t exist or can’t exist. We have plenty of treaties that inhibit states. Nuclear weapons, slavery, pollutants. Enlightentment and enlightened self-interest isn’t out of the question.
- AndrewKemendo 3y ago
  “Enlightened self interest” is randian nonsense. That’s how we got here in the first place Ask Lybia how nuclear disarmament went Go count all the slaves supplying the global market for chocolate, cobalt, mica, vanilla etc... How about prisoners in the US making .20-.50c/hr making license plates or literally picking cotton on a former slave plantation in alabama. Or how about slave labor in the form of migrant children working in factories for Hyundai in the US south The concept of self-interested Neoliberalism has utterly failed and it is turning into a global catastrophe The earth cannot sustain 8 Billion people each living at millionaire consumption standards
  - wolverine876 3y ago
    I don't understand your point: There are bad things in the world, so everything is bad? We could point to lots of good things too. In fact, you live better - far better - than anyone in history. It's not even close. It was built by the post-war 'neoliberal' order, on a foundation of human rights and free markets. For us to quit and complain after all the work our predecessors did, remaining optimistic and working in a much starker situation - after depressions and world wars - would be pathetic abdication of our duties.
    - AndrewKemendo 3y ago
      I’m not sure what to tell you here cause you’re not looking at reality because life is hard for a lot of people and getting harder. I suggest you read this: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2022.0261#RSTB20220261F1 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2022.026...
      - wolverine876 3y ago
        > life is hard for a lot of people and getting harder. Life is hard and always has been, but it's far easier than the lives of our ancestors (on average, of course). Just look at the people who lived through - or the (200?) million who died in and more who lost everything in - WWII, less than 100 years ago, right after the Great Depression, right after WWI. And they were optimistic and energetic enough to build historically free, peaceful, and prosperous postwar order. There is far more to do, absolutely. Let's get to work.
  - fsflover 3y ago
    > The earth cannot sustain 8 Billion people each living at millionaire consumption standards This might be true, but what exactly are you suggesting?
fulafel 3y ago
A lot of places already have carbon pricing in place (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_emission_trading#Examples_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_emission_trading#Exampl...). The international political system has a long track record of cajoling nations into joining treaties that theoretically are like this. It's not prisoner's dilemma, because the main property of the PD problem is that parties are prevented from communicating and cooperating with each other. When there's negotiations, transparencency/monitoring, etc, parties can cooperate. If you think international treaty development is like PD, you are due for a for a big optimism update!

nradov 3y ago

In order to be politically acceptable, a carbon tax should be phased in gradually and coupled with a reduction in income tax so as to make it revenue neutral. That way it can't be framed as just another government tax grab.

dublinben 3y ago
Offsetting income tax would be a massive handout to the rich, who have been and continue to be the greatest contributors to carbon emissions. Instead, it should be paired with a dividend which makes it revenue neutral for the median household. Lower income families, who are more impacted by but less responsible for climate change, would be paid a benefit.
- AdrianB1 3y ago
  There is progressive taxation, so you can control who is getting offsets and who is not.
- michael1999 3y ago
  Canada’s rebate was per-capita. Most people received more in their rebate than they paid in increased fuel cost.
- angra_mainyu 3y ago
  > Offsetting income tax would be a massive handout to the rich, who have been and continue to be the greatest contributors to carbon emissions. I'm not sure how these two ideas make sense in your head. If you implement a carbon tax and the rich are the greatest contributors as you stated, one would expect them to be hit by the carbon tax as well. In any case, I personally see an income tax as a strange thing to have in the context of a discussion wherein taxing undesirable behavior is seen as a way of disincentivizing it. At the very minimum free the working class and lower-middle class from income tax.
- brlewis 3y ago
  In the U.S. capital gains and dividends are taxed at a low rate to benefit the rich, and "Income tax" is a working-class thing. Maybe the OP was referring to the U.S. concept of income tax.

ianai 3y ago

It's finding a way to input the external costs of consumption of emissive products into their final price(s). In reality, a gallon of gas causes significantly more damage than the price paid at the pump - it was like $16/gallon when I saw a figure for it around 2010. Imagine how much differently a world with $20/gallon gas would look. There'd probably be massive pressures from all corners to move away from oil.

trimethylpurine 3y ago
Gas was just under $4 a liter every time I've been to Europe. That's about $16/gallon. People were driving to work, and sitting in traffic, just like they do in the US.
- ianai 3y ago
  For there, that'd be 32/gallon with the old figure I used.
  - trimethylpurine 3y ago
    Do you have any example of a country driving less when fuel costs were ALWAYS higher? I would guess short term, yes, but eventually people will drive just as much, and they will spend less on housing, which will decrease costs of housing to allow for a larger portion of income to pay for gas. That seems like basic economics to me. Unless, you have a real world example that contrasts that. People still have to get to work. They still have to pick up their kids from school. It doesn't matter what gas costs. They still have to. Just like they are paying double for it in Europe today, they will pay whatever it costs.
    - ianai 3y ago
      Absolutely, when gas doubled during the Great Recession I personally saw much less traffic on the roads in the major US city I lived in at the time. People were also much less aggressive on the roads. Unlike those days, people can now offset their use of oil for transportation with BEVs and PHEVs. See recent reports of oil/gas demand seemingly plateaued to decreasing. When the price of something increases, energy included, alternatives become more attractive. Oil enjoyed strong price insensitivities for a long time, but those days are sunsetting. Even China is seeing this with their “lying flat” movement. Dowries for a marriage are averaging USD 60,000(per The Economist). So instead men aren’t dating and aren’t doing the 996. Russia is seeing it in European nations building LNG infrastructure at their major ports and taking deliveries from overseas. That’s a long term loss of business. And those same European nations are incentivizing their citizens to replace heaters with heatpumps and other means of reducing fossil fuel use. When prices and costs increase people are incentivized to decide to go with alternatives.

zapnuk 3y ago

It's not just on a global level. In germany we can't agree on building new north-south power lines to transport the energy we generate through wind power. ..and in the USA (and many other 1st world countries) you still have one of the two political parties who doesn't even agree that climate change is either real or poses a serious problem.

jcfrei 3y ago

A carbon tax will not be politically viable for two simple reasons: 1) Some people who would need to pay can't really afford it: It's people living in old houses or who have to drive very far to work or rely on cheap energy for heating and electricity - It's not gonna affect the software engineer who drives his Tesla to work. 2) Another big chunk of the working population would lose their jobs because their industry gets shaken up: Those working in polluting industries (coal and gas) or the huge part of the economy that's surrounding petro-chemicals (gas stations clerks, heating engineers, fuel truck drivers), etc. You would need to redistribute the CO2 tax income as welfare checks but again: That's not a politically viable solution because the fear of job losses pretty much outweighs anything else.

brlewis 3y ago
How about redistributing the CO2 tax as cuts in payroll and income taxes? That would benefit the working population and create a lot of replacement jobs.
barbazoo 3y ago
Have a look at https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/carbon-pricing-in-canada-what-it-is-what-it-costs-and-why-you-get-a-rebate-1.6627245 https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/carbon-pricing-in-canada-wha... about the Canadian carbon tax and how rebates can work.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

whydoineedthis 3y ago

A carbon tax will make the problem worse. To make up for the profit losses from the tax, business will produce and sell more goods - actually increasi g the pollution put in the air.

jjjjj55555 3y ago

I've been hearing for over a decade that carbon taxes are the solution. I've also been hearing that Republicans are standing in the way of this solution. What I've never heard is an explanation of why some sensible, well-run scandinavian country hasn't already implemented this and brought their emissions down to zero. If there are simple solutions to this problem then why hasn't some country already implemented them?

K0nserv 3y ago
Sweden has had a carbon tax since 1991 and has almost halved co2 emissions since. Sources: https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/sweden https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/sweden https://government.se/government-policy/swedens-carbon-tax/swedens-carbon-tax/ https://government.se/government-policy/swedens-carbon-tax/s...
- jjjjj55555 3y ago
  The US has dropped them 25% over the same time period, so Sweden has done 25 percentage points better. That's less than a 1% compounded drop for those 35 years, and that's assuming that all of the delta was attributable to carbon taxes. That's not a very convincing case.
_Tev 3y ago
It is not simple. Carbon tax is useless without carbon tariffs, which have high political costs. Not to mention without any kind of carbon dividends the whole scheme would be extremely unpopular. So everyone is just pushing half solutions and talking a lot. Politicians will never go for hard solutions, especially when everyone is satisfied by talking about magic pills like "green deal", "more renewables" or (from current top comment) "climate advocacy" and "citizen engagement". People just love talking. And feeling good about it.