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I don't know if the Earth gets cleaner faster this way. In the US, college is too expensive, so people ask for gov't loans using taxpayer dollars. This ends up

by rtpg 12y ago

I don't know if the Earth gets cleaner faster this way. In the US, college is too expensive, so people ask for gov't loans using taxpayer dollars. This ends up rising college prices, since virtually everyone is now guaranteed to be able to pay at least $5k per year instead of $0. I could see a similar situation here where auto manufacturers lobby for subsidies for people buying their first car or whatever, and so the extra taxes ended up getting covered by subsidies. Car companies end up getting more money without having to bother reducing emissions. Generally thinking, I think you will find little sympathy for the poor souls who want to buy a $500k car and drive it at 200mph at 3 mpg (don't know what real numbers look like for these things). Especially not in public areas, in our public space. In any case, pollution makes everyone's lives pretty awful (see recent pictures of cities in China), so that ends up being prioritised. Maybe with a tax, only 1% of cars will be over some limit, but with regulations, pretty much 0% will. In an alternate universe, some NRA-like figure is arguing about how if we outlaw polluting cars, only criminals will have polluting cars.

redthrowaway 12y ago
I think the Earth gets cleaner at largely the same rate. The drive to compete on prices forces 99% of the cars sold to be optimized towards lowered emissions (accounting for the increased price of those optimizations). I don't find your subsidy argument persuasive. There's never been (to my knowledge) a government subsidy for buying cars (outside of cash for clunkers, which was stimulus disguised as subsidy), and I don't see a carbon tax affecting that. As for college being expensive, like many things that's an American phenomenon. The rest of the western world seems to get by just fine with affordable education and healthcare. Even here in Canada, where education is far more expensive than in Europe, our tuition is pretty reasonable (~$2500/semester). I graduated with a BSc in CS and $38k in student loans, and I took my sweet time about it.
gambiting 12y ago
This system already works in the UK. You have to pay larger tax for larger emissions,and some manufacturers(Nissan, Citroen, Land Rover) have completely removed larger engines from their offers, because clients were not interested in buying them and taking a hit on their annual tax. At least that's what UK Land Rover branch told me - their % of petrol Range Rovers is close to zero, while in other EU countries which don't have tax tied to emissions sells mostly petrol Range Rovers(which have larger engines with larger emissions) because there is effectively no penalty for choosing them over the slower diesels.

by rtpg 12y ago

redthrowaway 12y ago

I think the Earth gets cleaner at largely the same rate. The drive to compete on prices forces 99% of the cars sold to be optimized towards lowered emissions (accounting for the increased price of those optimizations). I don't find your subsidy argument persuasive. There's never been (to my knowledge) a government subsidy for buying cars (outside of cash for clunkers, which was stimulus disguised as subsidy), and I don't see a carbon tax affecting that. As for college being expensive, like many things that's an American phenomenon. The rest of the western world seems to get by just fine with affordable education and healthcare. Even here in Canada, where education is far more expensive than in Europe, our tuition is pretty reasonable (~$2500/semester). I graduated with a BSc in CS and $38k in student loans, and I took my sweet time about it.

gambiting 12y ago

This system already works in the UK. You have to pay larger tax for larger emissions,and some manufacturers(Nissan, Citroen, Land Rover) have completely removed larger engines from their offers, because clients were not interested in buying them and taking a hit on their annual tax. At least that's what UK Land Rover branch told me - their % of petrol Range Rovers is close to zero, while in other EU countries which don't have tax tied to emissions sells mostly petrol Range Rovers(which have larger engines with larger emissions) because there is effectively no penalty for choosing them over the slower diesels.